Territorial Conservation Research Articles

Territoriality by Conservation in the Selous–Niassa Corridor in Tanzania

Summary In this paper we argue that historically emerging frontiers of conservation pave the way for continuous top–down territorialization. Drawing on a concrete case in the Selous–Niassa Corridor in Southern Tanzania, we show how a frontier emerged in the form of community-based conservation. Decades of consecutive and continuous territorialization projects, based on mapping and boundary making, have ensured that conservation is beyond questioning, despite failures in the processes of demarcating, controlling, and managing this large-scale socio-spatial intervention. Although these failures produce territorial conflicts and confusions on the ground, we argue that in the context of a conservation frontier the gap between the envisioned ideal and the messy reality is used to legitimize continuous conservation interventions that rely on technical expertise rather than political dialog. While such top–down territorialization by community-based conservation inevitably remains partial and contingent, this is nonetheless a powerful and resilient project that gradually transforms communal landscapes into conservation territories with little room for public debate.

Territorialising REDD+: Conflicts over market-based forest conservation in Lindi, Tanzania

In this paper we use the lens of political ecology to shed light on the causes and effects of pro-poor REDD+ induced land use conflicts. We build our study on recent theoretical work on territorialisation in nature conservation to analyse the conflicts and outcomes of the TFCG/Mjumita REDD+ project in Lindi, Tanzania. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in two case study villages we argue that conservation organisations increasingly make use of participatory tools, FPIC procedures and good governance principles to include local populations in the creation of what we call market-based conservation territories (MBCT). In contrast to project developer’s claims of win–win benefits, we highlight the mixed outcomes of MBCTs and argue that their performance-driven nature and reliance on formal governance arrangements lead to the enclosure of common forests. This inevitably causes conflicts between and within villages over the meaning, ownership and access to forest resources, especially given the importance of customary relations in tropical rural contexts. We argue that despite the extensive community engagement strategy and genuine pro-poor approach of the REDD+ project, project proponents were unable to prevent land use conflicts and risks of economic and physical displacement. The specific social, economic and political conditions shaped the implementation of the project which led to negative consequences to some stakeholders despite genuinely noble intentions. Therefore, we argue that in order to achieve more positive results when creating MBCT, project developers must better acknowledge the inherent trade-offs of markets in conservation and take the limitations and realities of local governance context better into account. We suggest a more explicit assessment of social and environmental justice in the project and more context-specific efforts to prevent social harm from conservation. Theoretically, our study contributes to a better understanding of territorialisation processes under the current trend of market-based conservation.

Планы по разработке газового месторождения Кансу на границе Устюртского заповедника – реальная угроза для экосистемы заповедника и крупнейшей популяции балобана в Кахахстане

Plans of JSC “KazMunayGaz” National Company” on developing the Kansu gas field, which is situated right next to current southern borders of Usturt natural reserve on Kenderli-Kayasan conservation zone (Mangystau Province of the Republic of Kazakhstan) are a direct danger for the largest population of the Saker Falcon Falco cherrug korelovi in Kazakhstan and for Kenderli-Kayasan conservation zone’s ecosystem as a whole. On the contrary, the realization of plans to expand the Usturt State Reserve within the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan/GEF/UNDP project “Rising of stability of systems in conservation territories in desert ecosystems through promoting life sustaining sources compatible with biodiversity in and around conservation areas” and international expert group’s initiative of Mangystau Protected Area System to be nominated for UNESCO World Heritage status could create favorable environment for Usturt population of the Saker Falcon. It’s evident that all possible outcomes should be taken into account in the long-term planning of future development of Mangystau region, and options of development with less negative effect on environment should be chosen. In their letter to President of Kazakhstan the experts described their opinion on the necessity of imposing a moratorium on exploration and development of the Kansu gas field and concentrating on alternative fields.

Пасивна охорона теріофауни в рамках наявних концепцій створення природоохоронних територій

Пасивна охорона теріофауни в рамках наявних концепцій створення природоохоронних територій

Violent enclosures, violated livelihoods: environmental and military territoriality in a Philippine frontier

The political geography of environmental governance can overlap and converge with uneven agrarian change in forest frontiers subject to violent enclosures. When the governance of conservation territories converges with and reinforces enclosures, spaces can be controlled with authority and violence that places livelihoods at greater risk in the context of uneven agrarian political economies – the outcomes of which reflect ‘violent enclosures’. This paper examines how indigenous resource users negotiate the discursive and material impact of environmental governance converging with militarized-insurgent spaces as overlapping enclosures in a protected area on Palawan Island, the Philippines. Drawing on local experiences, we examine how the livelihood vulnerability arising in the local political economy is exacerbated by access and use constraints from the overlapping enclosures of environmental and military governance in the buffer zone of Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park. We argue that the seemingly less governable forest frontiers of protected areas are often the poorest, highly politicized and contested spaces of political and ecological refuge. Here, scarce forest resources are managed closely, and recalcitrant groups seek refuge as military powers frame, conflate and manage local behaviour as criminal and dangerous, merging conservation and military interventions as coercive governance. We conclude that only by critically engaging how governance processes and enclosures converge to yield structural and discursive violence – and by making this apparent to policy makers – will indigenous peoples successfully negotiate the double bind of violent enclosures in frontiers.

Beyond Nature Appropriation: Towards Post-development Conservation in the Maya Forest

The establishment of biosphere reserves in Mexico was followed by alternative livelihood conservation/development projects to integrate indigenous groups into Western style conservation under the idea of sustainable development and participation. In this paper, I discuss the outcomes of two forest wildlife management projects in one Maya community along the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve in the state of Quintana Roo. Both projects ultimately failed and the community mobilised and expelled the NGO from the community. I argue that the failure of these projects involved two dynamics: 1) lack of coherence between the objectives of state agencies, conservation NGOs, and the local community; and 2) unequal ethnic relations, reproducing relations of colonial inequality and dictating how indigenous groups can participate in managing a territory for conservation. If collaboration and local participation are key in conservation management programs, these case studies suggest that greater institutional accountability and community autonomy are needed to make the practice of conservation more democratic and participatory. The expulsion of the NGO as a conservation and development broker also opened the space for, and possibilities of, post-development conservation practice that challenges the normalising expectations of Western biodiversity conservation.

Whose Elephants? Conserving, Compensating, and Competing in Northern Botswana

While conservationists and politicians applaud the recent growth of Botswana's elephant population, farmers and residents of northern Botswana struggle to live with elephants who destroy crops and threaten livelihoods. The state's response has been to implement a narrowly applied compensation policy that reinforces government control over wildlife while communities affected by so-called human–elephant conflict demand increased rights to deal with the problem themselves. In this way, elephants represent contested ground between the state and local communities that can only be fully understood by considering the experiences and views of those who live with them as well as the national policy context in which management decisions are made. This article focuses on the hidden costs of attempting to live with elephants, framing this struggle as contestation over ownership of elephants in a political context that is increasingly focused on generating tourism revenues and expanding conservation territories.

Geo-political genetics: Claiming the commons through species mapping

Genetic techniques are increasingly employed in the field of conservation biology; our understanding of sea turtle biology, and particularly of sea turtle migrations and population structures, has increased through genetic analyses that ‘match’ turtles found in various and often widely distributed habitats (e.g. nesting beaches, foraging grounds, migratory corridors). This relatively recent technological development has implications for how sea turtles are conceived, both as resources and as objects of conservation. Traditionally, sea turtle populations have been identified with nesting beaches, and most conservation efforts have been focused on these discrete geographic locations and undertaken by the state. The more complete understanding of relationships among turtles found in geographically disparate areas, achieved via genetic analysis, can take conservation beyond the beaches and territorial waters of individual states; foraging populations can now be linked to nesting populations sometimes hundreds of kilometers distant. In this paper, we explore the implications of genetic analysis for sea turtle conservation, the scale at which it is undertaken, and the variety of actors with competing interests in it. We focus on the case of hawksbill sea turtles in the Caribbean, where genetic data are invoked in conservation conflicts. We are particularly interested in the way genetic data can support the scaling-up of sea turtle conservation, creating new ‘conservation territories,’ and we draw on political ecology and common pool resource theory to explore the implications thereof.

Conservation encounters: transculturation in the ‘contact zones’ of empire

In the last 20 years, Latin American countries have experienced a boom in conservation territories. At the same time, neoliberal restructuring of Latin American economies has devolved funding and management responsibilities to international NGOs. In this context, conservation projects have become important zones of encounter and contact, wherein those inhabiting protected areas are necessarily subject to and subjected by the discourses and practices of conservation institutions. How do local actors engage with these processes? This paper examines the cultural politics of conservation encounters in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, a protected area in Guatemala's northern department of Petén. Drawing upon the concept of transculturation and anti–essentialist framings of subject formation as performative, I outline how differently situated social groups in the reserve negotiate, contest and enact the daily discourses and practices of conservation as articulated by powerful US based international organizations.

Wilderness ethics and political ecology: remapping the Great Bear Rainforest

Abstract Political ecologists have criticized parks, wilderness and protected areas for abridging the rights and resources of local people. A critical review of the debate over conservation territories, however, suggests an alternative conception of wilderness, as landscapes hospitable to wildlife and to native ecosystems more broadly, rather than off-limits to humankind. This paper argues that the recognition and protection of wilderness are fully compatible with a model of humans-in-nature. It adapts the framework of remapping to examine whether conservation territories can reconcile social justice and a broader respect for the biosphere. A case study of dominant-use zoning in coastal British Columbia suggests that conservation territories need not place social justice and biocentric ethics at odds. The remapping process, designed but not fully controlled by the provincial government, is a window of opportunity in which the tradeoffs between economic, social and environmental priorities can be weighed, and in which difference, both socio-cultural and ecological, can be acknowledged. The paper concludes that the remapping of the region exemplifies an incremental approach to acknowledging the moral considerability of endangered species and endangered cultures.

The Spaces of Conservation and Development around Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya

Geographically or sociologically defined resource management units, such as buffer zones or community resource management territories, seek to harmonize local land–use practices with protected–area management objectives. The geographically restricted nature of these models often results in simplistic representations of society–nature relations over time and space. Conservation areas are misrepresented as ecologically and socially homogeneous, as well as politically neutral. This study examines the limits of a spatially defined conservation and development project designed around the physical geographical unit of the watershed at Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya. It argues that politically motivated violence that has plagued the area since the early 1990s has severely undermined the suitability of such narrowly defined conservation territories. Specifically, the case study points to the permeability of the Lake Nakuru watershed to national and regional political forces that ultimately constrain participation in conservation activities. The spaces of conservation and development must be enlarged to include these extralocal arenas and processes if environmental problems are to be effectively addressed.

Contested Realities: Feral Horses in Outback Australia

Abstract Prior to 1980, feral horse numbers in the Northern Territory of Australia were thought to be low, between 40,000 and 60,000. Based on research done by an American geographer, these estimates should have been critically scrutinized by Australian scientists. They were, however, accepted uncritically. Then in the early 1980s, helicopter censuses showed that the feral horse population was more than 200,000, a figure that, when adjusted upward to 238,000, became the basis for urging pastoralists to join with the Territory's conservation commission to sharply reduce the number of horses. But because of public outcry, the unwillingness of pastoralists to participate in a horse-reduction program, and a slow-footed conservation commission, virtually nothing was done. By the late 1980s, the “problem” of feral horses had been redefined. Without supporting data or good reason to believe that large numbers of horses had died through drought or other means, the estimate of horse numbers was adjusted downward to 70,000. The reasons for this redefinition are social and political, and were unrelated to new biological knowledge or the available technical means to dramatically reduce horse populations. While this narrative of contested realities might be seen by some as exemplary of these postmodernist times, this would be an inappropriate inference.