Authors: Biasetti, Pierfrancesco; de Mori, Barbara;

Conservationists often have to deal with intricate conflicts between competing interests, demands, and values. Conservation projects, for instance, can produce inequities among social groups and people. When they involve the manipulation of wildlife, they can negatively impact animal welfare. Implicit value judgments may create contrasts in priority-setting. And so on. When not addressed, these and other similar ethically relevant issues may undermine the chances of success of a conservation project. Ethical analysis can help by providing conservationists with the means for anticipating potential conflicts. Here, we discuss an existing conceptual tool for ethical analysis—the Ethical Matrix (EM)—in a version explicitly tailored to biodiversity conservation. After briefly describing the EM in its specific adaptation to the context of ethical analysis in conservation—by focusing on what the tool is, why to use it, and how to use it—we will present some examples of its application. In this way, it will be shown how the EM can be used to unpack the values involved in an entangled conservation scenario, assess the impact of different decisions on stakeholders, and map the potential conflicts, exploring the existing possibilities for compromise between different ethical demands.