Paper short abstract:

This paper will focus on corridors for conservation and development in Tanzania, utilising the linear connotations of the corridor idea to think through temporality in conservation and development, and how this produces contested and complex spaces in Tanzania's Kilombero Valley.

Paper long abstract:

Development and conservation interventions in Tanzania come with their own temporal connotations: the former broadly suggesting linear progress, an onward march into the future; the latter, attempts to exclude such progress and arrest progress within a specified space hinting at nostalgia for a time before development. With its irresistible intimations of movement and mobility, the corridor as a tool for advancing both development and conservation aims offers particularly fertile ground for thinking about progress and change. In the Kilombero Valley, rural transformation has been shaped by temporal visions of the past/future, sometimes coming together in tense and productive moments, and sometimes clashing when met with realties of the present on the ground. In this paper I will explore some conservation and development programmes from the Valley's recent past and, using as a touchstone the idea of the corridor as a strategy for both conservation and development, explore connections between the past and possible trajectories for the future in this highly complex and rapidly changing landscape.