private conservation, Peru, extraction, property institutions, de-growth

Abstract: A growing body of de-growth literature recognizes the futility of national economic strategies in the West based on growth measured by GDP (gross domestic product). A number of policy recommendations have emerged, of which one is an emphasis on a re-evaluation of how private property regimes mediate the human productive relationship with our surroundings and suggest that common property regimes may be more amenable to de-growth. Simultaneously, in the conservation science literature, private property institutions designed to enable market exchange are increasingly promoted as mechanisms to solve biodiversity conservation problems. This paper speculatively explores how these distinct policy recommendations may come together through a nested case study of private conservation in the Cordillera Huayhuash of the Central Andes in Peru. Findings show that extraction and conservation are articulated through private property institutions and that preference for private property regimes exist in the extractive sector and within rural agricultural producers.