Short Abstract

The panel develops around epistemic recognition, evidence-making processes, and the forms of authority that may emerge for local communities through their involvement in conservation projects in Africa, focusing on how environmental knowledge is recognized and used within conservation encounters.

Long Abstract

The panel develops around the themes of epistemic recognition, evidence-making processes, and the different forms of authority that may emerge for local communities through their contribution to these processes. Conservation projects in Africa involve a wide array of actors who are not engaged in the same way. Some are recognised as knowledgeable interlocutors and involved as informants or trackers, while others may be included mainly as resource users, beneficiaries of interventions, or populations to be regulated. The panel develops around three interrelated questions: who is recognised as capable of producing relevant environmental knowledge? What counts as evidence within conservation processes? And which forms of authority are generated through such processes?

Local involvement in conservation projects is not necessarily connected with participation in environmental knowledge production. Local communities may be consulted without having the possibility to define the problems at stake. The panel also explores who gets positioned as a knower and how factors such as gender, generation, ethnic affiliation, and social position may influence this process. Secondly, the panel addresses how environmental knowledge becomes evidence within conservation encounters and through which mediations. Evidence-making is understood as a relational process shaped by institutional objectives and resources, but also by communities, which may obscure knowledge or use it strategically through selective disclosure. A final question concerns the consequences of epistemic recognition for communities and individuals. Epistemic inclusion may leave territorial authority and decision-making power unchanged, while environmental knowledge may also be used strategically as evidence in support of political claims.

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