Leading rural land conflict as citizens and leaving it as denizens: Inside forest conservation politics in Burkina Faso

Abstract

Based on an empirical study of struggles concerning access to land and political inclusion (and exclusion) in the context of a forest conservation project in rural Burkina Faso, this paper analyses environmental politics through the lens of citizenship. In Centre-east Burkina Faso, a peasant resistance to a newly demarcated forest conservation zone turns into an identity and political conflict involving an international conservation organization, the state, decentralized and customary authorities. Based on shared history and residency, a new citizenship of migrants had emerged. These new citizens, finding their given lands within the new forest conservation area, rejected the project-proposed forest boundaries, put forward their citizenship entitlements and engaged in resistance. Eventually they also found themselves in conflict with their polity, lost their claims along with their still-fragile citizenship. Consequently, they were evicted from the forest and labelled as les déguerpis, denied citizenship and became denizens. Beyond confirming the fragile, processual, nature of citizenship these findings also bear theoretical and conceptual implications, challenge the mainstream way environmental politics are analysed and suggest the need to understand political belonging and citizenship as the very basis of environmental struggles.