Community Based Conservation & Management Flashcards
Who are the different stakeholders in conservation governance in Africa?
- Multilateral Governmental Organizations: United Nations Environmental Programmes
- International NGOs: IUCN; AWF
- Western Governments
- Western and National Celebrities
- National Governments
- Local NGOs
- Local communities
What are the critiques of conservation policies/practices in the global South?
- Strong critique of the hegemony of Euro-American views of the relationship between people and nature (i.e. their separation);
- Recognition that global environmental narratives shape conservation interventions in the global South;
- Need to marry indigenous knowledge with that of science;
- Recognition of the need to link conservation to social justice and development.
What is the colonial legacy of conservation?
European perception of nature in Africa ‘naturalised’ Eden and wilderness (vast empty spaces).
Socially constructed landscapes reflected European view of nature/society relationships & aesthetics.
Europeans had primeval views of Africans; supported by Social Darwinian ideas about racial hierarchies; believed indigenous groups were destroying nature.
Westerners as custodians/stewards of the land, and through capitalism link modern methods of resource exploitation to preservation of biodiversity.
What is fortress conservation?
Fortress conservation is a conservation model based on the belief that biodiversity protection is best achieved by creating protected areas where ecosystems can function in isolation from human disturbance.
Fortress, or protectionist, conservation assumes that local people use natural resources in irrational and destructive ways, and as a result cause biodiversity loss and environmental degradation.
What are the problems with fortress conservation?
- Produces pristine images of the environment
- Involves coercion – top-down – non-participatory;
- Criminalization of African livelihood strategies;
- Forced displacement- disruption and loss of rural livelihoods;
- Results in everyday forms of resistance - illegal hunting, ‘poaching’, burning, tree-felling, grazing of livestock etc.
- Conflicts over property rights.
What is community-based natural resource management (CBNRM)?
- Started out as grassroots movement, but scaled-up in the 1980s to link up with ‘sustainable development’.
- Introduction of rights-based approaches to conservation - linked to social justice;
- Morally and ethically sound to think about the livelihoods of affected communities;
- Promoted shift from centralised (top-down) to local/grassroots control over natural resources;
- Argument that because local people relied on natural resources, they were in the best position to conserve with the help of external assistance.
How is neoliberalism linked to CBNRM?
CBNRM occurred at the same time as neo-liberalism was taking root; they both focused on issues of market-based solutions and governance reforms;
Promoted by international institutions - World Bank and other donors put pressure on African governments to introduce new conservation laws and regulations;
Free-market seen as a means through which poverty could be reduced and equitable livelihoods delivered;
Decentralization of responsibilities to local authorities and communities;
Discourse of empowerment of local communities;
How do communities benefit?
Market-derived benefits to communities in exchange for conservation;
E.g. Ecotourism;
REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries)
What are the problems with CBNRM?
- Generated unrealistic expectations;
- Unequal distribution of benefits. Social class determines who gains in communities;
- The poor tend to be hit hardest when resource management is decentralised, as restriction on use becomes more effective
- Gendered Impacts
- Ecotourism projects undermine village & ethnic group land rights
- Unsustainable without external inputs – World Bank Trust Fund.
- Talking with the community is seen as management; power remains with conservation staff and projects.
- National governments have used such projects to extend control into rural communities where they may not have had much legitimacy.
- Reluctance on the part of national political elite to devolve power.
Does CNBRM empower local communities?
- Participation not always effective - difficult to institute as rural communities are heterogeneous, lack resources and often powerless;
- Time-consuming, arduous;
- Lack of engagement with communities;
- Communities reliant on external ‘expert’ knowledge rather than indigenous;
However:
Involves giving representative local bodies the power to run their affairs.
New networks/assemblages of governance - Intense relationships between local communities, conservationists and foreign donors (western governments, the World Bank) and sometimes, national governments.
Explain the resurgence of top-down conservation?
CBNRM - scaled-up to a global repackaged solutions – focusing on donor-driven ideals (based on global environmental narratives) and free-market strategies for livelihood change;
Neo-protectionists seek to work with indigenous people to draw them further into market relations – conservation becomes hybridised and bureaucratised.
‘Green Grabbing’ - facilitated by the capitalist crisis in the West
Conservation Concessions – promoted by Western NGOs
‘Green Militarization’ – ‘war for biodiversity’
What is green grabbing?
‘Environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of [land] grabs – whether linked to biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services, ecotourism or ‘offsets’ related to any and all of these’ (Fairhead et al 2012).
Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment – whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices.
- Involves:
(i) novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature
(ii) extraordinary new range of actors and alliances – as pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once unlikely common interests (Fairhead et al 2012).
