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People, Parks and Poverty: Political Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation
Abstract
"Action to conserve biodiversity, particularly through the creation of protected areas (PAs), is inherently political. Political ecology is a field of study that embraces the interactions between the way nature is understood and the politics and impacts of environmental action. This paper explores the political ecology of conservation, particularly the establishment of PAs. It discusses the implications of the idea of pristine nature, the social impacts of and the politics of PA establishment and the way the benefits and costs of PAs are allocated. It considers three key political issues in contemporary international conservation policy: the rights of indigenous people, the relationship between biodiversity conservation and the reduction of poverty, and the arguments of those advocating a return to conventional PAs that exclude people."
... Human-nature relationships are complex, fraught and continually evolving. On both a theoretical and an ethical level, there is a need to carefully and constantly interrogate the links between conservation on the one hand and vested interests, resource needs and tourism practices on the other hand (Adams & Hutton, 2007). ...
... Globally, there has been a wide variation in the 'officialisation' and use of protected areas. More often than not, though, these protected areas leave an imprint of leisure, hunting, tourism, economic agendas and large-scale environmental destruction on the natural landscape (Adams, 2004;Adams & Hutton, 2007;Kelleher, 1999)all while physically and economically displacing dependent communities (Brockington, 2008). ...
... Certainly, the establishment and spatial expansion of conservation areas are not always a function of bona fide conservation concerns alone. Scholars have identified other key catalysts of these moves (such as political-strategic concerns, power relations and capitalist accumulation) in order to illustrate that conservation, as a philosophy and practice, is not necessarily benign (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Brockington & Igoe, 2006;Carruthers, 1989;Ramutsindela, 2007Ramutsindela, , 2012Wolmer, 2003). In their critique of conservation, Dressler (2007, 2012) frame it in terms of the commodification of nature, as defined and fuelled by capitalist and neoliberal interests. ...
Africa is known for its pristine destinations, mainly associated with rich fauna
and flora. This explains the existence of vast material, written and visual on rural
environments or nature-based destinations. However, little has been written on
urban tourism within an African context except South Africa with some remarkable
work on slum tourism. The link between urban risks, urban tourism and
sustainable development has also been limitedly explored in the academia and
under-researched in the Global South, especially on the African continent. This
book provides theoretical and empirical evidence on the interactions between
urban risks, tourism and sustainable development in sub-Saharan African urban
spaces. At the backdrop of vast natural, cultural and historical resources in African
urban areas are numerous environmental, social and political challenges. The
book, therefore, provides in-depth analysis of the linkages between tourism and
urban risk in African cities, towns and townships. This book is a toolkit of the
urban tourism development on the African continent, valuable to tourism, geography
and social science students and practitioners. The discussion on tourism
and urban risk provides a platform to interrogate possible efficient development
approaches on tourism in urban spaces. This volume showcases the many facets
of urban tourism through examining broad and localized empirical studies
and conceptual frameworks. It addresses the underlying issues of governance,
power, ownership, collaboration, justice, community empowerment and policies
that influence tourism decision-making at local, national and regional levels. It
further contributes to understanding the intricate relationships between tourism
stakeholders across the social, class, racial and national strands.
... Most protected areas-both, private and public-were originally established to conserve nature as well as to provide spaces for outdoor recreation. This has often entailed the enclosure of land and displacement of former uses and users (Adams and Hutton 2007;Igoe and Brockington 2007). The establishment of private natural reserves, and their use for tourism offers, can be seen as a continuation of this trend, via neoliberal mechanisms particularly privatization and commodification of natural resources. ...
... Like monetary valuation of nature more generally, this is based on the concepts of natural capital and ecosystem services to be made the bases for sale and purchase via MBIs (Rau et al. 2018). It is argued that nature as capital provides different services to humans: provisioning (food, water, etc.), regulating (climate), cultural (recreation) and supporting services (soil formation, plant pollination) (Adams and Hutton 2007). Integration of these services into economic accounting is attempted via efforts to create markets for ecosystem services. ...
... The combined strategy of enforcing protected areas and promoting market engagement simultaneously strengthens separation between people and nature and promotes the latter's economic value as the primary motive for its conservation (B€ uscher and Fletcher 2020; McAfee 2012a). The approach is criticized for maintaining colonial power relations and reinforcing social inequalities from a local to global scale (Adams and Hutton 2007;Apostolopoulou et al. 2021;Duffy 2006;McAfee 1999McAfee , 2012b. ...
Private engagement has always been central to biodiversity conservation. Recently, the role of private enterprises in (eco)tourism have increased, and private lands play a pivotal role in expanding protected areas within societies throughout the world. This paper contributes to discussions of private engagement in conservation and its relation to tourism (recreation generally), with novel insight on how the conservation-tourism nexus on private land is approached in different geographical contexts. We present a systematic literature review that results in five thematic clusters characterized by different conservation approaches to tourism in Global North and South. Research concerning Global South tends to emphasize (eco)tourism as a main inducement for conservation, while research concerning Global North emphasizes expansion of private protected areas where access for tourist-recreational use has to be compensated. We propose a future research agenda to exploring environmentally and socially just approaches to conservation and recreation in both Global North and South.
... This is evident within marine management spaces. Western protectionist paradigms that address biological conservation by separating people from nature (e.g., closures, no-take reserves) take precedence over Indigenous practices that place people within the ecosystem, maintaining connections through responsible resource use and environmental stewardship (Adams and Hutton 2007, Richardson 2008, Wilshusen et al. 2011, Stephenson et al. 2014, Ruru et al. 2017, Lyver et al. 2018. What results is management that focuses solely on bioecological conservation, ignoring socio-political contexts at the expense of cultural conservation and alienating tangata whenua from culturally important places and resources (Roberts et al. 1995, Adams and Hutton 2007, Mutu 2019. ...
... Western protectionist paradigms that address biological conservation by separating people from nature (e.g., closures, no-take reserves) take precedence over Indigenous practices that place people within the ecosystem, maintaining connections through responsible resource use and environmental stewardship (Adams and Hutton 2007, Richardson 2008, Wilshusen et al. 2011, Stephenson et al. 2014, Ruru et al. 2017, Lyver et al. 2018. What results is management that focuses solely on bioecological conservation, ignoring socio-political contexts at the expense of cultural conservation and alienating tangata whenua from culturally important places and resources (Roberts et al. 1995, Adams and Hutton 2007, Mutu 2019. For the Taiāpure, this clash of worldviews was evident throughout the establishment process, with news headlines such as "Iwi [tribe] versus Kiwi," implying that its designation would be in direct conflict with interests of non-Māori fishers (Kāti Huirapa Rūnaka ki Puketeraki 2013) despite it not excluding recreational or commercial activities (Fisheries Act 1996). ...
... If te ao Māori is not valued as equal to colonial paradigms, tangata whenua will not be viewed as equal comanagement partners but as stakeholders to whom rights may or may not be granted (Roberts et al. 1995, Adams andHutton 2007). If communities do not feel able to be an effective comanagement partner, they may turn away from formal agreements (Sen andNielsen 1996, Berkes 2009). ...
Centralization of fisheries management within large-scale, colonial governing bodies can remove access and management rights of Indigenous communities and deplete marine resources through a mismatch in bioecological and managerial scales. Management of pāua (blackfoot abalone, Haliotis iris ) in Aotearoa New Zealand exemplifies this transition from small-scale fisheries management by tangata whenua (local Indigenous people with historical claim to the land, Māori) to central government regulation and subsequent overexploitation. Comanagement strategies have the potential to address degradation of biological and cultural diversity by returning management to local scales and authority to local people. New Zealand's customary fisheries management legislation aims to facilitate such a devolution of management back to tangata whenua through the establishment of Taiāpure Local Fisheries and Mātaitai Reserves. However, local management systems can remain constrained by the wider governance structures that encompass them. These constraints are discussed in relation to a management proposal for pāua harvesting made by the East Otago Taiāpure Management Committee. The proposal aimed to return fishing practices to a customary method, providing greater protection for declining pāua populations while allowing a small harvest to continue. After a long and protracted application process, central government did not support the proposed regulation. This opposition demonstrated many of the constraints that local management committees face as they endeavor to operate within the confines of broader legal frameworks: conflicting worldviews, inequitable power sharing, perceived inferiority of Indigenous customs, requirements for conventional science, and navigation of bureaucratic processes. Insights are also drawn from another small-scale abalone fishery (ormer, Haliotis tuberculata ) in the Channel Islands, for which the desired regulation has been in place for over three decades.
... Biodiversity conservation efforts can result in inequitable outcomes across sectors and among different actors and stakeholders (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Dowie, 2009;Duffy, 2010). Despite quantified ecological and societal benefits from habitat conservation, protected areas may constrain livelihoods for local people (Anaya & Espírito-Santo, 2018;Boillat et al., 2018;Kohler & Brondizio, 2017). ...
... These costs and benefits relate to wide-ranging conservation issues, including habitat protection, climate change mitigation, cultural services, and tourism. Although North-South dynamics are complicated by the presence of "elite" populations within the Global South who may derive higher financial and other benefits from conservation (Mollett & Kepe, 2018), there are many reported instances of Indigenous and rural communities in the Global South not receiving commensurate benefits from conservation outcomes (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Anaya & Espírito-Santo, 2018;Brockington, 2002;Brockington et al., 2008;Dowie, 2009;Duffy, 2010;Franks et, al., 2018;Kohler Brondizio, 2017;Mollett & Kepe, 2018;Tran et al., 2020;Watson, 2013). ...
... Implementation of the Duck Stamp Act also highlights persistent Indigenous-settler colonial inequities inasmuch as the Act has not provided financial support for Indigenous communities to protect habitat or support provisioning of ecosystem services through traditional management practices (such as through Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas; see Tran et al., 2020). In this context, an important consideration is the fact that conservation through land purchases or conservation easements may violate Indigenous sovereignty or undermine traditional management by limiting access to lands (Adams & Hutton, 2007). ...
Biodiversity conservation efforts have been criticized for generating inequitable socio‐economic outcomes. These equity challenges are largely analyzed as place‐based problems affecting local communities directly impacted by conservation programs. The conservation of migratory species extends this problem geographically since people in one place may benefit while those in another bear the costs of conservation. The spatial subsidies approach offers an effective tool for analyzing such relationships between places connected by migratory species. Designed to quantify ecosystem services provided and received in specific locations across a migratory species’ range—and the disparities between them—the spatial subsidies approach highlights three axes of inequity: between indigenous and settler colonial societies, between urban and rural populations, and between the Global North and Global South. Recognizing these relationships is critical to achieving two mutually reinforcing policy goals: avoiding inequitable conservation outcomes in efforts to conserve migratory species, and ensuring effective long‐term conservation of migratory species. In demonstrating how the spatial subsidies approach enables the identification and quantification of inequities involving three migratory species (northern pintail ducks, monarch butterflies, and Mexican free‐tailed bats), we argue that a spatial subsidies approach could apply to migratory species conservation efforts worldwide under the context of “payments for ecosystem services.”
... Many contradictions exist with the case of the environmental offsets implemented in PNN SYA: the seemingly incompatible goals of different actors, contested valuations of land, contradictory policies, and conflicting narratives about the success or failure of the restoration project. Campesinos living inside and surrounding the park are seen by some in the ISAGEN-Parques Nacionales-Patrimonio Natural alliance and their contractors as standing in the way of their conservation goals -a familiar conundrum around the world, as social conflicts have long been recognized as an inherent part of protected area establishment and management (Adams & Hutton, 2007;García-Frapolli et al., 2018). When protected areas are promoted as wild or human-free zones, as a form of fortress conservation or territorialization projects, the resulting impacts on local people living within or surrounding the protected area boundaries include displacement from their land or severely limited livelihood options (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Brockington et al., 2006;Holmes, 2014;Redpath et al., 2013). ...
... Campesinos living inside and surrounding the park are seen by some in the ISAGEN-Parques Nacionales-Patrimonio Natural alliance and their contractors as standing in the way of their conservation goals -a familiar conundrum around the world, as social conflicts have long been recognized as an inherent part of protected area establishment and management (Adams & Hutton, 2007;García-Frapolli et al., 2018). When protected areas are promoted as wild or human-free zones, as a form of fortress conservation or territorialization projects, the resulting impacts on local people living within or surrounding the protected area boundaries include displacement from their land or severely limited livelihood options (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Brockington et al., 2006;Holmes, 2014;Redpath et al., 2013). One of the main challenges cited by those in charge of coordinating the restoration project was the tense relationship with the local community. ...
Environmental offsets are proposed as a solution to counterbalance the inherent conflict between extractive development and environmental protection. However, with the expansion of offsetting projects across the world, new socio-ecological conflicts are emerging as a direct consequence of these initiatives. This article examines a case study of environmental offsets implemented in Parque Nacional Natural Serranía de los Yariguíes located in Santander, Colombia, to compensate for the impacts of the Hidrosogamoso hydroelectric dam. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2019 and adopting an analytical framework that combines Johan Galtung's conflict triangle with political ecology, this study reveals the contradictory goals, values, policies and narratives, and the behaviors and attitudes that have led to tensions. In doing so, it highlights the social impacts of offset projects implemented in a protected area, as well as the practical and ethical challenges of attempting to offset environmental harm.
... The western concept of nature conservation emerged in the late 19th century in the United States (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Cronon, 1996). This movement was born in the midst of the colonial era and was rooted in a worldview in which Western patriarchal white societies felt they had the right to impose their values on the world, including the relationship between people and nature and between human populations. ...
... In the region, many National Parks (NPs) were designated during the colonial or apartheid eras, in areas merely unfit for any other forms of modern land use, albeit inhabited by indigenous communities . The creation of protected areas has been largely imposed on local communities, who were in many instances forcibly evicted from their land and alienated from meaningful access to all critical natural resources and culturally important sites (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Guerbois et al., 2013;West et al., 2006). Colonial top-down governance and environmental injustice towards local residents of NPs prevailed. ...
1 Calling on the concept of environmental justice in its distributive, procedural and recognition dimensions, we implemented a coelaborative scenario building approach to explore sustainable livelihoods pathways in four sites belonging to two Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa.
2 Grounded on participation and transdisciplinarity, as a foundation for decolonised anticipatory action research, we aimed at stimulating knowledge exchange and providing insights on the future of local livelihoods engaging experts living within these TFCAs.
3 Our results show that wildlife and wildlife-related activities are not seen as the primary drivers of local livelihoods, despite the focus and investments of dominant stakeholders in these sectors. Instead, local governance and land use regulations emerged as key drivers in the four study sites. The state of natural resources, including water, and appropriate farming systems also appeared critical to sustain future livelihoods in TFCAs, together with the recognition of indigenous culture, knowledge and value systems.
4 Nature conservation, especially in Africa, is rooted in its colonial past and struggles to free or decolonise itself from the habits of this past despite decades of reconsideration. To date, the enduring coloniality of conservation prevents local citizens from truly participating in the planning and designing of the TFCAs they live in, leaving room for limited benefits to local citizens and often limiting Indigenous people's capacity to conserve.
5 A practical way forward is to consider environmental justice as a cement between the two pillars of the TFCA concept, that is, nature conservation and socio-economic development of local or neighbouring communities, as part of a more broadly and urgent need to rethink the relationships between people in, and with, the rest of nature.
... The establishment of national parks could be regarded as a Europe-centric conceptual division between nature and human society (Adams & Hutton, 2007). According to Neumann (1998), national parks are "quintessential landscapes of consumption", in which human beings and any evidence of their activities do not belong. ...
... Neumann also argues that these early approaches to conservation were initially a desire to "escape" to "pristine" nature. They were founded on a fundamental conception of nature as something pristine that could be distinguished and physically separated from humantransformed lands (Champbell, 2005;Adams & Hutton, 2007). ...
... based conservation (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Corson et al., 2014). Functioning as a powerful narrative, protected areas reflect "a way of seeing, understanding, and (re)producing the world" (West et al., 2006, p. 252). ...
... This includes studies that critically examine conservation as development (Corson, 2010(Corson, , 2017Dressler & Roth, 2011;Osborne, 2015;Sundberg, 2004) and environmental rule (Agrawal, 2005;Lunstrum, 2013;McElwee, 2016;West, 2006). Political ecologists have contended that protected areas function as a hegemonic concept (Corson et al., 2014) and a tactic through which modern and colonial states have reterritorialized Indigenous lands and exerted state control (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Nadasdy, 2003;Neumann, 1998;Sandlos, 2014). Conservation can be coercive, militarized, and violent (Bocarejo & Ojeda, 2016;Kashwan et al., 2021;Massé & Margulies, 2020;Peluso, 1993), and has physically displaced Indigenous and local peoples around the world (Chatty & Colchester, 2002a;Dowie, 2009;Roth, 2004), Canada included (Binnema & Niemi, 2006;Sandlos, 2008). ...
Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), a form of Indigenous-led conservation, are gaining momentum in Turtle Island/Canada. While advancing Indigenous and decolonial futurities through IPCAs, Indigenous Nations may encounter various obstacles originating from settler colonial practices, policies, and systems. I draw on political ecology, critical engagements with reconciliation, and insights from my qualitative research to investigate IPCAs as potential processes of reconciliation and thus potentially transformative interventions into mainstream conservation. Unlike state-led parks and protected areas, Indigenous Nations establish and have a primary role governing IPCAs, which center Indigenous priorities, laws, and knowledge. This contrasts with parks and protected areas that have displaced Indigenous Peoples, appropriated territories, and imposed Eurocentric values and governance systems. Crown governments and the conservation sector are increasingly mobilizing reconciliation discourse in the context of conservation, but it is unclear what is or could be reconciled through IPCAs. I conducted community-engaged research with the Tsilhqot’in-led Dasiqox Nexwagweẑʔan IPCA and Kitasoo Xai’xais Stewardship Authority located in Tsilhqot’in and Kitasoo Xai’xais territories respectively (British Columbia). My research approach is informed by critical methodologies including decolonizing, Indigenous, and feminist methods. Key findings include: 1) Insights from previous land use and conservation planning processes reveal the risk of Crown governments and the conservation sector potentially undermining Indigenous governance and IPCAs; 2) IPCAs could be pathways of reconciliation if Crown governments and the conservation sector dismantle the roadblocks arising from settler ontologies and institutions; and 3) In the face of multiple legal hurdles, cultivating decolonial legal pluralism and engaging in legislative reform is feasible, can support Indigenous jurisdiction and governance, and could contribute to reconciliation through IPCAs. This study contributes to emerging decolonial political ecology work in the Global North by bringing the concerns of decolonization and reconciliation into political ecologies of conservation in Turtle Island/North America.
... There are different perceptions of what the equitable governance of nature is and this is the subject of a long-standing debate (Miller et al., 2011). How conservation can increase economic deprivation (Adams and Hutton, 2007) and impose alien ways of thinking on local populations (West and Brockington, 2006) has been well established by earlier critical social science research. More recently, scholars have adopted an explicit justice lens to empirically analyse such challenges in conservation (Garmendia and Pascual, 2013;He and Sikor, 2015;Martin, 2017) andto a more limited extentagriculture (Coolsaet, 2015(Coolsaet, , 2016. ...
The Half Earth (HE) and Sharing the Planet (SP) scenario narratives are two distinctly different scenarios on how to restore and conserve biodiversity while accounting for the need for agricultural production. Yet, the equity implications of both scenarios are not clear. We conducted a questionnaire to better understand what experts with various backgrounds perceive as the main equity implications of these scenarios. We find that, overall, distributive, recognitional, and procedural equity barriers are perceived as higher in the HE scenario, as is the possibility of reaching equity. Especially people depending on local biodiversity to sustain their livelihoods are perceived to face challenges due to inequities. Although equity risks are perceived to be lower in the SP scenario, the measures needed to achieve this scenario are seen as hard to implement, since existing economic and political power structures need to change. Some respondents perceive the SP scenario as anthropocentric, and therefore not equitable to non-humans. The equity perceptions are linked to the respondents' attitudes to nature, their professional focus, and their view on equity in nature conservation and agriculture discussions and agreements today. These results indicate that it is important to recognise the different equity implications of the different scenarios and the challenge to provide equity implications for such scenarios. Explicitly recognising different equity understandings in scenario development and science-policy interfaces could lead to more inclusive policies.
... In recent years, globally, the management of protected areas has evolved from mostly caring about biodiversity conservation to a wider concept, considering the social and economic aspects of local communities as a means to guarantee long-term conservation, by incorporating the concept of sustainable development, as identified by Cruz et al. (2014). Historically, the creation of protected areas was intended to prohibit land and other resources' use with a defining feature on the conservation paradigm and this method was embraced by most governments globally, as indicated by Adams and Hutton (2007), Reindrawati et al. (2022) and Xu et al. (2014). Protected areas, as explained by Fennell (2015), are broadly mandated with the dual purpose of protecting representative natural areas of significance, and encouraging public understanding, appreciation and enjoyment. ...
Public protected areas are set aside to legally protect the country's biological and culturally diverse resources. In South Africa, the protected areas have sustainably conserved some of the country's most biologically rich areas and endangered species; these areas also provide the main way in which people can visit relatively undisturbed areas of high natural and cultural value. Considering sustainability while managing protected areas raises new challenges such as how to reach a balance between economic development and conservation. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) serve as an important framework to develop protected areas that will bring along benefits such as: financial benefits for conservation, community empowerment through economic development, and tourist satisfaction. Public and private sector partnership is the best of both systems: as the private sector brings along the management expertise, knowledge, and resources, the public sector formulates policy and protects the interest of the public. The study aimed at examining the practical importance of managing eco-tourism development through PPP by collecting pre-existing textual data. A content analysis of published academic and industry papers that focused on the management of eco-tourism development by means of PPP, within a global and local context was analysed and thematically coded. The stakeholder theory in eco-tourism development highlights the importance of identifying stakeholder interests and influence to assist with the facilitation efforts toward sustainable eco-tourism development and alignment of functional activities in PPA. The results reveal definitive and practical policy response is needed on how best to apply these regulations to optimise PPP transactions to the benefit of all stakeholders.
... Stakeholders are 'the people and organizations who affect or are affected by a decision', and their involvement may be direct or indirect (Sterling et al., 2017, p160). In theory, inclusion of local stakeholders can lead to improved local livelihoods and success of conservation initiatives, particularly when these groups impact or rely on the target of conservation action (Adams and Hutton, 2007). This is especially important in HWC, where multiple groups are involved in disagreements over wildlife management (Dickman, 2010). ...
Conservation in the human-dominated Anthropocene involves negotiations among diverse stakeholders. However, these stakeholder inclusion schemes are often superficial, leading to unsuccessful interventions. Here we apply the theory of multinaturalism as an operational starting point for stakeholder engagement efforts, to deepen local involvement and work towards coexistence. Multinaturalism posits that natures are multiple and can be known in many ways, and that many natures can coexist in the same geographical space. Using the northern jaguar population in the US-Mexico borderlands as a case study, we investigate, through semi-structured interviews, the natural realities (‘natures’) of various stakeholders involved in borderland jaguar conservation. We define a nature as an individual’s or group’s perceptions, knowledge, values, attitudes, and actions towards jaguars. We construct each stakeholder group’s natural reality of this jaguar population through applied thematic analysis, and we identify which aspects of stakeholders’ natures are similar and different, particularly across the international border. For example, we found that many conservationists and activists value the jaguar as an apex predator because its presence signifies ecosystem health and balance, while some ranchers hold existence value for the jaguar’s power and beauty, but resent its role as a predator, due to potential for conflict with livestock. This information provides a greater understanding of differences in realities that may cause conflicts over wildlife-related decisions, and can be used by local conservation actors to facilitate collaboration in a complex transboundary region. This interdisciplinary study highlights the importance of investigating the human dimensions of conservation completely, while treating all forms of knowledge about nature seriously and equally. Due to the unique nature of human-wildlife interactions, each conservation situation requires bespoke consideration, and particularly in diverse landscapes, a multinatural approach offers a novel path towards sustainable human-wildlife coexistence.
... Political ecology covers the impact of environmental action [253]. The results of our study suggest that political ecology could make use of our data, survey, and scoping review, to engage with the perception of the impact of environmental activism in a different way and increase the amount of knowledge on the perceived and real impacts of environmental activism. ...
Environmental issues increasingly impact the well-being, the ability to have a good life, of people, especially members of marginalized groups. Dealing with environmental issues is a long-standing and increasing focus of activism. Youth are increasingly involved in environmental activism. One focus of environmental education is how to instill the role of being a change agent into students. Marginalized groups experience many problems in relation to environmental issues, and environmental activism impacts the lived experience of marginalized groups in diverse ways. A pre-study scoping review suggested a gap in academic inquiry around “the impact of environmental activism”. The aim of our study was to decrease this gap and to better understand the perceived impact of environmental activism. We used two approaches to achieve this aim. In the first step, we used a survey to ask undergraduate students about their views on the impact of environmental activism. Given the results of the survey and that students need access to information to be able to fulfill their roles as critical thinkers and change agents, we then performed a scoping review of abstracts from Scopus, Web of Science, and the 70 databases accessible through EBSCO-HOST to ascertain what topics and which marginalized groups are engaged with in the academic inquiry of environmental activism. We found that participants felt that environmental activism has an impact on all the social groups and entities we gave them as choices, although there were differences in how positively they viewed the different groups and entities being affected. The participants also indicated that many of the well-being indicators were impacted by environmental activism, although around 30% felt that they did not have information they needed to form an opinion. Finally, our participants felt that different social groups have different ability expectations. Our scoping review found that many of the groups and indicators that our participants felt were impacted by environmental activism were not covered in the abstracts we analyzed. Our findings suggest many gaps and the need for actions and opportunities in relation to the topic of the “impact of environmental activism”.
... Political ecology critically analyzes the significance of power and political inequalities in production systems, knowledge, discourse, and collective action as they influence social conflicts that may lead to environmental conservation or degradation (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Neumann, 2009;Robbins, 2012). Consequently, political ecology encompasses a range of theoretical arguments and methodological traditions as well as topical foci. ...
There is an extensive literature on environmental governance, which refers to multi-stakeholder processes to arrive at collective decisions about how natural resources will be managed. Recent work on environmental governance has focused on outcomes in terms of social-environmental sustainability. However, questions remain about the effectiveness of environmental governance in practice for yielding sustainable social or environmental outcomes. In cases where environmental governance processes prove ineffective, political ecology offers analytical approaches involving explanations that can account for unsustainable outcomes. In addition, an emergent literature on environmental governance provides frameworks to evaluate its effectiveness by unpacking it with regard to diverse criteria. These two literatures together permit analysis of how political ecology and other potential explanations can account for ineffective environmental governance in terms of specific unmet criteria. Analysis of ineffective environmental governance is likely to be especially valuable in a comparative perspective, in which multi-case studies can reveal the extent to which political ecology explanations predominate across cases. We focus on the Amazon, a large region with high social and biological diversity and where competing stakeholders engage in conflict over governance of natural resources. We pursue a comparative analysis of five cases where environmental governance has been ineffective in terms of sustainable outcomes. In each case, we identified five key explanations for ineffective environmental governance. We then coded those explanations with regard to whether they invoke issues highlighted by political ecology. We also coded them considering environmental governance evaluation frameworks to identify the unmet criteria for environmental governance to be effective. We then pursued a comparative analysis of similarities and differences across the cases. The findings indicate that political ecology issues are predominant among explanations for ineffective environmental governance across all five cases. The results also reveal which environmental governance evaluation criteria are most often unmet among the cases. The findings highlight the importance of political ecology for understanding ineffective environmental governance, and permit delineation of specific criteria for effective environmental governance that can be the focus of strategies to improve environmental governance for sustainability.
... La atención prestada por esta antropología a las poblaciones afectadas y los efectos locales de las áreas protegidas (cambios en los modos de vida; discursos y percepciones del medio; conflictos materiales y simbólicos por el uso de la tierra, las marismas, los ríos y el mar; nuevas actividades económicas, especialmente las vinculadas al turismo; etc.) también está en sintonía con las tendencias en la literatura antropológica internacional (ver Adams y Hutton, 2007;Holmes y Cavanagh, 2016;West, Igoe y Brockington, 2006). Ahora bien, en esta producción bibliográfica se han desatendido temas y problemáticas de interés potencial para este campo de estudio. ...
Entre 1978 y 1989 se crea en Andalucía un modelo de conservación ambiental que se convertirá en referente a nivel estatal e internacional. Será el resultado de un complejo proceso político marcado por tendencias contradictorias (tránsito del franquismo al parlamentarismo, del centralismo al autonomismo), activismo social-ambientalista y pugnas entre corporativismos disciplinarios (biología, ingeniería, geografía). A partir de entrevistas cualitativas, fuentes hemerográficas y documentales, explicamos este modelo, su visión y dispositivos como un marco político-administrativo que surge de relaciones personales y de la confrontación entre corrientes dentro del partido de gobierno en Andalucía (PSOE) en el contexto de un ascenso de las demandas y el movimiento ecologistas.
... The interaction between biotic and abiotic factors conveys negative or positive consequences to a habitat regarding its ecological dynamics (Yates, Norton, & Hobbs, 2000). Interactions among natural components in a forest, such as assemblage of organisms, types of symbiosis, prey and predator relationships and herbivore and vegetation relationships, maintain the natural balance (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Ogutu, 1997). If interactions between human beings and natural resources become unsustainable, it might cause ecological collapse with perilous impacts on nature (Sih, Ferrari, & Harris, 2011). ...
We conducted a one-year study in TWS, Bangladesh, to test socioeconomic-related impacts on the sanctuary caused by three performers marked as forest-endorsed settlers, illegal settlers, and forest-nearest villagers. The performer’s activities were marked as cattle ranching, gardening, paddy cultivation, vegetable growing, betel-leaf growing, and forest resource collection. These factors had a marked impact on the elephant’s use of fodder species, water bodies, feeding trails and resting places, as well as soil types. We revealed that 8% of the intruders were engaged in cattle ranching, 17% in gardening, 32% in paddy cultivation, 25% in vegetable growing, 6% in betel-leaf growing and 12% were forest resource collectors. These numbers were taken out of a recorded total of 26,937 incidences of forest intrusions, including forest endorse settlers (4%), illegal settlers (35%) and nearest forest villagers (61%). The disturbance rate differed statistically significantly across 6 study sites on the east coast and 4 study sites on the west coast in response to socioeconomic-related activities. Almost 2827 hectares of forestland was replaced by paddy cultivation (575 ha), vegetable growing (529 ha), betel-leaf growing (480 ha), gardening (448 ha), and illegal settlement (795 ha). Thus, a total of 11615 hectares of the sanctuary was permanently damaged, posing challenges to elephant survival.
... This can affect not only the actors or species involved but also conservation practice and outcomes (Avelino, 2021) and lead to conflicts (see Section 3.3). For example, conservation interventions relating to discourses around the need to protect nature (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Jones, 2006) (Table 2) and the need for livelihood changes have had problematic outcomes (Almudi & Berkes, 2010;Chomba et al., 2015; Table 2; Appendix S1, Case 3). These often-unintended consequences of conservation can include biodiversity loss, loss of rights and access to land and resources, or reinforcing social inequalities (Larrosa et al., 2016). ...
Abstract Conservation research and practice are increasingly engaging with people and drawing on social sciences to improve environmental governance. In doing so, conservation engages with power in many ways, often implicitly. Conservation scientists and practitioners exercise power when dealing with species, people and the environment, and increasingly they are trying to address power relations to ensure effective conservation outcomes (guiding decision‐making, understanding conflict, ensuring just policy and management outcomes). However, engagement with power in conservation is often limited or misguided. To address challenges associated with power in conservation, we introduce the four dominant approaches to analyzing power to conservation scientists and practitioners who are less familiar with social theories of power. These include actor‐centered, institutional, structural, and, discursive/governmental power. To complement these more common framings of power, we also discuss further approaches, notably non‐human and Indigenous perspectives. We illustrate how power operates at different scales and in different contexts, and provide six guiding principles for better consideration of power in conservation research and practice. These include: (1) considering scales and spaces in decision‐making, (2) clarifying underlying values and assumptions of actions, (3) recognizing conflicts as manifestations of power dynamics, (4) analyzing who wins and loses in conservation, (5) accounting for power relations in participatory schemes, and, (6) assessing the right to intervene and the consequences of interventions. We hope that a deeper engagement with social theories of power can make conservation and environmental management more effective and just while also improving transdisciplinary research and practice.
... The concept of exclusion has been widely used in natural resource management around the world. In writings on political economy, much literature refers to exclusion as a process for restricting stakeholders' decision-making in the governance of a given resource (e.g., Ribot 1995;Adams and 2007;Lele et al. 2010). Accordingly, exclusion is the diametrically opposed social process to participation. ...
This research presents a case study of a high-profile carbon forest sequestration project in Southwest China, which claims to achieve ‘triple-win’ outcomes for livelihoods, biodiversity and climate change. However, over the last 15 years, each household that participated in the project has only received 10–20 USD (about 0.67–1.33 USD annually), despite the requirement for farmers to convert their agricultural land into tree plantations. We argue that contemporary capitalism engaged in climate change mitigation efforts has effectively recast the rural governance of land from a territorial arrangement to multiple actors exerting control over carbon credit certification, which creates a new form of climate injustice and social exclusion in agrarian change.
... Nevertheless, since corresponding institutions are not powerful enough or their law enforcement lacks intensity, the impact of nature reserves on the environment has been weakened (Feng et al. 2021). Though the role of nature reserves in protecting biodiversity and promoting ecosystem services has been recognized by a majority of scholars (Cazalis et al. 2020;Bashir et al. 2021;Khan et al. 2022), their maintenance cost has been borne by locals disproportionally (Adams and Hutton 2007). ...
Clarifying the impact of nature reserves on rural residents’ income is of great significance to the organic integration of environmental protection and rural residents’ income improvement. Based on the panel data of 600 counties from nine provinces in China, ranging from 2010 to 2019, this study employs the quasi-experimental method of Difference in Difference and Propensity Score Matching (PSM-DID) to examine how rural resident’s income is influenced by the establishment of nature reserves. It is found that (1) Nature reserves, with a positive impact on rural resident’s income, bring more earnings to the rural residents. (2) The impact varies with the heterogeneity of natural reserve types. That is, national and natural parks can increase rural residents’ income, while the ones with wildlife or remote desert ecosystem play a limited role. (3) The increased income is mainly originated from the development of tourism, the improvement of facilities and the enhancement of ecosystem services. On this basis, multiple methods are proposed to promote rural residents’ income and livelihood security of local communities. Policy recommendations are brought forth as well, including the focus on guaranteeing the livelihood security of rural residents nearby nature reserves where wildlife and remote desert ecosystem are protected.
... Different forms of conservation governance might differentially affect ranger perceptions and experiences of their employment conditions. For instance, top-down governance of conservation areas, where local groups or bodies are partially or entirely excluded from decision making, can often impose high costs on local livelihoods and exacerbate social conflicts, particularly in areas with high levels of poverty and resource dependence (Kothari, 2008;Adams & Hutton, 2007). A commonly perceived strength of Indigenous and community governance is that the local development of rules can translate to greater legitimacy and compliance on the ground (Ostrom, 1990;Baral & Stern, 2010). ...
... The evolution shows three main phases, among which are fortress conservation (Brockington, 2002), co-management conservation (Brechin et al. 2003), and neoliberal conservation (Brockington and Duffy 2011;Igoe and Brockington 2007). Adams and Hutton (2007) argue that the concept of political ecology in conservation is of great influence in the crafting of protected areas. It looks at the politics and the social impacts of creating a protected area, and how the costs and benefits are allocated to the different stakeholders. ...
For several decades, conservation landscapes in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have witnessed the intervention of diverse international conservation and development agencies in a bid to promote the conservation agenda. These interventions have seen the application of several models; while the outcomes of some have been sufficiently documented, the intricacies linked to conservation sub-contracting and the outcomes they produce, account for a very negligible fraction of the literature. This knowledge gap represents a constantly ignored but very important contributing factor toward conservation outcomes. To close the gap, this paper takes the case of the Dja Landscape of Cameroon to explore the political ecology of conservation sub-contracting. Specifically, it; (a) explores power manifestations in the conservation sub-contracting process between an international and a local NGO, (b) evaluates their outcomes in the frame of the sustainability of conservation interventions, and (c) examines the twists and turns of the conservation sub-contracting process between an international and a local NGO using a power lens. Qualitative data was generated using key informant interviews (n = 36), expert interviews (n = 7), and focus group discussions (n = 5) in four communities around the North and Western clusters of the Dja Landscape. Using directed content analysis and narratives, the analysis leads us to the following conclusions: Firstly, as a model, conservation sub-contracting holds promise to deliver efficient and relevant interventions, provided the terms of the contract are clear to the parties involved. The flip side is that it renders local NGOs significantly dependent on the former – creating a power dynamic of dominance by funding agencies. Secondly, in sub-contracting, unexpected shifts in the exercise of power occur; therefore, power acquisition and exercise in conservation sub-contracting is not static. Thirdly, conservation sub-contracting is flawed with the observed obscurity of the sub-contractor vis-à-vis the target communities. While the results provide new insights on the switching roles of the potentate and the subordinate in conservation sub-contracting, they call for further studies across SSA to explore the twists and turns linked to sub-contracting.
... Protected Areas that followed the same structured of Yellowstone and Yosemite were created in dozens of countries around the world. However, with the international spread of this framework, communities all over the planet same their livelihoods impacted (ADAMS; HUTTON, 2007). ...
Resumo A criação de áreas protegidas é um dos principais pilares de ações focadas na conservação da natureza. Estudos buscando uma compreensão mais abrangente da relação entre “bem-estar humano” e áreas protegidas são chave para um equilíbrio socioambiental dessas ações. O presente trabalho buscou avaliar, através de entrevistas baseadas nos conceitos de liberdade, segurança, saúde e relações sociais, o impacto da criação de áreas protegidas no Pantanal em duas comunidades ribeirinhas da região. Mostramos que ambas as comunidades sofreram impactos negativos no seu bem-estar. No entanto, as experiências sobre o impacto são expressas de forma diversa, compatível com o histórico, tipo de gestão e categoria de cada área protegida. Também mostramos falas positivas sobre as áreas protegidas, referentes à questão social, econômica e ambiental. Mecanismos mais abrangentes de avaliação da relação homem/ natureza permitem entendermos os principais gargalos e potencialidades de uma conservação com efetiva participação das comunidades tradicionais.
... A heritage site is a complex space related to "development and environment, power and conflict" [6]. Therefore, research on ecological environmental changes in protected areas needs to focus on the dynamic changes and impacts of power networks [7]. ...
The coexistence of conservation and degradation is a challenge for protected areas, and unequal political and social power is the mechanism underlying this conservation paradox. The World Heritage site of the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces (HHRT) has important natural and cultural value, but despite the enormous investment in protecting the site, the rice terraces continue to degrade, and much of the degradation has been unexpected. This study attempts to reveal the mechanism of these unintended protection outputs from the perspective of power relations. After reviewing the literature on the political ecology of protected areas, this study further considers the conceptual framework of power in view of the ambiguity of the concept and integrates the themes from research on protected areas into the power analysis framework of political ecology. Three aspects of the power process and environmental impact of heritage sites are analyzed: the actor network, conservation discourse and natural reconstruction. The results reveal that power among actors in the HHRT has changed over the course of continuous interaction, power has been produced and re-established in different relational networks, and the exercise of power has changed and reshaped the natural environment of the heritage site through a series of spatial planning decisions. Conservation discourse related to heritage is an important way for actors to establish and exercise power. However, due to spatial differences in the allocation of power, local development opportunities are unbalanced. In this unbalanced relationship, in order to maintain or strive for development opportunities and achieve economic development, residents of the HHRT have reshaped the natural environment by changing their farming methods and traditional planting methods, posing a potential threat to the sustainable development of the heritage site.
... Thus, a policy of ecological priority was proposed for the construction of Qilian Mountain National Park (QLMNP). However, environmental protection in these areas has led to severe conflicts among local governments, enterprises, villagers, and other stakeholders [28,42,43]. The residents mainly rely on agriculture and animal husbandry for their livelihood [16], and the expansion of cultivated land is the major approach for agricultural production and income. ...
Qilian Mountain National Park (QLMNP) is a biodiversity hotspot with great agriculture and tourism resources. With the expansion of human activities, a few areas of the park are experiencing massive landscape transformation, and these areas are also highly ecologically sensitive. Nevertheless, there are substantial differences in the human activities and natural resources of various communities around QLMNP, resulting in heterogeneous landscape degradation. Hence, this study explores the extent and drivers of spatial heterogeneity in landscape fragmentation associated with ecologically vulnerable communities in QLMNP. Multiple ring buffer analysis and geographically weighted regression (GWR) were used to analyze the relationships between landscape fragmentation and variables of human activities and facilities to identify the main factors influencing landscape fragmentation in different regions. The results reveal that human disturbance had a stronger relationship with landscape fragmentation in QLMNP than natural factors do. Among the drivers of landscape fragmentation, the distribution of residential areas and the extension of agricultural land were found to have more significant impacts than tourism. Expansion of cropland had a greater impact on the eastern part of the national park, where overgrazing and farming require further regulation, while tourism affected the landscape fragmentation in the central area of the national park. The point-shaped human disturbance had a larger impact than the linear disturbance. The study findings can be used to formulate a comprehensive plan to determine the extent to which agriculture and tourism should be developed to avoid excessive damage to the ecosystem.
... Drylands outside of protected areas in Kenya are increasingly recognized as vital for mammalian biodiversity conservation (Western, Russell, & Cuthill, 2009). Decentralization of national authority to county governments (Kanyinga, 2016), and delegation of authority over development initiatives and wildlife management to a mosaic of non-governmental organizations (NGOs; Western et al., 2015), have spurred the expansion of 'community-based conservation' (CBC) interventions to currently cover 11% of Kenyan land. 1 In a broad sense, CBC is an activity that is intended to simultaneously enhance human development and to conserve biodiversity (Galvin et al., 2018), and is seen as an alternative to 'fortress' wildlife conservation practices that have been widely criticized for dispossessing Indigenous peoples of their lands and promoting a dichotomy between nature and society (Adams & Hulme, 2001;Adams & Hutton, 2007;Brockington, 2002). However, CBC models in Kenya have come under heavy criticism, variously being described as neo-colonial (Mbaria & Ogada, 2016), and facilitating 'green grabbing' (Bersaglio & Cleaver, 2018). ...
Throughout Kenya, new governance regimes that are designed to sustain habitat connectivity for wildlife populations outside of national parks have gained increasing prominence. Though these new regimes often center a discursive emphasis on the synergies between wildlife conservation and pastoralist land use, it often remains unclear how they have interacted with colonial and post-colonial legacies that influenced pastoralists' relationships with land. As an effort to gain an improved understanding of the practices that conservation governance regimes deploy, and their underlying rationales, I present an empirically-driven account drawn from ethnographic field work in Kenyan Ilkisongo Maasai land surrounding Amboseli National Park. I argue that to understand recent configurations of land, it is essential to consider the multiple types of interlocking practices deployed by international wildlife conservation NGOs and the Kenyan state. Under a range of pressures to subdivide collectively titled land, a new territorial and governance configuration is emerging where land tenure will retain characteristics of being both private and collective. I argue that a discursive emphasis that frames conservation interventions as producing welfare for populations of wildlife and pastoralists alike has created new potentials to center the concerns of politically marginalized pastoralists, but has also raised risks of an ‘anti-politics’ that can reproduce and reinforce multiple dimensions of power asymmetries.
... The same three dimensions of households' vulnerability to crop raiding can be found in the Pendjari Biosphere Reserve. The institutional vulnerability comes from the classical top-down conservation strategies, excluding local populations from the decision-making process (Adams 2004;Adams and Hutton 2007). These conservation regulations may indeed hinder farmers' ability to protect themselves against raiding animals (Thirgood et al. 2005), thereby creating a form of institutional vulnerability (Fairet 2012). ...
Human–wildlife conflict is becoming a serious threat for both wildlife conservation and human well-being. Its main representations are livestock predation and crop raiding. This chapter examines the problem of crop raiding by wildlife and its socio-economic implications around Pendjari Biosphere Reserve in northern Benin. Data were collected in 2017 through field observations, semi-structured interviews, and a questionnaire survey of 209 farmers of the surrounding villages of the reserve, and 98% of them reported losses of crop every year due to wildlife. Crops with the highest degree of destruction are cotton, maize, millet, and sorghum, and the wild animals responsible for this are mainly baboon, warthog, and elephant. Crop raiding causes, for an average farmer, an annual financial loss ranging from $94.64 in farms of sorghum to $311.8 in farms of cotton. Compared to the annual minimum salary in Benin, these numbers are considerable. Farmers try to manage the impacts of crop raiding with various mitigation measures such as guarding, but the heavy toll of crop raiding and the low level of effectiveness of such measures clearly reveal the vulnerability of agricultural households bordering protected areas.
... Therefore, a wide range of measures, such as law enforcement to tackle illegal poaching and trade, setting up protected areas, restoring degraded ecosystems and controlling invasive species, have been adopted to combat these serious biodiversity concerns [13,14]. However, to ensure the effectiveness and success of these conservation measures, the local public's acceptance and support for those conservation initiatives need to be considered [15][16][17][18][19]. Acceptance and support among the key stakeholders are especially important [20,21]. ...
Background
The Chinese Hwamei (Garrulax canorus Linnaeus, 1758) is a widely distributed species and has long been kept as a pet, especially by the ethnic communities in Southwest China. According to conservation experts’ suggestions, it has been designated as a second-level national key protected species in February, 2021 to protect this bird, indicating that keeping it at home is no longer permitted in China. However, a key factor to ensure effectiveness and success of conservation initiatives is local stakeholders’ acceptance and support.
Methods
Interviews and focus group discussions were used to document the policy outcomes and the views of 108 local bird-keepers in a county in Guizhou province.
Results
Despite awareness about the illegality of the practice, the bird was still commonly caged both in rural and urban regions. To justify their unwillingness to stop keeping these birds, the interviewees presented many arguments, such as benefits for the community members’ health, cultural heritage and contributions to local livelihoods. Fewer than 30% of the bird-keepers believed that the practice of self-keeping has reduced the wild population. Most argued the decline was mainly generated by the harvesting and keepers with monetary interests. They suggested enforcement should target those people and bird markets, as well as the harvesting methods. They also recommended restricting the number of birds allowed to be kept by one keeper, establishing protected areas and a harvesting ban period. The study participants demonstrated considerable local ecological knowledge about approaches for managing the species’ use.
Conclusions
Due to the benefits for the people and the bird’s large distribution, I argued that a conservation goal to lower the harvesting and keeping rates would be more appropriate than a strict ban on keeping them. Such a policy would be more feasible and culturally acceptable because it is built on keepers’ support and suggestions. It is necessary to monitor the effects of bird keeping on the wild population. Overall, this qualitative study demonstrated the advantage of factoring in local voices in conservation decisions.
... Colonial histories that include war, persecution, and dispossession of land and other resources have led to persistent gulfs between local communities and government, other non-state actors, and market actors (Fanon 1952, Escobar 1995, Olusoga and Erichsen 2010. Conservation efforts have been part of the genesis of these colonial legacies (Hutton andAdams 2007, Dressler et al. 2010). These legacies often place communities at a power disadvantage when negotiating with other CBNRM actors and can preclude positive outcomes for communities (Nadasdy 2012, Mosimane andSilva 2015). ...
Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) seeks to align the interests of local communities and conservation institutions. A significant challenge to this realignment is that CBNRM is often implemented in locations with colonial histories of oppression, persecution, and dispossession that have left legacies of inequity and marginalization. Social networks are one method for discerning how marginalized CBNRM actors can negotiate entitlements and agency. Through the lens of social networks, marginalization can be viewed as insufficient connectivity between the center and the periphery of the network. One possible remedy to this dysfunction are boundary actors, which are thought to be vital to connecting parts of social networks that would otherwise be poorly connected. Using social network analysis to visualize interactions between the Topnaar community and CBNRM institutional actors in Namibia’s Namib-Naukluft and Dorob National Parks, we find a number of individuals well-positioned to serve as boundary actors. Although our results suggest these individuals can be effective in sharing and translating key knowledge, supporting transfers of benefits, and enabling or negotiating entitlements, we also found that social, political, institutional, and geographic constraints limited their effectiveness. In particular, the Topnaar Traditional Authority, adopted a “neo-traditional,” top-down, gatekeeper role, while their community wanted them to be more responsive and engaged in directly addressing the communities’ problems. In general, the boundary actors were the focus of much discontent and conflict, in large part because of unclear pathways of accountability. We recommend the co-creation of boundary objects that specify responsibilities and thus reduce conflict and support effective boundary actors.
... Thus, as local people's ties to their land and livelihoods were in many cases severed, local relationships to the natural environment, both inside and outside boundaries of protected areas changed (Adams & Hutton, 2007;Sène-Harper & Séye, 2019;Wessels et al., 2021). Stone and Nyaupane (2019) describe how African locals, even beyond those in communities directly adjacent to national parks, view protected areas as important spaces only for foreign tourists, government, or investors. ...
In East Africa, settler-colonization during the Scramble for Africa period and the militarized conservation regimes that became a common feature of colonial governance in the region, characterized by conserved land secured via fences and patrols of armed rangers, fundamentally altered locals’ access to and relationship with their land and natural environment. In parallel to the impacts on locals’ relationship with nature, direct colonial governance impacted local expressions of leisure. Colonial authorities often enforced particular activities during times normally allocated as free time, forcing individuals sometimes to perform tasks or engage in activities contrary to local conceptions of leisure. This paper draws linkages between two discrete but related scholarly literatures focusing on African contexts: the lasting influences of a particular period and type of colonization on local peoples’: (a) conceptions of leisure, and (b) relationships to their natural environment. East Africa is the primary regional focus, to contain the scope. Snowballing literature search and database keyword searches are used for literature review, in which African-authored scholarship is prioritized to address Euro-North American bias in academic research. Evidence in the literature describes how leisure and perceptions of nature were constrained and redefined during the settler-colonial period and their evolution in the postcolonial era inform how leisure and perceptions of nature are shaped in the present. However, the paper focuses only lasting impacts of a particular period and type of colonization, and thus the lasting impacts are likely to be deeper than those described in this analysis. Next, the paper draws on intersections of these literatures to examine a contemporary issue in East Africa: recent efforts to increase domestic ecotourism by encouraging locals to engage in nature-based recreation activities and leisure experiences. The paper contributes to the African ecotourism literature by intersecting colonization, sociology of leisure, and tourism literatures to identify contemporary historically-rooted opportunities and challenges in domestic ecotourism in East Africa, highlighting gaps in sociology of leisure and ecotourism literatures pertaining to prospective African tourists’ perceptions of ecotourism activities.
... Several literatures have found out that biodiversity conservation costs and benefits are not reasonably shared among different conservation actors (see Baldus, et al., 2003;Nelson, 2007;Moyo 2016). Adams and Hutton, (2007) indicate that benefits realized form conservation are global while conservation costs are borne by local people, predominantly poor and politically weak individuals in the community. For example, Songorwa (1999Songorwa ( , 2015 found out that local community living next to protected areas lose more than half of their per capita income due to damage caused by wildlife. ...
Wildlife Management Area establishment around protected areas in Tanzania have been faced with various challenges including failures to adequately involve local populations in planning, governance and management of wildlife related resources. This study examined the benefit sharing mechanisms in Community Based Conservation programs, the case of Makao Wildlife Management Area in Meatu District, Tanzania. The study was conducted in Jinamo, Mwabagimu and Makao Villages. Data were collected from 281 heads of households using a survey design within the mixed approach. The study used simple random sampling based on the names of all heads of the households in each study village who were obtained from the village households as registered by village chairs. The major findings indicate that in the past five years, there is a considerable increase of income generated from wildlife investment in the study area which is used for payment of VGS salaries, food and other expense for VGS, community development and sharing among member villages. The study further shows that, inadequate involvement in the WMA activities results in local people having low perception on the WMA accrued benefits. The study recommends that it is essential to involve the local community in the WMA design and management in order to improve its acceptability and ownership. Benefit sharing in the WMAs should be designed as a strategy to offset conservation costs and build support for biodiversity conservation among conservation actors mainly local communities.
The article identifies the Sundarbans landscape as a ‘marginal scape’ in the context of the Marichjhapi Massacre of 1979. It applies the conservationist vs. environmental (in)justice approach of ecocriticism to Amitava Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Deep Halder’s Blood Island: An Oral History of Marichjhapi Massacre. It relates the idea of environmental discrimination and injustice based on caste to the misallocation of the ‘Commons’. For the Marichjhapi Dalit Refugees, the Sundarbans landscape and its ecological attributes become an essential medium in reconstructing their layered identity after migrating from Bangladesh to Sundarbans, which becomes marginalized. The paper argues that the management of environmental resources/landscapes has always been in the hands of the rich, entwined with Brahminical hegemony, who try to impose political geography over ecological systems to suppress the dispossessed. It concludes by comprehending that any justice-based approach (here, social and environmental) still favours non-human beings and ends up causing a multi-layered crisis for marginalized human populations.
In 1995, the Second International Biosphere Reserve Congress in Seville resulted in a set of new regulations that spurred a significant paradigm shift in the UNESCO Man and Bio-sphere (MAB) Programme, reconceptualizing the research programme as a modern instrument for the dual mandate of nature conservation and sustainable development. But almost 20 years later, a large proportion of biosphere reserves designated before 1996 still did not comply with the new regulations. In 2013, the International Coordination Council of the MAB Programme announced the ‘Exit Strategy’ to assess, monitor and improve the quality of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves. However, the strategy also meant that 266 biosphere reserves in 76 member states were faced with the possibility of exclusion from the world network.
This study presents a global assessment of the challenges that result from the Exit Strategy and the Process of Excellence and Enhancement that follows. Specifically, it investigates the differences in quality management strategies and the periodic review processes of various biosphere reserves, the effects of those quality management strategies on the MAB Programme and on the 76 directly affected member states, and the interlinkages between the MAB Programme and other UNESCO designations for nature conservation: the natural World Heritage Sites and the Global Geoparks.
Semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with 31 participants in 21 different countries, representing all UN regions. To showcase the diversity of the World Network of Bio-sphere Reserves, 20 country-specific case studies are presented, highlighting the challenges of implementing the biosphere reserve concept and, more specifically, the periodic review process. Information gleaned from the experts was transcribed and evaluated using a qualitative content analysis method.
The results of this study demonstrate major differences worldwide in the implementation biosphere reserves, especially in the case of the national affiliation of the MAB Programme, the legal recognition of biosphere reserves in national legislation, the usage of the term ‘bio-sphere reserve’ and the governance structures of the biosphere reserves. Of those represented by the case studies, the four countries with the highest number of voluntary biosphere reserves withdrawals after 2013, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria and the United States of America, show that the Exit Strategy contributed to the streamlining and quality enhancement of the world network. The biosphere reserves in those countries were strictly nature conservation areas without human settlements and were designated as such in the 1970s and 1980s. Only post-Seville biosphere reserves remain in those countries. Some experts have pointed out that there appears to be competition for political attention and funding between the three UNESCO labels for nature conservation. While a combination of the designation of biosphere reserves and World Heritage Sites in one place is favoured by experts, Global Geoparks and Biosphere Reserves are seen as being in competition with each other.
This study concludes that quality enhancement strategies were fundamental to improving the credibility and coherence of the MAB Programme. Most pre-Seville biosphere reserves were adapted or the member states were encouraged to withdraw them voluntarily. Challenges in implementing the Exit Strategy were not unique to individual countries but applied equally to all member states with pre-Seville sites. Over the course of the quality enhancement process, many UNESCO member states have become more involved with the MAB Programme, which has led to rejuvenation of the national biosphere reserves network in many countries.
The wildlife conservation approach that insists on making forests free from human activity brings a drastic change for communities residing inside the forest risking their very existence. This ethnographic study of pastoralists, cohabitating with Asiatic lions inside the wildlife-protected area, explored the influence of restrictions imposed on their lives. Data was collected through participant observations, informal discussions, and in-depth interviews. Ordered and social arena maps as described in the situational analysis approach by Adele Clarke, were used for analysis. The social arenas of State, Temporary migration, and Market were found to shape the lives of the Maldharis. Their life after the declaration of the protected area was characterized by economic insecurity, lost identities, loss of networks, dignity, and honor. The multiple and multifold vulnerabilities of the marginalized Maldharis, who made forests their homes for generations, warrant an integrated approach towards conservation.
While wildlife conservation practices have been exposed as being inherently political, the science behind wildlife monitoring is often less explored. In this chapter I expose the politics associated with wildlife monitoring by addressing the methodological challenges involved in counting and tracking migratory wildlife—from scientific and Maasai perspectives. I focus on an area in northern Tanzania where wildlife do not abide by conservation boundaries and share the landscape with people and livestock, challenging any ontological divide of nature from society. I contrast how local Maasai know wildlife in this space with different scientific approaches. The chapter highlights the benefits of a Critical Physical Geography approach that recognizes multiple ways of knowing ‘nature’, through ecological and ethnographic methods that are always informed by political-ethical concerns.
Effective protected area (PA) management should deliver better conservation results and improved welfare for local people, especially for many developing countries (DCs) with mega-biodiversity, where pressing conservation demands for global value and urgent economic growth requirements for local development co-exist. Here, we proposed a conservation-compatible livelihoods approach that forms a closed loop of rural livelihoods and biodiversity conservation to support the policy design of effective protected area (PA) management in the DCs. By reviewing the transition of conservation discourse from “fortress conservation” to “community conservation”, the conservation-compatible livelihoods approach returns to the principle of human-land reciprocity, and aims to regulate the local resource utilisation through recognition of biodiversity values of global meaning. We define conservation-compatible livelihoods (CCLs) by deepening the meaning of sustainable livelihoods and strengthening cultural inclusiveness. Building on literature and practices, we provided a typology of various CCLs and a triple-judgement procedure strengthening the different needs as a mutual decision-making process and facilitating realistic livelihood alternatives not exclusive of traditional wisdom for developing CCLs. We presented the mechanism model of CCLs to illustrate how to achieve a fair and sustainable livelihood through value generation based on the resource endowments, and through the cooperation of stakeholders. Finally, we discussed the trends for the CCLs approach to take effect and why this systematic approach can apply to DCs for their self-reliant development.
To better understand current conflicts related to human–wolf interactions in Finland, this article undertakes a longue‐durée examination of societal structural transformations and how they have influenced ways of relating to nature in the country. Through a world‐ecological perspective, we weave together a historical review and results of ethnographic fieldwork to explain how and why human–wolf relations in Finland transformed from indifferent coexistence to purposeful eradication in the late 19th century and ultimately to contemporary contested protection. We argue that the nature‐making capacities of capitalist development are an integral part of the historical circumstances that led to the eradication of wolves, which was not only the result of animosity towards wolves but also fuelled by the interests of elite hunters. The resulting negative perceptions, coupled with changes in practices and landscapes during the wolf‐less era, are central in current contestations, illustrating the deep ideological, emotional, and practical nature relations that capitalism creates.
Resumo A criação de áreas protegidas é um dos principais pilares de ações focadas na conservação da natureza. Estudos buscando uma compreensão mais abrangente da relação entre “bem-estar humano” e áreas protegidas são chave para um equilíbrio socioambiental dessas ações. O presente trabalho buscou avaliar, através de entrevistas baseadas nos conceitos de liberdade, segurança, saúde e relações sociais, o impacto da criação de áreas protegidas no Pantanal em duas comunidades ribeirinhas da região. Mostramos que ambas as comunidades sofreram impactos negativos no seu bem-estar. No entanto, as experiências sobre o impacto são expressas de forma diversa, compatível com o histórico, tipo de gestão e categoria de cada área protegida. Também mostramos falas positivas sobre as áreas protegidas, referentes à questão social, econômica e ambiental. Mecanismos mais abrangentes de avaliação da relação homem/ natureza permitem entendermos os principais gargalos e potencialidades de uma conservação com efetiva participação das comunidades tradicionais.
The set aside of protected areas is one of the pillars of initiatives focused on nature conservation. Studies seeking a broader understanding of the relation between human well-being and protected areas are key to support a social-ecological balance these initiatives. In this paper, we sought to understand, through interviewers structured around the concepts of freedom, security, heath, and social relations, the extent to which protected areas in the Pantanal have impacted the lives of two riverine communities in the region. We show that both communities were negatively impacted in all axes of well-being evaluated. However, each group experienced the impacts differently, depending on the process of creation, category and management strategy of each protected area. We also show that people see economic, social, and ecological positive aspects of the protected areas. Broader understanding about well-being, as applied in this study, allow us to better uncover the relation between human / nature and the potential for effective participation of traditional communities.
Scientific studies about the role of urban green spaces (UGSs) in biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation are limited in developing countries. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the role of UGSs in biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. Using a systematic sampling method a total of 137 sample plots of various sizes were laid per cluster. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was undertaken among clusters using the Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) test at a 5% level of significance. A total of 127 woody species belonging to 58 families and 99 genera were recorded. Of the total species, 7 (5.51%), 34 species (26.77%), and 86 (67.72%) were endemic, exotic, and indigenous to Ethiopia, respectively. The presence of threatened or endangered trees in Ethiopia, such as Hagenia abyssinica and Juniperus procera in the UGSs of Dessie, indicates that UGSs could be another potential site for biodiversity conservation. The overall mean carbon stock (ton ha − 1) and its total CO 2 equivalent of UGSs of Dessie are 745.17 ± 170.86 and 2734.79 ± 627.06, respectively. This indicated a significant potential of UGSs to mitigate a changing climate. A statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) was revealed for the carbon stock and diversity. The highest mean biomass carbon was recorded in the urban forests (1448.14 ± 736.32 tons C ha − 1) and the lowest in urban Homegarden (61.28 ± 0.231 ton C ha − 1). Correlation analysis revealed a weak positive relationship (r = 0.26) between biomass carbon stock and Shannon's index. It is concluded that UGSs have an important role in mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. Therefore, urban plans should consider the roles of urban green space at every stage of planning.
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.
Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.
Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.
Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.
Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.
Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.
Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.
Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.
Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.
Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.
Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.
Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
This paper explores debates over the statistical picturing of the nation's finite forest resources in the Progressive-era United States. This picturing was made possible by a variety of new quantitative and graphical practices that made maps and statistics appear as objective evidence of the natural limits those objects appeared to exhibit. Drawing on the work of Timothy Mitchell, I argue that this appearance was generated through more generalized practices of enframing. Enframing involved the systematic ordering of objects to create the appearance of a world metaphysically divided in two and graspable in terms of the distinction between reality and the objective representations through which reality as such was made to appear. This binary ordering, or enframing, of appearance created the appearance of order itself as an apparently abstract framework within which the objects so enframed could be more closely regulated. Enframing the forest quantitatively transformed heterogeneous forests into an apparently calculable quantity available to new disciplinary forms of state power that Foucault argues are characteristic of modem governmentality. The timber-famine debate also highlights the question of trust and the dependence of expert authority on traditional gender and class differences, which were themselves reworked through the quantifying practices of scientific forest conservation.
In the period immediately following the war, four international political and economic trends converged to transform the content, implementation, and enforcement of wildlife and national park laws in East and Central Africa. One was the initiation of the British colonial development and modernization agenda for Africa. Second was the rising importance in Africa of the scientific expert in agriculture and natural resources management, particularly in wildlife conservation. Third was the establishment and expansion of international commercial air travel which encouraged, and made possible, mass tourism on a global scale. Fourth was the emergence and increasing importance of international conservation organizations in setting and implementing a national park and wildlife conservation program in Africa. Each of these four trends will be explored in the sections that follow. Though a detailed comparison with national park and conservation policies outside of this region is not intended, there are important parallels with and connections to events in the United States and internationally that will be highlighted throughout. For example, tourism provided an important economic motivation for national park development in both the United States and Africa, but it took quite different forms in each location. Furthermore, advances in scientific wildlife management just prior to and following the second world war were reshaping conservation laws and policies in countries on both sides of the Atlantic. Financial, technical, and scientific support to implement new conservation practices in British colonial Africa came from both the United States and Great Britain. Before moving into the analysis of the four postwar trends in Africa and elaborating on these and other international connections, it is necessary to first establish the status of wildlife and the character of conservation laws and practices in the decades leading up to 1945.
The realization of conservation goals requires strategies for managing
whole landscapes including areas allocated to both production and protection.
Reserves alone are not adequate for nature conservation but they are the cornerstone
on which regional strategies are built. Reserves have two main roles. They
should sample or represent the biodiversity of each region and they should
separate this biodiversity from processes that threaten its persistence. Existing
reserve systems throughout the world contain a biased sample of biodiversity,
usually that of remote places and other areas that are unsuitable for commercial
activities. A more systematic approach to locating and designing reserves
has been evolving and this approach will need to be implemented if a large
proportion of today's biodiversity is to exist in a future of increasing numbers
of people and their demands on natural resources.
National parks and wildlife sanctuaries are under threat both physically and as a social ideal in Indonesia following the collapse of the Suharto New Order regime (1967-1998). Opinion-makers perceive parks as representing elite special interest, constraining economic development and/or indigenous rights. We asked what was the original intention and who were the players behind the Netherlands Indies colonial government policy of establishing nature 'monuments' and wildlife sanctuaries. Based on a review of international conservation literature, three inter-related themes are explored: a) the emergence in the 1860-1910 period of new worldviews on the human-nature relationship in western culture; b) the emergence of new conservation values and the translation of these into public policy goals, namely designation of protected areas and enforcement of wildlife legislation, by international lobbying networks of prominent men; and 3) the adoption of these policies by the Netherlands Indies government.
This paper provides evidence that the root motivations of protected area policy are noble, namely: 1) a desire to preserve sites with special meaning for intellectual and aesthetic contemplation of nature; and 2) acceptance that the human conquest of nature carries with it a moral responsibility to ensure the survival of threatened life forms. Although these perspectives derive from elite society of the American East Coast and Western Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, they are international values to which civilised nations and societies aspire. It would be a tragedy if Indonesia rejects these social values and protected areas because subsequent management polices have associated protected areas with aspects of the colonial and New Order regime that contemporary society seeks to reform.
This article presents a critical review of recent writings that argue that people-oriented approaches to conservation have largely failed to achieve their main goalÐ the protection of biological diversity. Based on an analysis of this problem, authors of these works conclude that biodiversity conservation initiatives should place re-newed emphasis on authoritarian protection of national parks and other protected areas to safeguard critically threatened habitats worldwide. W e examine ® ve core themes in these writings. W e conclude that, while many of their ® ndings regarding shortcomings of current people-oriented approaches are well grounded, the overall arguments are incomplete because they largely ignore key aspects of social and political processes that shape how conservation interventions happen in speci® c contexts. As a result, recommendations linked to the renewed protectionist argument most likely will not provide long-term protection of biodiversity. Keywords biodiversity conservation, community-based conservation, conserva-tion debate, indigenous peoples, integrated conservation and development pro-jects (ICPPs), protectionist argument, sustainable use According to the conventional wisdom that emerges in recent literature on inter-national biodiversity conservation, current people-oriented approaches to protecting for sending their critiques and observations. Thanks also to the approximately 150 practitioners, program managers, academics, and other people around the world who expressed interest in reading this article.
In this article we build on an accompanying critique of recent writings in inter-national biodiversity conservation (this issue). Many scholars and observers are calling for stricter enforcement of protected area boundaries given the perceived failure of integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) and other people-oriented approaches to safeguard biodiversity. Pointing to many ongoing, ® eld-based efforts, we argue that this resurgent focus on authoritarian protection practices largely overlooks key aspects of social and political process including clari® cation of moral standpoint, legitimacy, governance, accountability, learning, and nonlocal forces. Following a discussion of these six points, we offer a series of recommendations aimed at highlighting existing work and encouraging dialogue and constructive debate on the ways in which biodiversity protection interventions are carried out in developing countries.
Key Words national parks, conservation and development, deforestation, tropics ■ Abstract The world's system of protected areas has grown exponentially over the past 25 years, particularly in developing countries where biodiversity is greatest. Con-currently, the mission of protected areas has expanded from biodiversity conservation to improving human welfare. The result is a shift in favor of protected areas allowing local resource use. Given the multiple purposes of many protected areas, measuring effectiveness is difficult. Our review of 49 tropical protected areas shows that parks are generally effective at curtailing deforestation within their boundaries. But defor-estation in surrounding areas is isolating protected areas. Many initiatives now aim to link protected areas to local socioeconomic development. Some of these initiatives have been successful, but in general expectations need to be tempered regarding the capacity of protected areas to alleviate poverty. Greater attention must also be paid to the broader policy context of biodiversity loss, poverty, and unsustainable land use in developing countries.
The authors compare Australia, the United States, and Russia to provide a cross section of political and cultural circumstances impacting indigenous people as these countries recognize the value of protecting wild natural areas. All three nations initiated protected area systems in the late 1800s that excluded indigenous populations. Throughout most of the 1900s, indigenous people were separated from the land by legal, political, and cultural barriers. We conclude by demonstrating that within the context of international agreements, all three nations have slowly recognized the rights of indigenous peoples and their role within, or next to, national park lands.
This paper provides an analysis of some current trends in political ecology and then illustrates the intermingling of politics and ecology using a case study of the exploitation and conservation of Prunus africana in Cameroon. It argues that political ecology is still a lively field, but that some recent attempts to chart a way forward for this perspective risk shifting it away from its liminal position in relation to natural and social science by being disinclined to engage with ecological processes. The case study draws attention to the strengths and shortcomings in existing attempts to weave political and economic analysis into environmental debates over the sustainable management of this tree species, which has been incorporated into phytomedical markets in Europe. The fortunes of the tree reflect its botany and ecology as well as the trajectories of the local economy, intercontinental markets for alternative health products, the policies and practices of the Cameroonian state and the politics of international aid.
Globalization is often viewed as a driver of deforestation, but there are contexts where it promotes forest recovery. This is the case in El Salvador. In spite of population densities in excess of 200 people per km2, the country, which has been seen as a Malthusian parable of population and ecological catastrophe, is now increasingly wooded. This reflects the impacts of globalization (new flows of labor, capital, commodities, and ideas) which profoundly affected the rural economy, as well as local processes such as civil war (which constrained the agricultural frontier), structural adjustment policies, and agrarian reform.
It is widely accepted that biodiversity loss and poverty are linked problems and that conservation and poverty reduction should
be tackled together. However, success with integrated strategies is elusive. There is sharp debate about the social impacts
of conservation programs and the success of community-based approaches to conservation. Clear conceptual frameworks are needed
if policies in these two areas are to be combined. We review the links between poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation
and present a conceptual typology of these relationships.
We strongly support initiatives to produce clear, efficient and practical goals for conservation to guide biodiversity planners and decision-makers in governments, agencies, conventions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). However, as things stand there is only limited consensus on global conservation priorities at international level. We believe that the time is now right for scientists and practitioners to work together to develop a commonly adopted blueprint for action.
Globally, tropical deforestation releases 20 to 30% of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Conserving forests could reduce emissions, but the cost-effectiveness of this mechanism for mitigation depends on the associated opportunity costs. We estimated these costs from local, national, and global perspectives using a case study from Madagascar. Conservation generated significant benefits over logging and agriculture locally and globally. Nationally, however, financial benefits from industrial logging were larger than conservation benefits. Such differing economic signals across scales may exacerbate tropical deforestation. The Kyoto Protocol could potentially overcome this obstacle to conservation by creating markets for protection of tropical forests to mitigate climate change.
We assessed the impacts of anthropogenic threats on 93 protected areas in 22 tropical countries to test the hypothesis that
parks are an effective means to protect tropical biodiversity. We found that the majority of parks are successful at stopping
land clearing, and to a lesser degree effective at mitigating logging, hunting, fire, and grazing. Park effectiveness correlates
with basic management activities such as enforcement, boundary demarcation, and direct compensation to local communities,
suggesting that even modest increases in funding would directly increase the ability of parks to protect tropical biodiversity.
Most of the world's biodiversity occurs within developing countries that require donor support to build their conservation capacity. Unfortunately, some of these countries experience high levels of political corruption, which may limit the success of conservation projects by reducing effective funding levels and distorting priorities. We investigated whether changes in three well surveyed and widespread components of biodiversity were associated with national governance scores and other socio-economic measures. Here we show that governance scores were correlated with changes in total forest cover, but not with changes in natural forest cover. We found strong associations between governance scores and changes in the numbers of African elephants and black rhinoceroses, and these socio-economic factors explained observed patterns better than any others. Finally, we show that countries rich in species and identified as containing priority areas for conservation have lower governance scores than other nations. These results stress the need for conservationists to develop and implement policies that reduce the effects of political corruption and, in this regard, we question the universal applicability of an influential approach to conservation that seeks to ban international trade in endangered species.
Conservation biology emerged in the mid-1980s, drawing on established disciplines and integrating them in pursuit of a coherent goal: the protection and perpetuation of the Earth's biological diversity. Opportunistic in its borrowing and application of knowledge, conservation biology had its roots within the established biological sciences and resource management disciplines but has continually incorporated insights from the empirical experience of resource managers, from the social sciences and humanities, and from diverse cultural sources. The Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) has represented the field's core constituency, while expanding that constituency in keeping with the field's integrative spirit. Conservation Biology has served as SCB's flagship publication, promoting research, dialog, debate, and application of the field's essential concepts. Over the last 20 years the field, SCB, and the journal have evolved to meet changing conservation needs, to explore gaps in our knowledge base, to incorporate new information from related fields, to build professional capacity, and to provide expanded opportunities for international participation. In turn, the field, SCB, and journal have prompted change in related fields, organizations, and publications. In its dedication to advancing the scientific foundations of biodiversity conservation and placing that science at the service of society in a world whose variety, wildness, and beauty we care for conservation biology represents both a continuation and radical reconfiguration of the traditional relationship between science and conservation.
Integrated Conservation-Development Projects (ICDPs) attempt to link biodiversity conservation in protected areas with social and economic development in surrounding communities. The performance of ICDPs thus far has been hampered by numerous difficulties, many of which are strikingly similar to those encountered in rural development efforts. While many of these difficulties can be traced to specific design or implementation flaws, more fundamental conceptual issues pose a challenge for the approach. This paper highlights the evolution and performance of these projects thus far, and the conceptual tradeoffs inherent in linking conservation and development.
In the growing literature at the interface of rural livelihood improvement and conservation of natural forests, two overarching issues stand out: (1) How and to what extent use of forest resources do and can contribute to poverty alleviation and (2) How and to what extent poverty alleviation and forest conservation are and can be made convergent rather than divergent goals. This article summarizes and evaluates the state-of-the-art knowledge in these domains of thought and identifies priorities for future research.
This case study investigates the conservation recognizing KNP services also demonstrated more ecologically sustainable wood extraction methods. These attitudes of two ethnic groups, horticulturalist Pimbwe and agropastoralist Sukuma, living around Katavi results suggest that while attitudinal studies seem to be a logical step towards making informed decisions about National Park (KNP) in western Tanzania, East Africa. Specifically, interest in degazetting KNP was examined the eCectiveness of protected area outreach, relating such outreach to behavioural changes in resource use (as a reflection of attitude towards the Park) relative to type and extent of KNP outreach, wildlife-related prob-through attitudinal assessment is a greater challenge, requiring a clear understanding of the relative influence lems, household wealth and residency status. Reported attitudes were then related to fuelwood extraction of socioeconomic and cultural factors. patterns. Attitudinal surveys showed that a lack of KNP outreach (i.e. village-level services and visits by KNP Keywords Attitudes, community conservation, fuel-wood, Katavi National Park, protected area outreach, staC) and increased land wealth and shorter residency time were associated with increased interest in seeing Tanzania.
Summary • Increasing concern over the environmental impact of agriculture in Europe has led to the introduction of agri-environment schemes. These schemes compensate farmers financially for any loss of income associated with measures that aim to benefit the environment or biodiversity. There are currently agri-environment schemes in 26 out of 44 European countries. • Agri-environment schemes vary markedly between countries even within the European Union. The main objectives include reducing nutrient and pesticide emissions, protecting biodiversity, restoring landscapes and preventing rural depopulation. In virtually all countries the uptake of schemes is highest in areas of extensive agriculture where biodiversity is still relatively high and lowest in intensively farmed areas where biodiversity is low. • Approximately €24·3 billion has been spent on agri-environment schemes in the European Union (EU) since 1994, an unknown proportion of it on schemes with biodiversity conservation aims. We carried out a comprehensive search for studies that test the effectiveness of agri-environment schemes in published papers or reports. Only 62 evaluation studies were found originating from just five EU countries and Switzerland (5). Indeed 76% of the studies were from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, where until now only c. 6% of the EU agri-environmental budget has been spent. Other studies were from Germany (6), Ireland (3) and Portugal (1). • In the majority of studies, the research design was inadequate to assess reliably the effectiveness of the schemes. Thirty-one percent did not contain a statistical analysis. Where an experimental approach was used, designs were usually weak and biased towards giving a favourable result. The commonest experimental design (37% of the studies) was a comparison of biodiversity in agri-environment schemes and control areas. However, there is a risk of bias if either farmers or scheme co-ordinators select the sites for agri-environment schemes. In such cases the sites are likely to have a higher biodiversity at the outset compared to the controls. This problem may be addressed by collecting baseline data (34% of studies), comparing trends (32%) or changes (26%) in biodiversity between areas with and without schemes or by pairing scheme and control sites that experience similar environmental conditions (16%). • Overall, 54% of the examined species (groups) demonstrated increases and 6% decreases in species richness or abundance compared with controls. Seventeen percent showed increases for some species and decreases for other species, while 23% showed no change at all in response to agri-environment schemes. The response varied between taxa. Of 19 studies examining the response of birds that included a statistical analysis, four showed significant increases in species richness or abundance, two showed decreases and nine showed both increases and decreases. Comparative figures for 20 arthropod studies yielded 11 studies that showed an increase in species richness or abundance, no study showed a decrease and three showed both increases and decreases. Fourteen plant studies yielded six studies that showed increases in species richness or abundance, two showed decreases and no study showed both increases and decreases. • Synthesis and applications. The lack of robust evaluation studies does not allow a general judgement of the effectiveness of European agri-environment schemes. We suggest that in the future, ecological evaluations must become an integral part of any scheme, including the collection of baseline data, the random placement of scheme and control sites in areas with similar initial conditions, and sufficient replication. Results of these studies should be collected and disseminated more widely, in order to identify the approaches and prescriptions that best deliver biodiversity enhancement and value for money from community support. Journal of Applied Ecology (2003) 40, 947–969
This paper presents and analyzes a number of tensions that arose in the shift from extensive livestock production to wildlife ranching and tourism in a dispersed community of white farmers in western Zimbabwe. It sketches the broader context of that shift and considers some of its effects, including those on the small (black)farmers of neighbouring Communal Areas. The tensions highlighted and manifested between the ranchers of Mlilo include the necessary movement from a characteristic view of wildlife as ‘vermin’, destructive of the conditions for livestock (and crop) production, to an appreciation that they are an exploitable and valuable resource (‘ecological capital’); and how inherited views and practices concerning the boundaries of private landed property are subverted by the demands of wildlife ranching.
There is general agreement among scientists that biodiversity is under assault on a global basis and that species are being lost at a greatly enhanced rate. This article examines the role played by biogeographical science in the emergence of conservation guidance and makes the case for the recognition of Conservation Biogeography as a key subfield of conservation biology delimited as: the application of biogeographical principles, theories, and analyses, being those concerned with the distributional dynamics of taxa individually and collectively, to problems concerning the conservation of biodiversity. Conservation biogeography thus encompasses both a substantial body of theory and analysis, and some of the most prominent planning frameworks used in conservation. Considerable advances in conservation guidelines have been made over the last few decades by applying biogeographical methods and principles. Herein we provide a critical review focussed on the sensitivity to assumptions inherent in the applications we examine. In particular, we focus on four inter-related factors: (i) scale dependency (both spatial and temporal); (ii) inadequacies in taxonomic and distributional data (the so-called Linnean and Wallacean shortfalls); (iii) effects of model structure and parameterisation; and (iv) inadequacies of theory. These generic problems are illustrated by reference to studies ranging from the application of historical biogeography, through island biogeography, and complementarity analyses to bioclimatic envelope modelling. There is a great deal of uncertainty inherent in predictive analyses in conservation biogeography and this area in particular presents considerable challenges.
Exclusionary models of land management can be traced back to the first millennium B.C. Conservation through the establishment of ‘national parks’, pioneered in USA and applied world-wide, has violated the rights of indigenous peoples causing impoverishment and social problems. International laws now recognise indigenous peoples’ rights and new conservation policies accept that indigenous peoples may own and manage protected areas. Participatory field research shows that these new principles are not yet widely applied in Latin America, Africa and Asia as national policies, laws and institutions have yet to be revised in conformity with international law. Recommendations are made on how conservation agencies should change their ways if future conservation initiatives are not to create further poverty.
