Beyond the REDD+ neoliberal environmentality and its discontents in Southern Tanzania

Abstract

This paper utilizes a Foucauldian approach to shed light on the claim that power relations are complex and dynamic, underlying neoliberal conservation mechanisms. Despite the ascendance of the Foucauldian governmentality lens to deconstruct neoliberal conservation, few context-specific studies analysing its multiple operations and contradictions with local realities are available. To fill this gap, this article advances a multiple-governmentality approach to REDD+ in Lindi, Tanzania, that allows for grappling with the social life of neoliberal conservation. It illustrates existing governing practices and techniques – including fences and fines, community self-management mechanisms, land use management plans, bylaws, monetary incentives, and social infrastructure – that have far-reaching and contradictory social consequences for forest-dependent communities in southern Tanzania. This article concludes by highlighting the significance of progressive, liberating-political framing to confront the exclusions and injustices inherent in current neoliberal conservation models.