Abstract
Theories of property highlight power relations and their distributional and spatial effects. The power of property is seen as necessary for the defence of nature but is also instrumental for opening nature to destructive forces, especially global capitalism. In this paper we expand the debate on property and nature conservation by showing that access to land and the arrangement of tenure regimes that govern it are crucial for the establishment of peace parks in southern Africa. To date, no peace park in the region has private land serving as its core area. We argue that the establishment of the core areas of peace parks depends on the configuration of property regimes and the power relations embedded in them. The possibility of establishing peace parks lies in the successful negotiations with property rights holders and the consequent rearrangement of land use options. These negotiations are much harder with private landowners, mainly because private property presents legal and financial challenges distinct from state and communal land regimes. In Southern Africa, private property is historically entangled with white identity and landownership. We substantiate this argument by drawing on empirical evidence from the failed attempt to create two transfrontier conservation areas across the Namibia-South Africa border, the Gariep Transfrontier Park in the late 1990s and the Lower Orange River Transfrontier Conservation Area in 2008. We ascribe this failed attempt to unsuccessful negotiations between the Peace Parks Foundation and white farmers, the inability to create a core area from scratch, and the historical tenure arrangements that evolved along the Lower Orange River over more than a century. The conceptual value of the case study is twofold. First, it contributes to understandings of conditions under which the idea of peace parks materializes or fails. Second, it underscores the agency of property regimes in nature conservation.
Highlights
The rise of transboundary peace parks in post-apartheid Southern Africa in the 1990s has been analysed from various vantage points, including colonial history (Mavhunga and Spierenburg, 2009), politics (Wolmer, 2003; Duffy, 2006), neoliberalism (Ramutsindela, 2007; Büscher, 2013), ecology (Suich et al, 2009; Andersson et al, 2012), and tourism (Chiutsi and Saarinen, 2017)
We argue that the Gariep and later the Lower Orange River Peace Parks did not take off as planned due to the dynamics of private property
We recounted the history of land dispossession and ownership in the Northern Cape and southern Namibia to highlight why and how the pattern of landownership developed on both sides of the Orange, where the Gariep and Lower Orange River transfrontier conservation areas (TFCA) were proposed
Summary
The rise of transboundary peace parks in post-apartheid Southern Africa in the 1990s has been analysed from various vantage points, including colonial history (Mavhunga and Spierenburg, 2009), politics (Wolmer, 2003; Duffy, 2006), neoliberalism (Ramutsindela, 2007; Büscher, 2013), ecology (Suich et al, 2009; Andersson et al, 2012), and tourism (Chiutsi and Saarinen, 2017). To demonstrate the importance of landownership in the creation of peace parks, we begin this paper by presenting evidence of the role property regimes play in nature conservation, including the establish ment of peace parks in Southern Africa. Held land, freehold land and state land are dominant forms of tenure in a legal system that govern property relations These three property regimes are involved in nature conservation in Southern Africa in various ways. As most of this communal land is owned by the state, local people have little or no say in the use of their land for purposes of creating or expanding peace parks (Ramutsindela, 2007) They have been relocated to give way for peace parks as evident in the creation of the Great Limpopo Peace Park across the Mozambique-South Africa border (Spierenburg et al, 2008). Nowhere is the power of pri vate property more visible in peace parks than in the proposal for the establishment of the Gariep and Lower Orange River peace parks to which we turn our focus
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