Advocates of NCS also argue – both as a matter of efficacy and as a matter of principle – that conservation should partner with, rather than impede, business.
Although groups with competing interests can negotiate agreements
– and should certainly do so when it is truly beneficial – it is rarely possible to identify solutions that maximize both economic and ecological benefits, as NCS advocates propose
[34].
Nor is it clear that giving up on conservation’s core goals is the best way to reach compromise with those who may have legitimate, but mostly non-congruent, objectives. We cannot speak effectively on behalf of the natural world if at the outset we prioritize corporate and other human interests.
NCS proponents also downplay evidence that corporations have done vast harm to lands and people through resource extraction [37], that recent efforts to ‘green’ business through environmentally responsible practices have often failed to reduce pollution or biodiversity losses [38,39],
and that indigenous rights groups view the ‘green economy’
as a cultural and ecological threat; for example, the declaration of 500 indigenous groups at the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development states: ‘The ‘‘Green
Economy’’ promises to eradicate poverty but in fact will only
favor and respond to multinational enterprises and capitalism.’ (See http://www.ienearth.org/docs/DECLARATION-of-KARI-OCA-2-Eng.pdf and Table S2 in the supplementary
material online.)