Green Violence Research Articles

Nature conservation, borders and violence along the Chobe River between Botswana and Namibia in the twentieth and twenty-first century

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the intricate dynamics of the Chobe River borderland between Namibia and Botswana, a border marked by its dual identity as both a national boundary and a conservation frontier. The Chobe River border has witnessed transformations from a colonial-era demarcation to an area drawn into liberation wars and, subsequently, a hotspot for militarized conservation. Drawing from archival material and interviews in the region this study illuminates the entanglement of nature conservation and violence in the region, exemplified by the harmful consequences of safeguarding wildlife along the border. We argue that the militarized role of the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) in protecting high-value wildlife and conservation zones intersects with the history of the Kasikili/Sedudu border dispute and the establishment of the Chobe National Park as well as with broader state imperatives, including security, finance, and legitimation. We develop this argument through a comprehensive investigation into historical debates over the border’s position, conflicts related to land use, and the BDF’s evolving role in green violence.

Fall from grace or back down to earth? Conservation and political conflict in Africa’s “miracle” state

Since the publication of the influential text, An African Miracle, much scholarship has focused on Botswana's supposed “exceptionality” anchored in the country's economic growth and sustained democracy. Botswana's success story has proved enduring and versatile, being deployed in numerous contexts including in relation to Botswana’s status as a conservation “safe haven” in southern Africa. Many green plaudits are associated with the tenure of former president Ian Khama (2008–2018), who broke with longstanding tradition and actively campaigned against his own vice president and successor, President Mokgweetsi Masisi. Their acrimonious relationship is multifaceted but in this article, we refer to disputes over wildlife conservation policy wherein Masisi rolled back his predecessor's signature conservation policies, focusing specifically on the reversal of the hunting ban, the disarming of some anti-poaching officers, and changes in Botswana's stance in international environmental diplomacy regarding ivory and the CITES regime. We contend that Khama's conservation decisions—underpinned by lack of consultation and green violence—made Botswana a “green miracle” to outside observers while contravening the central principles of local democratic practice such as therisanyo (consultation) cherished in the country. We argue that Masisi's reversal of Khama-era positions that were unpopular with conservation-adjacent communities represents not a “fall from grace,” but rather the bringing back down to earth of policies that had alienated the local population, thus indicating the potential to pursue inclusive governance that domestically Botswana acclaims.

The Militarisation of Conservation and Occupational Violence in Sikumi Forest Reserve, Zimbabwe

Discussions around the militarisation of conservation have largely focused on violence meted out against subsistence and commercial poachers in, and around, protected areas. Overlooked is violence experienced by perpetrators of such violence. Using lived experiences of anti-poaching in Sikumi Forest Reserve—a state forest managed by Zimbabwe's Forestry Commission—this article examines working experiences of paramilitary personnel. Empirical evidence shows that, in the process of implementing state militarised conservation practices, paramilitary personnel are subjected to violence perpetrated by the state through its authorities. I discuss this violence in the context of occupational violence and make two arguments. The first is that the range of victims of militarised conservation violence goes beyond local communities and commercial poachers to include paramilitary personnel perpetrating such violence. Related to this argument is the second argument that occupational violence has an exacerbating effect on everyday persistent violence. I conclude that aspects of occupational violence, such as displayed in Sikumi Forest Reserve, should be understood as part of broader green violence.

Conservation as counterinsurgency: A case of ceasefire in a rebel forest in southeast Myanmar

We demonstrate how international conservation practices in a rebel forest during ceasefire are shaped by and contribute to legacies of racialized political violence. Nature conservation has been shown in some cases to be implemented by armed forces and directly contribute to acts of “green violence” and the makings of “green war”. Less explored in the critical conservation literature, and the focus of our study, are the ways in which conservation projects can also be implicated in the continuation of counterinsurgency through “softer” non-militarized means. Based on ethnographic field research, interviews, and document analysis conducted by both authors, we present a field case study from the lowland forests of Tanintharyi Region in southeast Myanmar. The proposed Lenya National Park falls within territory contested by an ethnic Karen rebel group, who have been under a tenuous ceasefire since 2012 but who have not yet reached a political settlement to end armed conflict. We find that the mapping of Lenya during ceasefire by foreign conservationists legitimizes past forced displacements of Karen civilians by the Myanmar military during decades of war, and impedes the potential return of refugees and internally displaced persons to their customary lands now zoned for the park. Conservationists working to establish the park invoke and build upon racialized discourses of Karen forest dwellers as criminals, first as dangerous rebel supporters, and now as forest destroyers. The ceasefire has also opened up political space for Karen leaders to challenge the making of state forests, who envision an alternative model of community-led conservation based on indigenous rights.

A microdynamics approach to geographies of violence: Mapping the kill chain in militarized conservation areas

Within segments of the overlapping fields of political ecology and political geography, there is an emerging consensus that direct physical violence is over-studied, and that it cannot be analytically separated from other forms of violence. This article argues the opposite, namely, that direct physical violence remains understudied, and that analyzing it separately is warranted to grasp its specificities. To corroborate this argument, the article examines the study of green militarization and green violence. Whereas a substantial part of this literature discusses direct physical violence, most studies focus on broader conditions and discourses of violence, without empirically demonstrating how they feed into the production of direct physical violence. Consequently, these studies do not accurately map the entire “kill chain”. A case study of violence in Virunga National Park, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, demonstrates the analytical merits of studying direct physical violence through a “microdynamics” approach, implying the detailed study of specific acts of violence and how they were committed. Far from distracting from broader conditions, structures and histories of violence, a microdynamics approach provides an entry point for understanding how these dimensions feed into the production of direct physical violence, and how this violence interacts with other forms of violence. In addition, it allows for a more accurate understanding of how the kill chain is constituted in time and space. The article concludes that acknowledging the particularities of different modalities of violence, instead of conflating them, will significantly advance the study of geographies of violence.

License to Kill: Contesting the Legitimacy of Green Violence

The predominant focus within the growing body of research addressing 'green violence' – that employed in the name of protecting nonhuman natures – has been the exercise of such violence by representatives of nation-state regimes. Largely overlooked thus far, therefore, is a remarkably similar discussion conducted among civil society environmental activists, who have long debated the legitimacy of employing analogous forms of violence in their own defense of 'nature.' Juxtaposing these two discussions, this article explores how green violence has been discussed and contested among state and non-state actors, respectively. At stake in this discussion is the essential question of when, and by whom, green violence can be legitimately exercised. This question, in turn, raises the related question of who can legitimately employ ‘biopower’ when both state and non-state actors commonly justify green violence with quite similar claims to be acting in defense of imperiled forms of nonhuman life. In addressing these questions, this analysis suggests that we may need to rethink how biopower is being mobilised in the contemporary world wherein the nation-state political order is increasingly challenged by manifold forces while environmental concerns have at the same time come to be seen as one of the principle security threats to states, their subjects, as well as life as a whole.

Violent Green Spaces in Neoliberal Central America

Violent Green Spaces in Neoliberal Central America Mary Finley-Brook Correction: The last line of the first paragraph has been updated to read "...roles in mitigating climate change, supplying clean air and water,...". In the ten years since i wrote ‘green Neoliberal Space,’ international finance institutions (IFIs) have continued to intervene in Central America, but regional challenges are greater than ever. A decade ago, I never imagined per capita homicide rates in many Central American countries would rival the world’s deadliest war zones, as they do currently, with violence occurring even in protected areas. Similarly, I did not appreciate how grave Mesoamerican ecological threats were because it seemed these concerns were finally gaining overdue attention. In hindsight, I wish I had advocated for biological corridors and pointed out their essential roles in mitigating climate change, supplying clean air and water, and supporting rural livelihoods. spatializing and fragmenting conservation A vision for a Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC) was nascent when I critically assessed planning processes in Nicaragua’s portion of the regional initiative (see Finley-Brook 2007). Subprojects proposed to lower rural poverty and reduce extraction pressures in protected areas seemed likely to expand markets without biodiversity protection. Corridor-related projects in indigenous and Mestizo communities allowed inadequate consultation and replicated ‘cookie cutter’ plans for resource use and entrepreneurship. Indeed, just as I suggested, experts with the Independent Evaluation Group examining MBC implementation across the region found community initiatives poorly aligned with conservation objectives and local benefits unverifiable (IEG 2011: 21–23). Following more than $500 million in donor investment in the MBC, ambitious plans for regional networks of corridors quietly scaled back to support a small number of transboundary reserves (Holland 2012). While it was easy to find fault with the donor-driven MBC, regional corridors have merit. Many species require habitat protection beyond official parks, as the majority of their territory remains outside of protected areas (Mendoza et al. 2013). Yet ecological and technical capacity in Central America is often insufficient to design and implement landscape connectivity (IEG 2011), thus encouraging indiscriminate application [End Page 267] of corridors and increasing risk that poorly executed plans fail. The MBC’s paired goals of conservation and development remain in tension in the few places where successful corridor projects emerged. For example, deforestation remains high in Costa Rican corridors surrounded by road building and resource marketization (Wood et al. 2017). In much of Central America, economic development initiatives disrupt habitat and place rural livelihoods at risk without creating viable, accessible, or acceptable alternatives. Following construction of a highway connecting southern and northern Panama, intersecting the country’s major east-west biological corridor, an initiative offensively dubbed the ‘Conquest of the Atlantic’ promotes global investment in new mining, tourism, and energy projects in northern Panama (Bilbao 2017). Throughout Central America, infrastructure expansion intersects high biodiversity zones, which are generally racially and ethnically diverse, instigating land and resource conflicts between local inhabitants and developers. green violence: securitization and racialized dispossession “Inside the protected area, inside the bubble, social welfare would be assured. Outside, it was hell” (Carr quoted in Finley-Brook 2007: 102). In 2004, ecologist Archie Carr III, an early advocate for biological corridors throughout the Western hemisphere, suggested that protected areas forming the backbone of the MBC might become “little green enclaves of social justice and opportunity” or utopian “bubbles” (Carr quoted in Finley-Brook 2007: 102). Such idealized socio-spatial constructs have proven inaccurate as wildlife poaching, deforestation, drug cultivation and trafficking, and mining transgress the region’s porous and contested green spaces. Newcomers, often labelled as colonists, encroach in even the core of large reserves. Indigenous inhabitants with territorial rights within Nicaragua’s Bosawas Reserve confront illegal homesteaders at gunpoint. Meanwhile, Mayangna Sauni As, an indigenous territory traversing the Bosawas, recently declared a state of emergency and community members fled to Honduras to avoid violent exchanges with colonists (Ariel Artola 2017). This border area includes the transboundary biosphere reserve El Corazón (the Heart), the largest remaining area of natural habitat in Mesoamerica, which pairs the Bosawas with Honduran reserves. Sadly, transborder protected areas are some of the most insecure and violent spaces in Mesoamerica (Ybarra 2016). Depicting...

On the Record: Interview with Major General Johan Jooste (Retired), South African National Parks, Head of Special Projects

A multitude of measures, including regulatory changes, law enforcement measures and demandreduction campaigns, appear to have done little to stem the tide against organised environmentalcrimes. However, fewer rhinos were poached in South Africa’s signature national park, the KrugerNational Park (KNP), in 2015 and 2016 than in the year before and a steady decline was evidentat the time of the interview in June 2017. The KNP is home to the largest number of free roamingrhinos in the world. The park has been in the ‘eye of the storm’, losing close to 4 000 rhinosto poaching between 2006 and 2016. In 2012, the South African National Parks (SANParks)management formed a unit named Special Projects. The function of the project team was todevelop and implement mitigation measures to deal with the drastic increase in wildlife crime and,in particular, rhino poaching in the KNP. Major General Johan Jooste (Ret) heads the unit. Criticalvoices have questioned the efficacy of the anti-poaching strategy, suggesting that park authoritiesare waging a ‘war on poaching’ with unintended long-term consequences for protected areasmanagement and community relations.1 Scholars have argued that ‘green militarisation’ has led toan arms race between poachers and rangers2 and, moreover, that ‘green violence’ has led to thedeployment of violent instruments and tactics in pursuit of the protection of nature, and ideas andaspirations related to nature conservation.3

On the record: Interview with Major General Johan Jooste (retired), South African National Parks, head of Special Projects

A multitude of measures, including regulatory changes, law enforcement measures and demand reduction campaigns, appear to have done little to stem the tide against organised environmental crimes. However, fewer rhinos were poached in South Africa’s signature national park, the Kruger National Park (KNP), in 2015 and 2016 than in the year before and a steady decline was evident at the time of the interview in June 2017. The KNP is home to the largest number of free roaming rhinos in the world. The park has been in the ‘eye of the storm’, losing close to 4 000 rhinos to poaching between 2006 and 2016. In 2012, the South African National Parks (SANParks) management formed a unit named Special Projects. The function of the project team was to develop and implement mitigation measures to deal with the drastic increase in wildlife crime and, in particular, rhino poaching in the KNP. Major General Johan Jooste (Ret) heads the unit. Critical voices have questioned the efficacy of the anti-poaching strategy, suggesting that park authorities are waging a ‘war on poaching’ with unintended long-term consequences for protected areas management and community relations.1 Scholars have argued that ‘green militarisation’ has led to an arms race between poachers and rangers2 and, moreover, that ‘green violence’ has led to the deployment of violent instruments and tactics in pursuit of the protection of nature, and ideas and aspirations related to nature conservation.3

GREEN VIOLENCE: RHINO POACHING AND THE WAR TO SAVE SOUTHERN AFRICA'S PEACE PARKS

Over a thousand rhinos were killed in 2013 and 2014 as the poaching crisis in Southern Africa reached massive proportions, with major consequences for conservation and other political dynamics in the region. The article documents these dynamics in the context of the ongoing development and establishment of parks: large conservation areas that cross international state boundaries. The rhino-poaching crisis has affected peace parks in the region, especially the flagship Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park between South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In order to save both peace parks and rhinos, key actors such as the South African government, the Peace Parks Foundation, and the general public responded to the poaching crisis with increasingly desperate measures, including the deployment of a variety of violent tactics and instruments. The article critically examines these methods of 'green violence' and places them within the broader historical and contemporary contexts of violence in the region and in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. It concludes that attempting to save peace parks through 'green violence' represents a contradiction, but that this contradiction is no longer recognized as such, given the historical positioning of peace parks in the region and popular discourses of placing poachers in a 'space of exception'.