Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to explore the struggles of local communities of Southern Carpathian Mountains in Romania with the neoliberal biodiversity conservationist agenda.

Paper long abstract:

In the last decade the forests and pastures of Southern Carpathian Mountains in Romania became a highly conflictual terrain.

Supported by international philanthropists, a foreign foundation has bought thousands hectares of forest, gained the custody of three Natura2000 areas and succeeded against the law to acquire shares in some communal property associations. The clash between global and regional strategies of capitalism accumulation created geographies of exclusion in which the historically precarious and racial segregated groups were banned access to resources which barely supported their minimal subsistence needs.

In this paper I explore the local actors' coping mechanism and struggles with the conservationist agenda, trying not to fall into the trap of reifying the communities which live inside or near the protected areas.

I see this current green agenda as a primitive accumulation process in which nature is channeled from benefitting the poor to benefitting the rich. The foundation committed to preserve a romantic and pristine nature, building a narrative that does not take into account the historical co-production of the local communities (forestry-led industrial past, big dams projects in socialism, mono-species planted-forests and traditional pastoralism). Besides developing massive projects of ecosystems restoration the foundation engages in eco-tourism enterprises in line with the western fantasies which see this type of tourism as a sustainable non-consumptive activity.

The aim of this paper is to explore the genesis, the manifestations and the consequences of the clashes between neoliberal conservationist agendas and local livelihoods