Governing the Nature Restoration State

Abstract

Speaker: Nick Kirsop-Taylor The Holocene mass extinction represents an existential risk to many states in the Global North that are institutionally parasitical upon nature in its many guises. The UN Global Biodiversity Framework has been a landmark critical juncture in thinking and ambition towards national nature restorative efforts, and might in time stimulate a governance paradigm shift towards what we describe as the Age of Nature Restoration. However, governance transformations are inextricably connected with the sovereign state, where national ecological governance represents the means by which the state manifests its interests and priorities over its sovereign spaces. As such, paradigm shifts in national governance will in some cases herald state transformation to what is theorised as the Nature Restoration State. In this talk, Dr Kirsop-Taylor explores the key ideas, logics and limitations of his new book. We will examine how the institutional nature of the state builds historical institutionalist path dependencies that both expedite and challenge aspects of the Nature Restoration State. We will discuss the likelihood of such states emerging in the decades ahead and offer suggestions for the kinds of states that might, in time, orientate around place-based iterations of nature restoration as a central organising principle of the state. The talk will conclude with a discussion about a potential second volume exploring the politics of the Nature Restoration State.