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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the relationship between transboundary conservation and emerging dynamics of territoriality on the African continent by drawing on research on the politics of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) in north-eastern Namibia.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the relationship between transboundary conservation and emerging dynamics of political authority in the Namibian component of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCAs). In three steps it shows that understanding the implementation of transboundary conservation requires a perspective beyond imperatives of ecological connectivity, wildlife corridors and borderless nature.

Firstly, the paper argues that the establishment of KAZA should primarily be understood in relation to its political purposes for state power. Secondly, the implementation of transboundary conservation does have immediate consequences for political authority through a reconfiguration of borders, sovereignty and territory. By exerting eco-governmental control through transboundary conservation the cross-border, cross-scalar and cross-sectoral setting of KAZA gives rise to new forms of territoriality which can no longer be conceived with conventional concepts of political theory. Thirdly, encouraging a decolonial perspective on environmental governance in Africa, the paper asserts that the emergence of graduated forms of sovereignty and territoriality through transboundary conservation challenges the application of Eurocentric conceptions of state power on the African continent. By linking postcolonial debates on African statehood with Political Geography perspectives on new dynamics of political authority in the 21st century, the paper argues, that transboundary conservation is a significant element in making and remaking the African Green State.