Which author argues that conflicts over the environment are ontological and require governance that accounts for different worldviews?

• A. Blaser (2014)
• B. Pierotti & Wildcat (2000)
• C. Bridge (2009)
• D. Barbier (2021)

Answer: (A)

Conflicts over the environment arise because people carry different ways of being in relation to the natural world—different ontologies. Blaser (2014) treats this as a political issue: if communities hold fundamentally different worldviews about what counts as nature, who has rights, and who has authority, then governance must acknowledge and accommodate those divergent positions. The point isn’t that people disagree over preferences alone, but that they inhabit distinct realities or cosmologies that shape laws, policies, and resource use. So the best governance is pluralistic and inclusive, capable of negotiating across worldviews—through inclusive deliberation, recognition of rights of nature, or co-management that respects Indigenous and local ontologies. The other scholars touch on related aspects like Indigenous knowledge or economic perspectives on environment, but they do not foreground the ontological stakes and the need for governance that explicitly accounts for multiple worldviews as Blaser does.