Culture for biodiversity conservation? Untangling engagements with pastoralism in northern Kenya's private conservancies

In global environmental discourse, there is a growing emphasis on the importance of culture for addressing the biodiversity crisis. This culture-conservation nexus is becoming evident through a revival of interest in biocultural diversity and an unprecedented wave of commitments to Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights in international agendas. Although political ecology has a rich history of concern with cultural politics, attention is needed in this moment to if and how the biocultural turn is challenging and changing historically exclusionary conservation models. In this article, I use a case study of Laikipia's private conservancies in northern Kenya to show that sometimes conservation actors engage with the role of culture for conservation without supporting rights or sovereignty. Drawing on three months of qualitative research, I show that private conservancies are drawing on pastoralists’ knowledge and practices for environmental management, but in ways which do not truly valorise pastoralists’ biocultural heritage, nor tangibly contribute to strengthening pastoralists’ rights to land and resources. Sometimes, pastoralists’ environmental knowledge and biocultural practices are undermined, with the effect of framing private conservancies as the better conservationists. My findings highlight that in mainstream conservation spaces, engaging with culture can have consequences for shaping who is able to access and control the management of biodiverse lands. By returning to the cultural turn in political ecology for insights, this article sheds light on how the biocultural turn in conservation is becoming entangled in socio-political struggles on the ground, highlighting the need to critically question reductionist understandings of culture in conservation spaces. As biocultural approaches to conservation gain traction, a focus on culture in political ecology will be essential for advancing more inclusive conservation practices that genuinely address historic injustices and centre respect for human rights.