Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Annette LaRocco
(Florida Atlantic University )
Melanie Boehi (Université de Lausanne)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH118
- Start time:
- 1 July, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel focuses on the emergence of concepts of futures of nature in African rural and urban spaces in the post-independence era. It asks how different actors, including states, NGOs and activists, addressed questions concerning the future of nature and how they shaped politics.
Long Abstract:
The colonisation of nature, and futures of nature, was key to colonialism. Natural sciences and nature conservation were deployed to justify forced removals and dispossessions of land and natural resources. Colonial imaginations about nature as pristine and in need of control impacted on developments of natural spaces, which are necessarily also spaces of culture or "natureculture", and mediated relationships between humans and other organisms. In the post-independence era, numerous concepts of futures of nature emerged and contested colonial understandings of nature and competed against each other. African governments formally took control over institutions such as national parks and national botanical gardens, and new state organisations took over the management of nature. These developments gave rise to imaginations of new futures of nature, ranging from agriculture to tourism, biodiversity conservation and mixed-usage settings. Further, international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, and NGOs such as the IUCN and WWF, developed policies concerning futures of nature. Environmental activists imagined futures of nature concurrently with alternative social futures. Research has so far focused more on politics nature in rural than in urban areas. Africa's rapid urbanisation makes the question of futures of nature in cities a pressing one, and in the last two decades the scholarship on "urban green spaces" increased. This panel aims to unite rural and urban scholarship and focus on the emergence of concepts of futures of nature in African rural and urban spaces in the post-independence era, and the politics of nature that evolved therein.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Emmanuel Mogende (University of Botswana)
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to question the interest of Botswana government participation in transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs), specifically the Kavango-Zambezi TFCA
Paper long abstract:
TFCAs are considered the latest evolution of a more holistic approach to transnational environmental management that brings together conservation and development agendas. Using a discourse analytical perspective of claims advanced for TFCAs in Southern Africa, this study explores how Kavango-Zambezi TFCA has been motivated on the Botswana border. The study questions the interests of Botswana government participation in the KAZA TFCA and examines the effects of the KAZA TFCA on local communities. This study employs a qualitative approach employing triangulation methods of data collection. KAZA is one of the largest and most ambitious transboundary initiative in the world that stretches across the political borders of five sovereign states. KAZA acknowledges that nature knows no boundaries hence conservation corridors should traverse political boundaries and borders of the state. Against this backdrop, the rationale for KAZA is to provide the large herds of elephants (approximately 120,000) in Botswana with access to large area of grazing land. The study demonstrates how the burgeoning elephant population is inextricably linked with border policing, tourism and conservation. KAZA considers participation and local community involvement in planning and decision making as legitimate for sustainable natural resource management. However, the current realities exist in contrast to these considerations. The study reveals that there is a disparity between theory and practice as KAZA is yet to deliver its promises to the local communities. The study asserts that it is critical to view KAZA as a complex, evolving and long-term initiative that will be interesting to follow in the future.
Abe Goldman (University of Florida)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines demographic and land use changes around mid-altitude forest parks in East Africa, the rural-urban landscapes that have developed surrounding those parks, and the impacts on livelihoods and ethnoecological perceptions by people living near the parks.
Paper long abstract:
While most attention to conservation and its impacts has focused on African savanna parks, East Africa's mid-altitude protected forests represent very different contexts both in conservation objectives and in the historic and current interactions between the parks and the people living around them. The landscapes surrounding all remaining mid-altitude protected forests in East Africa have undergone massive demographic change over the past half century, which has transformed previously sparsely populated frontiers into densely populated examples of what may be considered rural-urban landscapes. Those landscapes include areas of intensive agriculture, with both small- and large-scale farmers, laborers, and enterprises, and hierarchical urban networks, all of which are highly interconnected. The third components are the protected forests, which are all separated by sharp boundaries from the surrounding rural-urban landscapes. This paper, based on several years of research in western Uganda and elsewhere, examines the demographic and land use changes around these forest parks and their implications both for local livelihoods and political economy, and for conservation prospects. Among other issues, we examine the nature and significance of ethnoecological perceptions and assessments by neighboring people and groups of the version of "fortress conservation" represented by these forest parks, and the parks' impacts and implications for the people and rural-urban areas near protected forests.
Martin Skrydstrup (Copenhagen Business School)
Paper short abstract:
What is a “water tower”? Where did this particular notion come from and how does it shape the future of natures in Kenya? This paper seeks to answer these questions by way of an ethnography of KWTA and argues that this case enables rethinking the relations between empire and environmentalism.
Paper long abstract:
The term "water tower" first appeared in a series of reports on the rampant destruction of Kenya's so-called "indigenous forests" based on aerial surveys in the first decade of the new millennium. These reports defined Kenya's five mountainous forests as the upper catchments for all the country's main rivers. In 2008, the trope entered Vision 2030 as a key "national asset" and in 2012 the notion became institutionalized in a new parastatal body entitled Kenya Water Tower Agency (KWTA). Beyond the discursive and institutional enactments in the capital, fences and large billboards announcing Water Tower: Lifeline of a Nation have mushroomed across the country and evictions of the Ogiek from the Mau Forest water tower and of the Sengwer from the Cherangani Hills water tower have followed in the name of "rehabilitation".
Moving between an institutional ethnography of KWTA in Nairobi and its interactions with rural forest dwellers, this paper argues that the emergence of water towers can only be understood in relation to how colonial forestry linked forests and water in the shape of "desiccation theory" in conjunction with the contemporary translations of global carbon markets into the nation's natural capital. Specifically, I argue that the notion of "water tower" became powerful since it enabled a recognition of certain landscapes as public land and common good in need of rehabilitation and conservation. Ultimately, the water tower case enables us to revisit the relations between empire and environmentalism in the wake of Grove's (1997) pioneering work.
Innocent Sinthumule (University of Venda)
Paper short abstract:
The paper demonstrates how the interests of wildlife conservation were pursued by powerful environmental organisations, SANParks and wealthy individuals who aided the expansion of the South African section of Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area at the expense of farm workers.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyses the conflict between biodiversity conservation and local livelihoods in the South African section of Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area. The paper demonstrates how the interests of wildlife conservation were pursued by powerful environmental organisations, South African National Parks (SANParks) and wealthy individuals who aided the expansion of the South African section of Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area at the expense of commercial farm workers and dwellers. This study argues that the creation and expansion of Mapungubwe National Park for conservation of biodiversity depended heavily on forceful management techniques which involved displacement of commercial farm workers and dwellers. The displacements had devastating effects on the lives and livelihoods of commercial farm workers. The paper concludes that South Africa has achieved minimal success in reconciling local livelihoods and biodiversity conservation.