Contribution short abstract:

This paper analyses a community-based rewilding project in southwestern Zambia as an emerging multispecies political community. It explores who counts as political actors, human and non-human, and how they are commoning together.

Contribution long abstract:

The Simalaha conservancy in southwestern Zambia has reintroduced thirteen wildlife species over the past decade into a wildlife dispersal area at the heart of the vast Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. Rewilding in Simalaha aims to promote the ecological connectivity between key conservation zones in this area. As a community-based conservation project, Simalaha promotes human-wildlife coexistence while involving local residents in decision-making and sharing the benefits of conservation with them. This paper analyses the multispecies community that emerges from community-based rewilding by looking at how people and wildlife interact and coexist in the conservancy and the changing political roles of local humans and reintroduced wildlife in this process. This ethnographic research is based on semi-structured interviews, observation and participatory wildlife mapping with local residents and leaders in Simalaha. The paper shows that Simalaha imposes commoning with wildlife on local farmers, who contest human-wildlife coexistence and feel marginalized in the conservancy’s management and decision-making. The paper also highlights that wildlife are political actors, considered in the management of Simalaha, but that their political role is obscured by depoliticizing narratives of rewilding and wildness. Based on these results, the paper argues that who counts as a political actor is being redefined in the emergence of a more-than-human political community, with risks for already marginalized humans. Commoning in this case of community-based rewilding goes beyond the sharing and management of resources in common among humans, as it opens up a common political space in which humans and non-humans must find ways to coexist.

Contribution short abstract:

Drawing from ethnographic research in a depopulated mountain valley, my contribution shows how grassroots community-making practices with the local endangered brown bear subspecies prove more useful than institutional patterns and scientific protocols for bear conservation.

Contribution long abstract:

Biologists have long now proposed coexistence between humans and nonhumans as the key strategy for biodiversity conservation. In Abruzzo, a mountainous region in central Italy, one of the oldest national parks protects local species, and primarily the about 80 individuals of the Marsican bear, a critically endangered subspecies of the European brown bear. Yet, coexistence results often, and even tragically, in conflict: a female bear was shot dead in late 2023 by a farmer who caught her stealing into his chicken coop. Drawn from ethnographic research in the Giovenco Valley, a depopulated area at the northern entrance of the Park, my contribution explores the community relationship established by some local villagers and activists with bears through several independent ecological projects and intends to show how grassroots practices that effectively create a multispecies community prove more useful than institutional patterns and scientific protocols for bear conservation. Sharing orchards and other food resources is just one of the tactics implemented by local people to mitigate human-bear conflict, whereas the Park interprets multispecies coexistence as an absolute separation. What is more, the space of town, orchards, and forest is renegotiated as a common ground crossed by human and nonhuman agencies and practices that redefine not only physical and social borders, but the very community shape. When I asked the activists the reason for their engagement, the answer was neither moral, nor apocalyptically anxious about the Marsican bear’s future, but as simple as it was astonishingly political: “The bear is one of us”.

Contribution short abstract:

Looking at a community-based conservation initiative in the Ecuadorian Amazon, this contribution highlights different ways to perceive the Commons, emphasizing local perspectives on nonhuman agency and human-nonhuman commoning.

Contribution long abstract:

Conservation practices are increasingly contested around the world, with calls for more sustainable and convivial ways of preserving the natural environment. Across geographies, Commons are often places of conviviality (Büscher and Fletcher, 2020) and constitute essential examples of constitutionality (Haller et al., 2016), directly framing and redefining coexistence practices. However, as colonial continuities and neoliberal ideologies create an uneven playing field in which powerful actors embrace western knowledge systems against local worldviews, socio-economic change as well as processes such as Commons grabbing and green enclosures have the potential to disrupt patterns of commoning and coexistence.

This contribution provides insights from a case study in the Ecuadorian Amazon where an indigenous community works with ecotourism as a community-based conservation initiative. In this community, jaguars are seen as active agents in their forest Commons. While jaguars’ agency inside the forest constitute the basis on which human-nonhuman interaction are built, I aim to show that due to structural power inequalities, this is not the way jaguars are officially allowed to be perceived. While from a local perspective, jaguars are seen as active agents in a forest Commons, officially they are just resources to be (sustainably) exploited for conservation.

This contribution discusses not only how nonhumans in different contexts actually co-shape the Commons, but also how global power inequalities invisibilize these interactions.

Contribution short abstract:

This presentation analyses the ways in which a “traditional” Lavongai conservation area known as vala, set up in coastal waters that may be regarded as a type of “common”, at once depends upon and influences the relations that Lavongai people have with nonhuman beings and with each other.

Contribution long abstract:

On Lavongai Island in Papua New Guinea, access to land and fishing grounds is indispensable to the livelihoods of most inhabitants. Land tenureship arrangements are fluid and complex, with ownership determined by membership in one of several matriclans, and usage derived through alliance, residence, or ceremonial purchase. At sea, the matter is more complex, as “there are no divisions into clans” there. This raises the question: is the sea a form of common?

Marine spaces are home to a number of nonhuman species with which Lavongai people have daily interactions. Marine animals have roles in local stories, myths and legends; certain specialists direct practices towards fish in order to “call” them or make them “tame”; their meat is key to gift exchanges organised for funerals and marriages; and they are important sources of food.

Lavongai people are recipients of discourses carried by local and foreign NGOs concerning durable management of marine resources. Blending such information with their own knowledge and practices, they have “revitalised” a form of localised fishing prohibition known as vala, described by Lavongai people as allowing them to properly “look after” fish and other marine beings. However, in such contexts, conflicts occasionally arise because not everybody agrees that such measures are beneficial nor necessary, showing how multispecies sociopolitical issues are central to such undertakings. In this presentation, I analyse the ways in which vala at once depends upon and influences the relations that Lavongai people have with nonhuman beings and with each other.

Contribution short abstract:

Faced with fungal pathogens in the pasture soils, livestock farmers in Spain re-envision the dehesa woodland as a landscape in which humans and nonhumans alike participate. While some species have found refuge again, others have been endowed with the questionable role of landscape conservationists.

Contribution long abstract:

The Spanish dehesa woodlands are traditional livestock pastures covered with numerous oak trees. Along with its agricultural importance, the dehesa has a high ecological value, not least for the conservation of endangered species such as the Iberian lynx and the griffon vulture. In the last 30 years, the tree disease Seca has become rampant and destroyed large areas of dehesa, threatening the livelihood of livestock farmers in the region. The Seca is caused by a soil-borne pathogen, the infestation with which ultimately leads to the death of the infected tree. Its spread is facilitated by soil compaction due to deficient livestock management. As farmers turn to Holistic Management to restore and preserve healthy soils, they re-envision the dehesa as a landscape that is constituted by humans and nonhumans alike. In other words, farmers open their eyes to the comprehensive soil community (Puig de la Bellacasa 2015) whose members provide the basis for the dehesa and its participants to flourish. Acknowledging the agency and key role of other-than-human beings in the conservation and commoning of the dehesa qualifies its long-vaunted anthropogenic origin. At the same time, the implementation of Holistic Management has ambivalent implications for nonhumans encapsulated in the contrast between feral species that are subject to conservation measures, and domestic animals and other nonhuman beings involved in the regeneration of the soil: Valued mainly because of their metabolic work in and above the ground, they are sidelined as resources without being given an equal share in the dehesa’s commoning.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores visions of 'networked arcs' and 'good growth' among urban gardenening practitioners in Berlin. These visions help conceptualizing modalities of more-than-human commoning and how they come to matter.

Contribution long abstract:

Practitioners, activists or scholars attempting to secure less bad futures now frequently pursue regenerative approaches. They seek ways “to work toward world making that enhances the lives of others” (Deborah Bird Rose). This paper probes the role commons and commoning play within such figurations. Drawing on fieldwork among activists pursuing ‘regeneration’ in Berlin urban gardening projects, I argue that these efforts are driven by visions of what I call ‘networked arcs’ and of ‘good growth’.

As ‘networked arcs,’ urban gardening projects build on histories of zoos and botanical gardens, yet envision to enable biotic life to radiate out from gardens on their own terms (instead of inscribing and showcasing it within the parameters of, say, zoos). Pursuing ‘good growth,’ on the other hand, serves as a vital critique of a growth-obsessed present. Taken together, both these visions help conceptualizing modalities of more-than-human commoning and how they come to matter.

Contribution short abstract:

In the Philippines, community-based conservation aiming to restore forests often relies on external support due to a lack of native seeds and seedlings. Expanding the “community”, I examine how bottom-up networks circulate seeds and knowledge to enable and shape future multispecies communities.

Contribution long abstract:

How to enable multispecies communities in an altered archipelago? Following centuries of colonial rule in which Philippine forest landscapes were displaced, governmental agencies replaced biodiverse forests mainly with a small number of non-Philippine tree species. As a result, community-based conservation efforts interested in restoring native forests to recreate thriving habitats face a central problem: where to find different kinds of native seeds and seedlings?

In the last decade, interest in native plants and trees has grown in the Philippines leading to the establishment of several local and scientific initiatives aiming to address this problem. These new bottom-up reforestation communities and networks try to shift governmental reforestation paradigms. They circulate seeds and knowledge throughout their networks and train people – and even whole communities – in native tree planting.

Examining these practices, I aim to expand the concept of “community” in community-based conservation to highlight the role of knowledge exchange through newly emerging reforestation networks. These networks open up space to negotiate ideas about the “proper” relations to and belonging of non-human actors, especially in contexts in which governmental agencies have effectively reduced species diversity. By following the seeds, I show how circulated knowledge of trees and forest landscapes not only enables community-based conservation efforts in the first place but also shapes how future multispecies communities are envisioned.

Contribution short abstract:

I show plural and conflictual human-environment relations in indigenous land management programs versus informal resource management by different indigenous Dayak groups in Kalimantan, Indonesia framed by concepts of political ecology and ontological anthropology.

Contribution long abstract:

Struggles on access and control of land, forest and mining products are vibrant in the context of massive resource extraction in Indonesia. Indigenous land management programs in Kalimantan, implemented by local indigenous Dayak groups, promise to secure access to land and resources and to strengthen political, economic and cultural participation. However, conflicts arise amongst different indigenous Dayak groups about the control of resources and about different 'plural' conceptualizations of the environment. Land and forest can provide a livelihood through subsistence economy, can be the abode of spirits or provide raw materials for the industry. The semi-nomadic group Dayak Punan Murung practice a contextual access and a relational approach to forested area and manage natural resources informally in the community what is common amongst communities in Southeast Asia. However, their plural conceptions of land and forest are rarely integrated into formal indigenous land management programs. In these programs, land should be mapped, bounded and in private ownership. Moreover, Punan Murung feel co-opted and instrumentalised by urban based indigenous Dayak organisation. Thus, hegemonic notions of nature are not only enacted by the state but also by dominant indigenous groups. I show that conflictual human-environment relationships are based on different conceptions of land or forest, which are embedded in political contexts. In order to conceptualize these conflictual or overlapping human-environment relations, I combine approaches from political ecology and ontological anthropology.