The barriers to diversifying voices and values in conservation and its governance run deep (H. Tallis et al. Nature 515, 27–28; 2014). Anyone who has sat on a diversity and equity committee knows how hard it can be to implement changes in practice.

Barriers include systemic racism and a dominant political–economic system that champions profitability above all. Futhermore, regulations governing issues from land tenure to wilderness acts are relics of colonial administrations — hangovers from elite Euro-American visions of property and land management.

What is needed to make a world where a genuine diversity of views can take root? We suggest that conservation should embrace something akin to the climate justice movement, in which scientists, activists, academics, farmers, indigenous peoples, urban and rural populations demand not just emissions reductions, but a dramatic redistribution of wealth and power.