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Review of African Political Economy
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Conservation, peasants and class: critical
reflections on the political economy of climate
change strategies in West Senegal
Rocío Hiraldo & Steffen Böhm
To cite this article: Rocío Hiraldo & Steffen Böhm (11 Dec 2023): Conservation, peasants and
class: critical reflections on the political economy of climate change strategies in West Senegal,
Review of African Political Economy, DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2023.2286080
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2023.2286080
Published online: 11 Dec 2023.
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Conservation, peasants and class: critical reections on the
political economy of climate change strategies in West
Senegal
Rocío Hiraldo
a
and Steen Böhm
b
a
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Sevilla, Spain;
b
University of Exeter Business School,
University of Exeter, UK
ABSTRACT
Environmental conservation has become a key climate mitigation
strategy in the last two decades. Through the multiplication of
‘conservation’ projects, Africa is one of the main centres of this
kind of intervention. While scholars have shown conservation to
be a vehicle for the advancement of capitalist interests, scarce
attention has been paid to agrarian labour and class dynamics in
the African countryside sustaining this development. Drawing on
the authors’ research in West Senegal, this article develops a
conceptual framework for integrating class and peasant labour in
the study of capitalist conservation. It shows how conservation-
related climate mitigation strategies in Africa nurture and are
nurtured by neoliberal and imperialist processes of agrarian
change, reinforcing the economic and political vulnerability of
African peasants. Alternative, anti-imperial climate change
mitigation strategies need to be centred around peasant
environmentalisms and their liberation from labour oppression.
Conservation, paysans et classe sociale : réexions
critiques sur l’économie politique des stratégies
de lutte contre le changement climatique au
Sénégal occidental
RÉSUMÉ
La conservation de l’environnement est devenue une stratégie clé
d’atténuation du changement climatique au cours des deux
dernières décennies. L’Afrique est l’un des principaux centres de
ce type d’intervention grâce à la multiplication de projets de
« conservation ». Tandis que des chercheurs ont montré que la
conservation était un moyen au service d’intérêts capitalistes, peu
d’attention a été accordée à la main-d’œuvre agraire et aux
dynamiques de classe dans les campagnes africaines qui
soutiennent ce développement. S’appuyant sur les recherches
menées par les auteurs dans l’ouest du Sénégal, nous
développons un cadre conceptuel permettant d’intégrer la classe
et le travail paysan dans l’étude de la conservation capitaliste.
Nous montrons comment les stratégies d’atténuation du climat
liées à la conservation en Afrique nourrissent et sont nourries par
KEYWORDS
Agrarian change; climate
change mitigation; nature-
based tourism; payment for
ecosystem services;
protected areas
MOTS-CLÉS
Changement agraire ;
atténuation du changement
climatique ; tourisme basé
sur la nature ; paiement pour
les services écosystémiques ;
zones protégées
PALAVRAS-CHAVE
Mudança agrária; mitigação
das alterações climáticas;
turismo da natureza;
pagamento por serviços
ecossistémicos; áreas
protegidas
© 2023 ROAPE Publications Ltd
CONTACT Rocío Hiraldo rhiraldo@us.es
REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY
https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2023.2286080
les processus néolibéraux et impérialistes de changement agraire,
renforçant ainsi la vulnérabilité économique et politique des
paysans africains. Des stratégies alternatives et anti-impériales
d’atténuation du changement climatique devraient être centrées
sur les écologismes paysans et leur libération de l’oppression du
travail.
Conservação, camponeses e classe: reexões
críticas sobre a economia política das estratégias
de mudança climática no oeste do Senegal
RESUMO
A conservação ambiental tornou-se uma estratégia chave de
mitigação climática nas últimas duas décadas. África é um dos
principais focos deste tipo de intervenção, através da
multiplicação de projectos de ‘conservação’. Apesar de vários
estudos académicos terem demonstrado que a conservação é um
veículo para o avanço de agendas capitalistas, pouca atenção
tem sido dada ao trabalho agrário e às dinâmicas de classe nas
zonas rurais africanas que sustentam este desenvolvimento. A
partir de investigação no oeste do Senegal, neste texto
desenvolvemos um quadro conceptual para a integração de
classe e trabalho camponês no estudo da conservação capitalista.
Mostramos como as estratégias de mitigação climática
relacionadas com a conservação em África alimentam e são
alimentadas por processos neoliberais e imperialistas de mudança
agrária, reforçando assim a vulnerabilidade económica e política
dos camponeses africanos. Estratégias alternativas e anti-imperiais
de mitigação das alterações climáticas devem centrar-se nos
ambientalismos camponeses e na sua libertação da opressão
laboral.
Introduction
Across Africa, forests are increasingly targeted for climate change mitigation purposes
(Trisos et al. 2022). Carbon credit schemes designed to oset emissions such as REDD+
(reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and the enhancement of
forest carbon stocks), collectively known as payments for ecosystem services (PES), have
aimed to incentivise aorestation and avoidance of deforestation on the African continent
(African Development Bank 2016; Rakatama et al. 2017). At the same time, it is said that
‘nature-based tourism’ (NBT) has considerable conservation potential in Africa (Stronza,
Hunt, and Fitzgerald 2019; UNEP 2019). Conserving nature is argued to have multiple
benefits aside from mitigating climate change, including promoting sustainable tourism,
recovering from the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, addressing long-standing
development challenges, and conserving biodiversity (World Bank 2021). NBT businesses
and PES have been expanding rapidly across Africa, materialising in manifold land-use
changes and jobs that are shaping rural labour conditions (Domínguez and Luoma
2020; Reyniers 2021).
Nature conservation has also become a means for generating profit and rent extrac-
tion. Described as ‘capitalist conservation’ by Dressler (2011), it has been criticised exten-
sively over the past 15 years (Büscher et al. 2012; Brockington and Duy 2010; Dunlap
2 R. HIRALDO AND S. BÖHM
and Sullivan 2020). These authors have rightly critiqued the injustices and inequalities of
these developments. However, when explaining the mechanisms by which capitalist
interests are advanced through conservation, insucient attention has been paid to
class relations. Despite recent incorporations of environmental aspects in the political
economy of agrarian change (Akram-Lodhi 2021), the emergence of environmental
labour studies (Stevis, Uzzell, and Räthzel 2018; Räthzel, Stevis, and Uzzell 2021),
recent attention to labour in conservation contexts (Neimark et al. 2020; Thakholi
2021), and acknowledgement of the transformation of peasant labour through green
grabs (Domínguez and Luoma 2020; Pemunta 2019), no theoretical framework of the
class dynamics unfolding through capitalist conservation has been developed.
So far, the generation of value – and therefore capital accumulation in the context of
conservation – is seen as derived from non-human nature itself (Bumpus and Liverman
2008; Osborne 2015) and the agency of conservation NGOs, development agencies,
private companies and consumers in NBT (Büscher 2013; Büscher and Igoe 2013;
Dunlap and Sullivan 2020). However, less is known about the social (class) relations of
production (Marx 1981, 953–954) enabling the expansion of capital through conserva-
tion. Here, we focus on these relations as experienced and shaped by peasants, a term
we use to refer to all petty producers whose livelihoods derive from spending their
labour not only in agriculture but also in fishing, shellfish collection, cattle ranching,
herding and collection of forest products, as well as reproductive activities such as
care for children and elderly people, domestic work and fetching water. Some authors
contend that ‘peasant’ is irrelevant as an analytical category in the study of capitalist
expansion, given that peasant economies have already been subsumed to capital via
petty commodity production and other forms of labour (Bernstein 2004, 2006).
However, we concur with those authors who maintain that, as it reinvents itself,
capital continues to engage in processes of primitive accumulation, transforming the
African rural world and hence peasants’ labour in a variety of ways (Moyo, Yeros, and
Jha 2012; Shivji 2009, 26–30). Therefore, peasants continue to have political and research
significance (Brass 2007; McMichael 2015; Narotzky 2016). As we will argue below, this is
visible in capitalist conservation, as peasant labour plays a vital role in the expansion of
NBT and PES projects in Africa, and peasants’ everyday lives are reshaped in the process
(Hiraldo 2017, 2018).
In this article, we show what it means for peasants to work in PES and NBT projects in
the Sine-Saloum Delta, West Senegal. We do so through a focus on changes in the con-
ditions of their labour as creators of use-values – that is, the useful goods and services that
human beings rely on for their survival and wellbeing (Marx 1967, 133). We collected the
data during ethnographic fieldwork in 2013–2014. We conducted 60 household inter-
views to map changes in labour conditions and the social relations of (re)production
over a 10-year period, through in-depth interviews with fishermen and mollusc collectors
aected by the conservation rules of a protected area, and with villagers who are
(self-)employed in NBT businesses; informal conversations with villagers; participant
observations; 60 open-ended questionnaire responses from villagers; and interviews
with ocers at the Senegalese National Parks Service and Fisheries Service, and
ocers from NGOs and multilateral development agencies involved in the funding
and implementation of PES and NBT projects. Analysing this data, we develop a frame-
work to explore capitalist conservation through a focus on class relations: the relations of
REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY 3
exploitation, appropriation, distribution and exchange between non-workers (i.e. those
who live and accumulate capital through the labour of others) and workers (i.e. hereafter
people who live through their own labour: Marx 1967, 927–930). We conclude by dis-
cussing the implications of this framework for reecting on and challenging the repro-
duction of African peasants as an oppressed working class through climate change
strategies.
The expansion of capitalist conservation: a West Senegalese case
To develop a theoretical framework of capitalist conservation and class, we first provide
insights from an illustrative example of the agrarian changes associated with NBT and
PES in the Niombato area, a group of 14 villages located in the south of the Sine-
Saloum Delta in West Senegal (see also Hiraldo 2017, 2021: Figure 1). The Delta is
part of the Saloum Delta National Park and the Saloum UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
Our research was mostly conducted in Boko and Dioube,
1
two villages close to a ‘pro-
tected area’ of mangroves and forest called Bamboung (Figure 2). At the time of the
fieldwork, 60 people (in 16 households) lived in Boko, whereas Dioube had around
560 inhabitants (in 54 households). Most people from these villages working in NBT
are employed in a small hotel (locally known as a campement) in Bamboung or in
businesses located in Toubacouta. This village, the largest in Niombato, had 10 small
and medium-sized hotels. Besides hotels, other NBT businesses included hunting tours
for European customers. There were no hotels in Boko, only one community-based
Figure 1. Location of Niombato in Senegal. Source: Google Maps.
4 R. HIRALDO AND S. BÖHM
restaurant, a handicraft market funded by an Italian NGO, and two picnic areas owned
by the two main hotels in Toubacouta. These and other NBT businesses located in Tou-
bacouta organise daily tours to Boko. In Dioube, there were three small hotels, and only
one (owned by Europeans) received customers regularly. The latter was located on land
owned by a villager, but he does not charge any rent to the hotel owner. This is related to
the fact that in Dioube land is only partially commercialised, despite most households
cultivating at least one hectare of land. Rather than demanding rent, the landowner
asked the hotel owner to employ him as a tour guide. Similarly, in Boko, hotel owners
do not pay for the picnic areas. They just request permission from the village chief
who controls the use of the land in the village. Boko is located within the 5800-hectare
Bamboung protected area, land alienated in agreement with the local government at Tou-
bacouta. Mangrove reforestation (PES) projects are approved only by the local govern-
ment at Toubacouta.
Climate change dynamics are important to understand this case, as they are having
and are expected to have severe impacts in Senegal. Projections suggest that 45% of the
Senegalese population will be aected by sea-level rises in low elevation coastal zones
by 2030. Further, addressing climate change has already cost 15% of the country’s
gross domestic product. Hence, Senegal has attracted significant investments from
global North countries and companies for climate adaptation and mitigation projects,
including PES. In 2013–2014, Senegal was the West African country with the largest
mitigation and adaptation-related climate finance commitments (in 2008 US$m:
Trisos et al. 2022). The Senegalese government has been active in this process, creating
Figure 2. Location of the fieldwork area in relation to Bamboung protected area. Source: Google
Maps.
REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY 5
a national committee known as COMNACC in 1994 for coordinating national and
international climate change-related initiatives in Senegal. It has also participated
in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, submitting its
National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (NAPA) in 2006, which led to the
implementation of a national project for adaptation to coastal erosion in vulnerable
areas. Moreover, it created a National Forest Policy for 2005–2025 that provides a
basis for national plans and programmes around forest management (Nachmany
et al. 2015).
Carbon osetting (PES) projects are mostly led by bilateral and multilateral develop-
ment agencies and implemented by conservation NGOs with support from local gate-
keepers. The first PES project was a pilot clean development mechanism (CDM)
project that was part of a UNEP-led programme called CASCADE, enabling French com-
panies to oset their emissions in former French colonies in West Africa (UNEP 2012).
The Bamboung protected area of forest and mangroves was funded by the French Devel-
opment Agency (AFD) and implemented by Oceanium, a conservation NGO co-led by a
French citizen and Ali Haidar, who became, in 2012, the Senegalese Minister of the
Environment and then Minister of Fisheries. Forests and mangroves are particularly
important due to their ability to absorb carbon and thereby reduce global warming –
with mangroves having four times the absorption capacity of tropical forests. Local pea-
sants are now excluded from the Bamboung protected area. The protected area has
involved the permanent restriction of natural resource extractive activities in 1800 hec-
tares of mangrove forest and 4000 hectares of terrestrial forests. It is now exclusively used
by tourists and NBT business employees.
Local peasants are employed in both PES mangrove reforestation (or planting) pro-
jects and in NBT businesses. All the villagers working full-time for NBT businesses orig-
inally came from households dependent on rain-fed agriculture and horticulture. Many
are migrants from other areas, with their access to land dependent on the village chief.
Their decisions to engage as workers in NBT businesses and PES projects are rooted
in the history of agrarian change in these villages. Central here have been the neoliberal
policies of the Senegalese state, which removed state subsidies for farmers (Dembele
2003; Oya and Ba 2013), and the general lack of support for small-scale peasant pro-
duction which is leading to a process of depeasantisation (Hiraldo 2018).
The creation of the Bamboung tourism-oriented protected area was also key in the for-
mation of a labour force for NBT businesses in Niombato. The mangroves were central to
the livelihoods of local fisherfolk and shellfish collectors. Seventy-five percent of the
employees from Boko belonged to households aected by the restricted access to the pro-
tected mangrove area. In Dioube, where fishing and mollusc collection were less central,
this percentage was nonetheless still high, at 40%. Similarly, petty traders reselling sou-
venirs to nature tourists and working at the community-based restaurant also largely
came from peasant backgrounds, particularly shellfish collectors (Hiraldo 2017). Niom-
bato women experienced many hardships (Hiraldo 2018), especially shellfish collectors
from Boko, who were mostly women over 40 and for whom this activity had been
central to their families’ subsistence.
Even prior to the new restrictions, many men had migrated from the area. Whether
this involved moving to urban areas or trying to get to Morocco by foot and then to
Spain, migration did little to lift peasants out of poverty, forcing many to return to the
6 R. HIRALDO AND S. BÖHM
countryside. Eighty-two percent of all returned migrants became employees in a NBT
business (Hiraldo 2017, 2018).
Since the 2000s, class relations in NBT and PES projects in the Bamboung area have
developed a neo-colonial and racial character. Those controlling the production process
have mostly been white Europeans, while those providing their labour have been black
African peasants. NBT businesses (hotels and guided nature tours) are mostly owned
by French and Belgian white men. Working conditions in such businesses and PES pro-
jects have been particularly poor. Villagers employed in Niombato-based NBT businesses
had working weeks of up to 60 hours, while some working days lasted up to 12 hours,
particularly when the number of customers increased. In addition, as the most successful
NBT businesses expanded, villagers have seen changes in their labour conditions: an
intensification of their labour time and reductions in the number of workers employed,
resulting in higher workloads. For example, for tour guides in the largest hotels this
meant doing two guided tours instead of one within the same amount of time. Peasants
employed in NBT businesses in Niombato had very low wages (€1 or less per hour),
which only covered household monthly food expenses, and were not enough to cover
health, education, transport and other basic reproduction costs. Further, they were some-
times forced to do unpaid work for the business (Hiraldo 2017).
In contrast to NBT businesses, which run during the whole tourist season, PES pro-
jects like the Bamboung protected area only provided work for one week or less per
year, mostly at the end of the rainy season. For between four and six hours a day planting
or collecting mangrove seeds villagers received either 1000 or 3000 CFA (€1.50 or €4.60)
(Hiraldo 2017).
Some villagers began to work on their own account, trying to engage with NBT. They
ran the community restaurant and handicraft market in Boko. Their income, especially
for those working at the restaurant, was very uncertain. Most visitors arriving in Boko
were staying at the largest hotels in Toubacouta. These businesses oered tourist
packages that included accommodation and food, which meant that they never visited
Boko during lunchtime. For handicraft sellers, not finding customers can mean not reco-
vering the money invested in purchasing merchandise (Hiraldo 2017).
After the enclosures, the mangroves became less productive. To cope with the loss of
income, some mollusc collectors, especially women, started other economic activities,
such as horticultural production, making and selling straw brushes, and growing and
selling hibiscus. This increased the time and energy needed to secure their families’ live-
lihoods, but allowed some women independence from harsh husbands.
Besides these relations of exploitation, the local partners of conservation NGOs and
development agencies have often used their position to benefit from peasant labour
and the need for means of production. A particularly relevant example is a local man
who acted as partner for one of the mangrove reforestation PES projects (financed by
a Dutch NGO). He used his privileged position to extract value from horticultural
petty commodity producers from his village (mostly women). In addition to reforestation
campaigns, the project included a local development component which allowed him to
request development funding. He was able to acquire water cans, seeds and fertilisers,
which he then sold back to producers, essentially making him free money. The project
also financed the construction of some wells and water channels as well as the installation
of a fence to prevent cows from entering horticultural gardens. This man then started
REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY 7
charging peasant producers fees to use this land, and increased the rent every year. Given
these forms of value appropriation, the peasants’ cost of production increased tenfold
over a relatively short period of time, and their profitability significantly reduced
(Hiraldo 2017).
Peasants have endured loss of livelihoods and an intensification of their working day
following their exclusion from the Bamboung protected area. They have also experienced
harsh working conditions in NBT businesses and PES projects. Some workers have
resisted, protesting about working conditions and conservation rules in meetings
about the protected area where members of the local government were present, but
they were ignored. Fisherfolk and mollusc collectors have mobilised to find support
from local and regional authorities regarding the lack of free, prior and informed
consent around their exclusion from the protected area – at first presented as a commu-
nity-based project and a temporary measure to last three to six months, only to find it
later became permanent. With the CASCADE carbon osetting project, villages were
not informed that their labour would serve the creation and sale of carbon credits.
Some villagers have refused to work in PES projects and NBT businesses where their
labour was not remunerated. Others have turned to acts of outright protest, such as dis-
obeying the exclusion rules or threatening hotel managers by taking money from tills and
refusing to return it until working conditions improve. However, in most cases, resist-
ance has been pre-empted with repression by the National Parks Service, with the dismis-
sal of some workers, and with the exclusion of critical voices from decision-making
committees. In short, peasant contestation in the context of capitalist conservation has
been systematically resisted and avoided by those controlling NBT and PES, often via
the state (Hiraldo 2021).
Relations between peasants, class and conservation: a conceptual
framework
While each case is unique, depending on specific local histories, cultures and political
economic relations, our insights have relevance and application globally. Such capitalist
conservation approaches have been implemented in many countries around the world
(Neimark et al. 2020; Reyniers 2021; Thakholi 2021), and this phenomenon, we
expect, will increase as climate change continues to intensify. Based on our empirical
insights as well as our reading of the literature, we now put forward a conceptual frame-
work for understanding these developments. As outlined above, we are focused on
understanding capitalist conservation through the lens of class relations and a focus
on peasants’ daily (labour) experiences of newly implemented climate change strategies,
such as NBT and PES.
Conceptual starting points: labour, class and peasants
First, we suggest that the experience of peasants needs to be rooted in Bernstein’s (2010,
22–24) four overlapping questions of ‘Who owns what?’, ‘Who does what?’, ‘Who gets
what?’ and ‘What do they do with it?’, which together help us to understand the social
relations of production and reproduction in peasant societies. These questions point
not only to the way conservation itself functions, but also to the broader social relations
8 R. HIRALDO AND S. BÖHM
around which material (re)production is organised in agrarian contexts. They therefore
allow us to understand how peasants are inserted in class relations, not only through their
participation as workers in capitalist commodity production, but more broadly through
their loss of ownership of the conditions of their labour (i.e. their alienation as capital
expands in society via the generalisation of exchange value, commodity production
and commodified labour: Gibbon and Neocosmos 1985; Marx 1967, 733).
‘Who owns what?’ involves paying attention to property relations in various aspects
of the production process. This implies interrogating the extent to which peasants own
the money or capital invested in PES and NBT projects in which they work, whether
they own the product of their labour as well as the sources that fund their labour-
power, and who owns the means of production. Land ownership and land property
relations in PES and NBT are central to this last question. It is clear in this case that
land appropriation to create the tourism-oriented protected areas and PES projects
has eroded customary forms of land tenure, such as peasants’ communal access to
forests, mangroves and oceans (Beymer-Farris and Bassett 2012; Hiraldo 2018). The
Bamboung example, whereby a conservation NGO, with support from the state,
creates exclusionary conservation rules without formal ownership of the land, shows
that the question of land ownership is as relevant as the questions of land control,
land (in)security and land use (i.e. Who is (not) allowed to use the land?) (Beymer-
Farris and Bassett 2012).
The question of what is being owned is also important as it allows us to note peasant
dierentiation around means of production such as fishing tools. It also sheds light on
the various levels of capital owned by NBT businesses.
Equally, this question problematises how NBT and PES relate to capital in dierent
ways. In this sense, it is connected to the question of ‘What do they do with it?’
Labour in NBT is used to make profit through commodity production because it is a
capitalist commodity production process. On the other hand, PES are not commodity
production processes, even when they generate carbon or biodiversity credits.
However, they relate to capital in that they entail the depoliticisation of the negative
climate and environmental eects of capitalist commodity production. From this view,
the price of carbon and biodiversity credits is not an expression of value (Büscher
et al. 2012) generated through peasant labour in reforestation, but a price put on depo-
liticisation through the creation of a carbon, climate or environmental rent (Felli 2014;
Hiraldo 2017).
The questions of ‘Who does what?’ and ‘Who gets what?’ point to crucial dynamics in
the labour process (Thompson 1990; Baglioni 2018): ‘Who produces what?’, ‘Who appro-
priates the products of labour?’, ‘Who makes decisions about what?’, ‘Who expropriates
and who is expropriated?’ In relation to capitalist conservation, the following questions
are of importance: ‘Who guards protected areas?’, ‘Who does the cleaning and cooking in
NBT businesses?’, ‘Who commands and enforces conservation rules?’, ‘Who manages
and controls workers in the labour process?’ These questions interrogate class relations,
divisions of labour and their patriarchal, racial and neo-colonial character. As Marxist
feminism suggests (Arruzza 2016; Dalla Costa and James 1975), this also involves
asking ‘Who produces the worker?’, that is, ‘Who does the reproductive work, such as
cleaning, cooking and looking after children?’ This lens also enables wider antiracist,
decolonial and feminist readings of the questions proposed by Bernstein (2010, 22–
REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY 9
24). As the Niombato case illustrates, the high percentage of white European male owners
of NBT businesses employing black Africans from peasant families denotes the perpetu-
ation of existing patterns of neo-colonial, patriarchal and racial relations of production
exemplified in capitalist conservation.
Overall, our conceptual starting points are guided by Marx’s (1981, 953–954) view that
capital is not a thing, but a contradictory social relation of classes, enabling non-workers
to make profit through either commodity production or the appropriation of portions of
surplus value extracted elsewhere. Hence, processes of capital accumulation are insepar-
able from poverty creation and perpetuation (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2010; Bernstein and
Byres 2001; Da Corta 2008; Harriss-White and Heyer 2010). Class and labour relations
are experienced in a bodily way, given that the labour process and modes of exploitation
are an everyday occurrence (Mezzadri and Majumder 2022). The labour process is also
important from the perspective of human–nonhuman relations. NBT and PES projects
often involve working with nature, reshaping peasants’ relations to the landscapes
where they work as petty producers (Hiraldo 2018).
Dierent forms of labour exploitation in capitalist conservation
A class analysis of the labour process seeks not only to study labour conditions (such as
time, eort, regularity of the work and type of labour), but, more importantly, to under-
stand why people have certain labour conditions, why they change over time and space,
and how they are reproduced.
NBT and PES are produced through multiple labour processes and social relations
(Bernstein 1989; McDermott 2021). To understand how and why these processes and
relationships produce certain labour conditions, it is necessary to investigate the material
aspects of the labour process and the specific modes of exploitation. This means taking
into consideration workers’ ownership of the production process and the purpose of pro-
duction. When workers sell their labour-power, this becomes a commodity purchased
and consumed by its owner (Marx 1967, 270–274). As the Niombato case illustrates,
owners of NBT businesses and leaders of PES projects have determined the labour con-
ditions of waged workers in this context: labour-time and eort, wages, frequency of the
work and ability to remain at a particular post. This means connecting labour conditions
to the dierent needs of those purchasing labour-power to NBT businesses and PES pro-
jects. As in other forms of tourism, capitalist owners contract labour-power with the aim
of profit-making (i.e. capital accumulation). This is ensured through the extraction of
surplus value from workers (Bianchi 2011; Britton 1991; Hiraldo 2017). The long
working days in NBT businesses in Niombato refer to the absolute surplus value,
which increases as capitalists extend the length of the working day while paying the
same wages. The intensification of the working day and dismissals in NBT businesses
in Niombato refer to the extraction of relative surplus value, which increases as the capi-
talist makes workers produce more commodities in the same amount of time, while redu-
cing the number of workers (Marx 1967, 643–654). The low wages described in the
Niombato case are essential to the extraction of surplus value in NBT businesses, and
for decreasing costs in PES projects. Moreover, in the case of NBT, they are useful for
the maintenance of class relations in that, as in other capitalist commodity production
10 R. HIRALDO AND S. BÖHM
processes, they generate workers’ dependency on wages, hence on the exploitation of
their labour by the capitalist (Marx 1967, 342–343).
Labour-power in PES reforestation projects is not determined by the need for surplus
value extraction because they are not commodity production processes. However, low
wages are of interest to those purchasing it. In the current context of the neoliberalisation
of development aid, which finances most PES projects, labour conditions are shaped by
the principle of cost eciency. Economists have already mapped the countries where the
‘break-even price of carbon’ (i.e. the carbon price that represents a sucient financial
incentive to adopt a new carbon-sequestering practice), is lowest. Unsurprisingly,
given the abundance of natural ecosystems and the low costs of labour, African countries,
including Senegal, generally feature towards the top of that list (Jakovac et al. 2020;
Murray et al. 2011). In contrast to NBT, low wages in PES projects do not generate econ-
omic dependency, because labour-power is needed only sporadically after the expected
number of trees is planted (Hiraldo 2017).
Although in petty commodity production traders own some or even all the means of
production, their ownership of the conditions of their labour is nonetheless shaped by
capital and state policies (Bhattacharya 2014; Gibbon and Neocosmos 1985). As the
Niombato case illustrates, NBT-related petty commodity production is shaped not
only by the costs of the means of production and commodities traded, but also by the
dynamics of capitalist competition. Given the growing size of the NBT sector, petty com-
modity producers’ and traders’ ability to sell is increasingly determined by their ability to
compete with larger capital. This is particularly important in petty commodity pro-
duction as traders not only have to reproduce themselves as workers, but also as
capital (Bernstein and Woodhouse 2001). They do not receive a reward from their
labour unless their commodities are sold.
Enclosures, alienation and the realisation of capitalist conservation initiatives
As suggested by the Niombato case, conservation-driven enclosures often prevent pea-
sants from accessing the land where they perform their main economic activities,
whether they own it or not (Beymer-Farris and Bassett 2012; Domínguez and Luoma
2020; Hiraldo 2018; Pemunta 2019; Thakoli 2021). These changes in land use and
control deepen existing processes of depeasantisation (Bryceson 2002; Hiraldo 2018;
Mazwi, Mudimu, and Helliker 2022; Mwijarubi 2019; Temudo and Abrantes 2013) gen-
erated through the neoliberalisation of the state and its imperialist accumulation by dis-
possession mechanisms (Harvey 2005, 160–165). Central here are the elimination of state
support to the vast majority of poor farmers through the removal of agricultural parasta-
tals, rises in the costs of basic goods, and the privatisation and commodification of agri-
cultural inputs, such as seeds, fertilisers and water (Araghi 2009).
Rather than promoting food sovereignty and security for peasants, these mechanisms
of capitalist private property creation ‘divorce workers from the ownership of the con-
ditions of their labour’ (i.e. their alienation) as non-workers’ private property is
created (Marx 1967, 874, 967–968). NBT- and PES-related enclosures add to this
process of ‘disarticulated accumulation’, whereby primitive accumulation in the
African periphery is incapable of bringing sustained, self-generating development
(Shivji 2009, 58–59). Instead, it serves to expand the interests of national and foreign
REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY 11
capital, while producing peasants as a reserve of cheap and oppressed labour (Bond 2019;
Moyo, Yeros, and Jha 2012; Shivji 2009).
Capitalist enclosures may or may not turn peasants into wage labourers for NBT and
PES projects. However, what the Niombato case shows is that capitalists’ and project
leaders’ ability to exploit peasants in these forms of conservation is facilitated by the
alienation of peasants through capitalist enclosures, whether they are conservation-
driven or not. The realisation of capitalist conservation initiatives, we argue, is nurtured
by an ongoing process of primitive accumulation continuously experienced as alienation
by peasants (De Angelis 2001; Hiraldo 2018). Such a perspective not only brings the focus
of class formation and peasants’ bodily experiences to the conservation literature, but
also suggests that the study of the nascent green economy must include an understanding
of the formation of African peasants as an oppressed class, and the role of state policies in
this process.
Peasants’ agency and diversity in agrarian transformations driven by capitalist
conservation
What the Niombato case suggests is that, while peasants are oppressed by expropria-
tion and exploitation through the development of NBT and PES projects, their
responses are central in understanding how capitalist conservation transforms their
everyday lives. For example, it shows that peasants’ adaptations to enclosures chal-
lenge the supposed linear trajectory from expropriation to proletarianisation
through their engagement in capitalist commodity production processes as waged
workers. Nonetheless, capitalist conservation can deepen their alienation even
when peasants choose adaptation responses that do not involve them engaging in
this form of proletarianisation. This is the case with adaptations to enclosures
through the multiplication of petty commodity production activities, which can
lead to self-exploitation (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2010; Bhattacharya 2014; Gibbon
and Neocosmos 1985). This also implies that this form of income diversification is
not necessarily a way out of poverty (Bryceson 2002) but rather a way of coping
that further intensifies peasants’ working days. This form of alienation nurtured by
NBT- and PES-related enclosures continues to transform African peasants into an
oppressed class, highly profitable for capital when needed.
Moreover, the Niombato case shows that peasant diversity is central to understanding
how peasants adapt to and experience capitalist conservation in their everyday lives.
Paying attention to peasant diversity means considering the role of dierentiation
around access to means of production (Bernstein and Byres 2001; Cousins, Weiner,
and Amin 1992), which is related to patriarchal relations, family hierarchies, age and gen-
erational dierences (Bernstein 2010; O’Laughlin 2013), as well as their dierent connec-
tions to the state and actors leading capitalist conservation initiatives.
Finally, peasant responses are also relevant to the ways in which class relations in
capitalist conservation emerge and are maintained. As the case study shows, the devel-
opment of NBT and PES does not go uncontested. Given that class relations are a con-
tradictory relation based upon the deepening of labour oppression, peasants often resist
the mechanisms of class formation in capitalist conservation. This highlights the
importance of considering attempts by peasants to challenge land expropriation,
12 R. HIRALDO AND S. BÖHM
labour exploitation, and their exclusion from decision-making around capitalist con-
servation. Equally, it is central to pay attention to the role of governments in the for-
mation and reproduction of class relations in capitalist conservation through its
repression and neglect of peasant voices (Gilbert and Afrizal 2019; Moyo, Yeros, and
Jha 2012; Shivji 2009, 18–54).
Conclusion
Class analyses are mostly absent in the capitalist conservation literature. This is surpris-
ing, given that NBT, PES and other new conservation practices have had substantial
eects on peasants’ everyday lives and the distribution of power in Africa. We have there-
fore argued that critical perspectives of capitalist conservation need to expose the ways in
which NBT and PES, which have become vital tools in climate change mitigation and the
transition towards a so-called ‘green economy’, reproduce peasants’ oppression, as a
working class in the imperialist periphery. This has led us to propose a framework for
mapping peasants’ experiences of, and responses to, class relations and agrarian class
dynamics in the context of capitalist conservation. We have done so by looking at
capital beyond its supposed essential features, focusing on the multiple processes
through which capital separates peasants from the ownership of their labour. Capitalist
conservation, we argue, is nurtured by and part of an ongoing process of primitive
accumulation (De Angelis 2001).
Using a critical literature review of processes of labour, class formation and capitalist
expansion, as well as examples from our research in Niombato, West Senegal, the
framework points to two key ways through which to explore the emergence and repro-
duction of class relations in the context of capitalist conservation: enclosures and the
act of producing. Marxist concepts such as surplus value, centre–periphery, disarticu-
lated accumulation, accumulation by dispossession and petty commodity production
are particularly useful in demonstrating how peasants’ labour oppression forms the
basis for capitalist conservation practices in Africa, providing new opportunities for
compradors, rent-seekers and capitalist class formation. We have also emphasised
the importance of seeing peasants’ experiences of, and responses to, class relations in
NBT and PES through a focus on their agency, dierentiation and diversity. While
labour exploitation in capitalist commodity production is general, processes of alien-
ation are very varied. Overall, this article has argued that a focus on analysing relations
of (re-)production and class formation is vital for understanding capitalist conserva-
tion, but it needs to be located in the context-specific, place-based and everyday settings
where peasants live.
This article has implications that go well beyond academia. Our framework allows us
to critically scrutinise the role played by governments, private entrepreneurs, develop-
ment agencies and NGOs based in both the global North and South, in the oppression
of peasants and their ways of living on the land and sea. Positive change, we would
argue, will need to come through the organisation of peasants around the defence of
their rights and their leadership in decisions that aect the ecosystems that they call
home. NBT and PES projects all too often create new alienations. Hence, any betterment
needs to provide opportunities for de-alienation, which allows peasants to regain control
of their labour conditions. Activists across the globe concerned with the problems
REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY 13
experienced by peasants in Africa and elsewhere have been organising for years to cri-
tique capitalist conservation projects and help peasants improve their lives, and there
are positive examples of the eectiveness of peasant organisation (Minority Rights
Group International 2022; TICCA 2023). By transforming the ways in which we under-
stand the expansion of capital through conservation, we hope to have contributed to
broader eorts to counter neoliberal and neo-colonial climate change mitigation and
its eects on peasant alienation.
Note
1. Village names are fictitious, to protect informants’ identities.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the reviewers and issue editors, Janet Bujra, Chanda Mfula and Lee Wengraf,
for their generous and insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper. We are indebted to the
people of Boko and Dioube for sharing their time, reections and insights and doing so in the midst
of their everyday struggles. We also thank the University of East Anglia, the University of Copenha-
gen, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Swedish Development Agency, whose
financial support was essential for conducting the research presented here.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Rocío Hiraldo is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Social Anthropology at the Uni-
versity of Seville. Her work investigates emerging green economies in Senegal, Portugal and Spain,
through a focus on working-class people’s experiences. Her articles have featured in the Journal of
Agrarian Change, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Human Geography: A New
Radical Journal and IDS Bulletin.
Steen Böhm is a professor in organisation and sustainability at the University of Exeter. He has
published five books on climate change themes: Upsetting the oset: the political economy of carbon
markets (Mayy), The atmosphere business (Mayy), Ecocultures: blueprints for sustainable com-
munities (Routledge), Negotiating climate change in crisis (Open Book Publishers) and Climate
activism (Cambridge). More details are available at steenboehm.net.
ORCID
Rocío Hiraldo http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2526-6206
Steen Böhm http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0888-1362
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