Short Abstract:
The debate about green grabbing, defined as appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends, and transnational environmental governmentality,is sometimes heated, and often the role of the major players is left out in the discussion.
Long Abstract:
The increasing importance of emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, with their own cooperation agendas, limited resources and growth and far-reaching effects on climate change, food security and management of natural resources.
Green grabbing, defined as appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends, and transnational environmental governmentality, where big NGOs are supposed to define the environmental agenda in African countries, are concepts used by critics of conservation. Who has the right or access to use natural resources, and who defines what kind of nature is exploited or set aside for conservation? Are outsiders' claims on defining the boundaries for exploitation vs conservation legitimate or are they signs of an emerging neo-liberal agenda?
The debate is sometimes heated, and often the role of the major players is left out in the discussion. Are logging, expansion of agricultural cropping or fishing rights natural activities of local people or are the activities responding to the needs for food to man and domestic animals in emerging markets? The approach to balancing development and conservation needs differs between the new players. Conflicts are present in Russia and China, whereas fewer conflicts might be observed in India. Does the variation in approach to conflicts make a difference in the new players' approach to management of natural resources in Africa ?
Accepted papers:
Session 1
Neoliberal conservation and displacement at the margins
Melis Ece
(University of Sussex)
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Paper short abstract:
Climate mitigation programs like REDD+ represent emergent neoliberal forms of green grabbing. Their potential local impact need to be evaluated in light of past conservation and local governance practices, which have led to appropriation of land and forest through mass displacements in Africa.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on the case of the mass displacements from the Niokolo-Koba National Park in Senegal during the 1970s to demonstrate that the climate mitigation programs like REDD+ (Reducing Emissions form Deforestation and Forest Degradation) risk perpetrating eviction for land and forest appropriation in the name of conservation in Africa. In Senegal, although international conservation and development institutions did not directly impose coercive conservation practices, the centralized and technocratic form of postcolonial state and its local governance policies favored evictions from national parks as a form of appropriation of land and forests for national development. The gradual withdrawal of state control and liberalization of economy during the 1980s and decentralization policies during the 1990s have opened up the space for local communities to reclaim power in decision making regarding the allocation of land and management of natural resources, albeit increasing commodification of land and forests with the help of NGOs. As decentralization failed to achieve expected results and attracted increasing criticism among international donors, in countries like Senegal where state guardianship and hold on forests and land is rooted in post-independence reforms, the recent neo-liberal turn offers an important avenue for centralized state institutions and urban elites to re-assert their power in rural forested areas. In this context, climate mitigation programs like REDD+ may re-enforce centralization of power and to promote controlled privatization through distribution of funds and deliberative domination and could have an important potential of replicating past evictions.
Debating DDT in Tanzania
Gregory Maddox
(Texas Southern University)
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Paper short abstract:
Tanzania, like many African nations, has resumed the use of DDT in malaria control efforts. While never totally banned in the country, the resumption of its use comes as part of the adoption of a malaria control regime promoted by WHO and its Western sponsors.
Paper long abstract:
In the last two decades, deaths from malaria, a disease caused by a mosquito borne parasite, have increased and then declined in East Africa. Several factors helped cause this increase and decline. First, Plasmodium falciparum has acquired resistance to not only the first widely available treatment for malaria, chloroquine, but also to later sulfa related drugs. Second, the increase in urbanization has increased the number of people vulnerable to continuous infection, and finally, the collapse of large scale mosquito eradication programs in the 1970s. By the beginning of the current century, with a widespread international recognition of the scope of the problem, calls came for renewed use of previously banned pesticides to control mosquitoes, including the re-legalization of DDT. DDT use has become relatively widespread as part of an integrated effort to control malaria which has seen some success. This paper will examine both the international and East African contexts for such debates. It will argue that global power relationships have shaped the debate and led to widespread popular support for the use of pesticides in East Africa.
Can global environmental governance fight the market (and should it)?
Stig Jensen
(Copenhagen University)
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Paper short abstract:
Discuss issues related to international governance of biodiversity management
Paper long abstract:
The aim of this paper is to discuss whether global environmental governance is contributing to improving environmental and development conditions in Africa.
The specific focus is on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) initiative to protect African rhinoceros (from extinction) against Asian demands of rhino horn for medicine.
In a situation with fast growing rhino poaching in Africa and an Asian black market street value of rhino horn that has soared to about $65,000 a kilogram, making it more expensive than gold, platinum and in many cases, cocaine. In parts of Asia, a belief has taken hold in recent years that ingesting rhino horn can cure or prevent diseases such as cancer.
The double aim is, firstly to decode the discussion on the impact of global environmental governance (specifically CITES) on Africa and Africans in the past and present. The second part will be focusing on possible ways forward including the role of governance and markets in order to improve both environmental and developmental conditions in Africa.
Natural resources management in Rwanda
Peter John Mugume
(University of Rwanda)
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Paper short abstract:
This study examines decentralization’s role in natural resources management in Rwanda. It examines decentralization, by taking the qualitative case study of two districts of Nyabihu and Kayonza from the Western and Eastern Provinces of Rwanda respectively.
Paper long abstract:
Decentralization process is considered as a way that can facilitate natural resources management in Rwanda's transition to a sustainable peaceful development process. This paper explores the role of decentralization in natural resources management in Rwanda through the case study of Nyabihu and Kayonza districts in the Western and Eastern provinces of Rwanda respectively. Different scholars because of its local initiatives and political commitment have praised the policy of decentralization in Rwanda. This policy however, in natural resource management lens, still has challenges related to devolution of powers over resources at the local levels. The study revealed that, Nyabihu and Kayonza districts' local leaders and communities have limited natural resources management skills coupled with shortage of local staff and financial means to effectively manage natural resources. There are conflicting interests over natural resource use among the actors. This study suggests that, there is need for the central government devolved more natural resource management powers to the local government units to enable them manage the natural resources effectively. District's and sectors' officials and their development partners need to intensify the sensitization of communities including the cell and village officials on natural resources related policies and laws and their role in the implementation of the policy for the effective natural resources management. The study concludes that Rwanda's natural resources management decentralization process is still at its early phases. Decentralization has laid a foundation on which, local government units and communities can contribute to effective natural resources management in Rwanda.
Green grabbing and the trade-offs between conservation and poverty alleviation: fact or fiction?
Thorkil Casse
(Rsokilde University)
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Paper short abstract:
Main-stream thinking, within most socio-economic disciplines, perceives the overall objectives of conservation and development /poverty alleviation as difficult or impossible to reconcile. In this paper it is argued that the trade-off is less clear on the ground. Examples used from Madagascar.
Paper long abstract:
Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neocolonial resource alienation in the name of the environment, the opponents of conservation argue. Compared to the previous century more players are now involved, like multinational companies, acting upon a capitalist rationality. Dispossessing private owners by violent actions, delegitimizing poor people's land rights or even more obscured 'through the market' are the main components in the new era of privatization of land. In short, the critics of conservation name the new trend 'green grabbing'.
The paper takes on these arguments and links them with the experience in conservation efforts in Madagascar. Contrary to the claims of the critics of the so-called 'neo-liberal' conservation approach, the paper suggests that conservation critics, being right in the observation of the social phenomenon, are excessive normative in their approach and less explicit about the basic assumptions in their analyses. The most adverse opponents to conservation base their arguments on a number of implicit assumptions: village homogeneity, promotion of laissez-faire policy (ultra-liberal), non-existence of opportunity costs, and an unclear rights concept. Finally, the paper contemplates whether a middle ground can be identified between the proponents and opponents to nature conservation.
Mapping nature - securing spaces: transnational nature conservation in the Kavango-Zambezi Region
Luregn Lenggenhager
(University of Cologne)
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Paper short abstract:
The Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area recently became a new big player within the conservation networks of Namibia’s borderlands North-Eastern Namibia. Its practices to secure transnational spaces for conservation - particularly mapping - are analysed within historical contexts of the region.
Paper long abstract:
In March 2012 one of the largest nature conservation areas of the world - the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Area (Kaza TFCA) - was launched in the five countries corner of Zambia, Angola, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. The Conservation Area or Peace Park was envisioned, promoted and facilitated by a large South African NGO and is criticised by many scholars as a neo-liberal project to secure capitalist interests in the region or as a neo-colonial re-territorisation of the region.
In this paper I elaborate on practices used to 'secure' such a vast area for conservation and discuss them within broader histories of space and borders in the region. Dominant actors such as the national states or the army but also international NGO actively used the concept of conservation over the last century as means to define space and enforce policies within them.
My research focuses on mapping as a particularly powerful practice of spatial ordering and elaborates on how mapping reproduced power structures behind nature conservation and how it is still used to legitimate major player's interests within transnational environmental policies.