Convivial rewilding: Autonomy as a link between rewilding and convivial conservation

Amid mounting evidence that biodiversity is declining at dangerous and unprecedented rates around the world, calls for transformative responses to this crisis are growing. In this context, various conservation movements have emerged. Convivial conservation stands out for its transformative potential, advocating an explicitly political approach to conservation linked to broader movements for social justice and transformation of unsustainable, growth-based economies. Rewilding has also emerged under the banner of transformative conservation, becoming markedly popular as a way to create space for ecological processes to flourish. We bring these into dialogue with each other, comparing principles put forward by both movements in the search for what we call “convivial rewilding”. We explore this possibility through an analytical focus on autonomy, finding some overlap, but a lack of deeper resonance, between the two. We provide suggestions on where convivial rewilding might emerge and find that it is actually supported by the absence of a clear definition in rewilding. It is the process of negotiating, implementing and experimenting, rather than a clear definition, that presents the greatest opportunity for convivial rewilding to provide justice and equity to both human and nonhuman nature in conservation.