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Convivial conservation has been put forward as a radical alternative to transform prevailing mainstream approaches that aim to address global concerns of biodiversity loss and extinction. This special issue includes contributions from diverse disciplinary and geographical perspectives which critically examine convivial conservation's potential in theory and practice and explore both possibilities and challenges for the approach's transformative ambitions. This introduction focuses on three issues which the contributions highlight as critical for facilitating transformation of mainstream conservation. First, the different ways in which key dimensions of justice — epistemic, distributive, and participatory and multi-species justice — intersect with the convivial conservation proposal, and how potential injustices might be mitigated. Second, how convivial conservation approaches the potential to facilitate human and non-human coexistence. Third, how transformative methodologies and innovative conceptual lenses can be used to further develop convivial conservation. The diverse contributions show that convivial conservation has clear potential to be transformative. However, to realise this potential, convivial conservation must avoid previous proposals' pitfalls, such as trying to 'reinvent the wheel' and being too narrowly focused. Instead, convivial conservation must continue to evolve in response to engagement with a plurality of perspectives, experiences, ideas and methodologies from around the world.

The term 'coexistence' is increasingly being used by academics and practitioners to reflect a re-conceptualisation of human-wildlife interactions (HWI). Coexistence has become a popular buzzword and is central to several proposals for transformative change in biodiversity conservation, including convivial conservation. Although ideas about how to achieve coexistence proliferate, critical exploration of the framing and use of the term is lacking. Through analysis of semi-structured interviews, webinars and online and offline documents, this paper critically interrogates how 'coexistence' is being conceptualised and translated into practice. We characterise coexistence as a boundary object that reflects a broadly agreed on 'hopeful mission', while being flexible enough to be meaningful for a wide range of actors. We identify three main framings of coexistence, which reflect the ways of knowing, values and approaches of different epistemic communities. We find that although the idea of coexistence has the potential to help facilitate transformative change in wildlife management, so far it largely manifests in practice as a positive-sounding label for standardised packages of tools and incentives. We argue that as the meaning of coexistence continues to be contested, there is an opportunity for activists, academics, and practitioners to reclaim its transformative roots. We identify a role for convivial conservation within this agenda: to re-politicise coexistence through the concept of 'meaningful coexistence'.

Models increasingly pervade conservation and development practice – model policies, model countries, model regions, model states, model projects, model villages, model communities and so on. These are idealized, bounded, miniature entities that seek to demonstrate the efficacy of a more substantive policy, scheme or intervention. Although political ecologists and critical scholars have analyzed models in specific interventions, there has been relatively little reflection on the common logics central to models more generally. Drawing on critical conservation and development literature and in-depth case studies of REDD+ in Tanzania and Nigeria, we identify and elaborate three core model logics: 1) problematization of the field of intervention and valorization of microcosms within it; 2) isolation and bounding which seek to order complexity and etch microcosms in space and time; 3) enrolment of actors. Although ambitious and transformational in its claims and aspirations, REDD+ has thus far manifested as an extensive network of models across socio-political scales. We argue that idealized REDD+ models enable proponents to demonstrate and 'sell' REDD+ as a 'successful' intervention, thereby allowing the scheme to persist in policy circles in spite of its failures on the ground and its lack of viability at scale. We therefore argue that models often become an end in themselves, paradoxically failing to herald the transformational intervention they were originally meant to epitomize. Keywords: Conservation, development, models, Nigeria, Tanzania, REDD+