The Language of Conservation Project was founded in 2014 by directors Claudio Campagna and
Daniel Guevara, as part of the Center for Public Philosophy, UC Santa Cruz. It is now an
independent initiative that seeks a radical transformation in how we talk and think about life, in
all its diverse, natural forms. The discourse and thinking that has dominated world-class
conservation for the last three decades operates primarily with the politically expedient
language of sustainable development. This is the language of economics, which is incapable of
representing the nature and value of life, or of addressing the overwhelming threat of
extinctions that we (human beings) pose to all forms of life, including our own. Well-meaning,
alternative talk of the “intrinsic value,” or “rights,” of nature also distorts and alienates us from
what most living things are, have and do. Campagna and Guevara’s recent work, Speaking of
Forms of Life: The Language of Conservation, lays out, in a rigorous but accessible way, the
guiding language for a new conservation, the language which makes it possible for us to identify
and describe life in the first place, and to represent the primary value in life of a creature’s
satisfying the necessities of its form.