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.