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Paper short abstract:

This paper will introduce a new heuristic device, ‘contract politics', to investigate the complex assemblage of social agreements and expectations that surround nature conservation projects located at resource frontiers in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Paper long abstract:

By introducing a new heuristic device, ‘contract politics', this paper will investigate the social assemblage of agreements and expectations around a nature conservation project in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Fundamentally, contract politics is about the ‘political marketplace’ of – formal and informal, public and private, licit and illicit – contract-makers and contract-takers which come together to determine regimes of resource control. This is particularly relevant in conflictual settings, where a stable agreement has failed to emerge between state and subject; and instead, an intricate mosaic of contracts overlap and interact, sometimes peacefully sometimes contentiously, between a variety of state and non-state actors. The paper will operationalize the heuristic by exploring how different actors come together to assert control over and contest access to land and resources around a UNESCO World Heritage Site ‘in danger’, namely, Kahuzi-Biega National Park. In this context, the Congolese state’s conservation agency (ICCN), conservation NGOs, eco-guards, the government military, non-state armed groups, and local resource users all engage in the politics of contracts in one form or another. Agreements between these actors sometimes generate outcomes favourable to the preservation of ecosystems and biodiversity; though at other times, they prioritize the kind of extractive resource uses which degrade environmental values. Using the contract politics heuristic, scholars will be able to better understand the complex social relationships and interactions that affect nature conservation projects located in Africa's resource frontiers.