Abstract
AbstractWe raise two points of contention with “When conservation goes viral: The diffusion of innovative biodiversity conservation policies and practices” in which Mascia and Mills make a case for “diffusion of innovation theory” as a way of understanding how conservation interventions spread, drawing on case studies from Tanzania and the Pacific. First, the conceptualization of the spread of CBNRM as the uptake of innovative policies through diffusion depoliticizes CBNRM and ignores existing social science scholarship on Tanzanian CBNRM. Second, the article's central claim of “diffusion” builds on inflated statistics on the spread of CBNRM in Tanzania.
Highlights
When conservation research goes awry A reply to Mascia and Mills (2018) Lund, Jens Friis; Bluwstein, Jevgeniy
Rather than eager “adoption” and seamless “diffusion,” CBNRM in Tanzania has spread through top-down, donor-financed implementation of technical and bureaucratically framed interventions
Research on Wildlife Management Areas (WMA) shows that they were implemented by State and NGO actors identifying areas and “sensitizing” villages to join, often through manipulation and inflated promises (Benjaminsen, Goldman, Minwary & Maganga, 2013; Green & Adams, 2014)
Summary
When conservation research goes awry A reply to Mascia and Mills (2018) Lund, Jens Friis; Bluwstein, Jevgeniy. When conservation research goes awry: A reply to Mascia and Mills (2018) Conservation scientists have embraced insights from social science. In “When conservation goes viral: The diffusion of innovative biodiversity conservation policies and practices,” Mascia and Mills (2018) make a case for “diffusion of innovation theory” to understand how conservation interventions spread, drawing on evidence from Tanzania and the Pacific.
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