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- Convenors:
-
Emily Woodhouse
(UCL)
Rob Small (Fauna Flora International)
Phil Franks (International Institute for Environment and Development)
Dickson Kaelo (Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association)
Francesca Booker
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- Format:
- Roundtable
- Sessions:
- Monday 25 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel will create productive discussion among academics, non-governmental and community organisations highlighting the value of critical social research and the messy realities of implementation, to nurture new collaborations for social justice in conservation.
Long Abstract:
The Convention on Biological Diversity parties have agreed that protected areas should be managed through equitable processes that respect the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. But practice still lags far behind policy. Anthropologists have long played an important role in demonstrating the multitude of ways that conservation can impact local livelihoods, social relations, and cultural practices. Without concerted efforts to include diverse voices, interventions can exacerbate marginalisation. For example, despite a recognition that women are more likely to lose out, detailed understandings of intra-household dynamics, women's roles and needs are often missing from planning and evaluations. Conceptualisations of equity or justice in conservation are coalescing around three areas of concern: (i) distribution of costs and benefits; (ii) procedure referring to participation in decision-making; (iii) recognition of cultural difference and respect for rights. But there remains a gap between academic research, policy and practice, and the experience of local communities with efforts to balance ecological and social outcomes remaining challenging. Many organisations are actively working to establish more equitable approaches to conservation yet through the messy realities of local politics, established practices and differing positions form, and pace of change is uneven resulting in trade-offs and compromise. This panel will create productive discussion among academics, non-governmental and community organisations, highlighting the value of critical social research and the realities of implementation, to nurture new collaborations. Participants will make short presentations on their perspectives and relevant projects, followed by dynamic but structured discussion around key issues and future directions.
Accepted participant details:
Session 1 Monday 25 October, 2021, -Short bio:
Fleur Nash is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. A part of her research is focused on how researchers and practitioners can work together in conservation. She has been using various collaborative methods to work with a conservation INGO and local organisation out in Kenya.
Additional details:
Critique from the outside, which is the form the majority of social research has taken in conservation, can fall on stubbornly closed ears. Conservation practitioners have pushed back against academic research, arguing that it is based in too much ideology and too little realism, resulting in a lack of understanding of the messy complex realities in which conservation organisations work. For critical social research to impact change on the ground, there is a need for researchers and practitioners to work together, not in silo.
This presentation will share a story of a collaboration between a PhD researcher and practitioners in a conservation INGO and local organisation in Kenya. The story aims to highlight three main points:
• Switching the lends to ‘study up’ those stereotypically seen as having more ‘power’ can offer insights into how rights based conservation approaches can be achieved in reality;
• Working together with practitioners through participatory action research can result in implementable change on the ground;
• To work in collaboration there needs to be consistent, transparent and timely communication throughout the research process.
Short bio:
Young indigenous BaAka hunter-gatherers and their Sangha-Sangha neighbours join hands to defend their rights and cultures, leading to the establishment of a human rights centre fostering justice and more equitable social relationships in this UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Additional details:
Indigenous BaAka and Sangha-Sangha youth came together to advance their rights and protect their cultural and natural heritage. For this purpose, two years after CAR became the first African country to ratify ILO 169 in 2010, they started collaborating with various national and international partners, among them local and state authorities, conservation NGOs and regional indigenous networks. Human rights experts praised the initiative for its bi-cultural character and a rights-promotion approach embedded in a broader process of cultural revitalization and nature protection.
Starting as a self-organised group of 25 girls and boys from ten villages in Dzanga-Sangha, the group has evolved into a well-regarded and influential civil society association called Ndima-Kali (www.ndimakali.org). Accompanied by village elders, they have organised forest camps focusing on transmission of cultural knowledge and values, developed bilingual school materials, and carried out awareness-campaigns using theatre, video, and radio. With support from UCL, they completed a participatory mapping which they successfully used to protect vital areas from logging interventions. One of their biggest accomplishments has been to help establish a human rights centre which provides legal support to the communities and enforces ILO 169. Ndima-Kali collaborates with the centre in the monitoring of human rights abuses, training local authorities, and carrying out anti-discrimination campaigns. These actions have put the BaAka centre-stage in the efforts to reduce inter-community conflict and advance social justice.
I will reflect on the initiative’s main achievements and challenges, drawn from my direct experience of partnering up with Ndima-Kali for nearly a decade.
Short bio:
I use a feminist political ecology approach to centre local systems of gender norms and their intersection with socio-economic dynamics to reflect on the drivers of participation in poaching economies, the expansion of militarised conservation practice, and their impacts on women and households.
Additional details:
How poaching economies and militarised responses to shut them down intersect with local gender norms and dynamics remains under-examined. Feminist political ecology, along with insights from feminist criminology, helps to address these gaps in what myself and colleagues refer to as a feminist political ecology of wildlife crime. This framework centres local systems of gender norms and their intersection with socio-economic dynamics to offer a fuller understanding of the drivers of participation in poaching economies and their increasingly deadly impacts, a reflection of the expansion of militarised conservation practice. I draw on collaborative fieldwork in the Mozambican borderlands adjacent to South Africa’s Kruger National Park on the illicit rhino horn economy to show how several stark gendered dynamics emerge. First, long-standing norms of masculinity, in particular caring for family, in one of the poorest regions of Southern Africa motivate men to enter the trade despite the risks. Second, women whose husbands have been killed while hunting rhino embody the indirect human consequences of a violent poaching economy. The loss of their husbands, a broader context of poverty, and gendered norms articulate in ways that leave these women and their children to experience more acute and long term vulnerability. Understanding these dynamics are important for crafting sustainable solutions to the poaching problem. I discuss what lessons a feminist political ecology of wildlife crime offers for understanding and addressing poaching conflicts, wildlife crime and illicit resource geographies more broadly.
Short bio:
The presentation 'Reimagining forest conservation: putting communities at the center of conservation efforts in Liberia' highlights the opportunities that now exist to develop and advance a new model for conservation.
Additional details:
Liberia's Land Rights Law of 2018 has reshaped the relationship between government, private sector, conservation NGOs and international organizations working on land and forestry in Liberia. The law recognizes communities' ownership of their ancestral lands and creates opportunities for them to formalize their collective land and forest rights, and to further strengthen their tenure security. In this new position of power, with the needed support and technical assistance, communities could become champions of conservation across rural Liberia. This paper looks ahead and outlines the opportunities that exist to bring communities to the forefront of conservation efforts in Liberia.
**
Silas Siakor is actively working with the Government of Liberia and civil society organizations, directly coordinating efforts to bring more than 1 million hectares of land under local communities control and ownership to foster community-based conservation and sustainable management. Silas has championed community forest and land rights in Liberia for about two decades. For his work, he has received several international awards, including the Whitley Award for Environment and Human Rights in 2002 (UK), the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2006 (US), Award for Outstanding Environmental and Human Rights Activism from the Alexander Soros Foundation (US), Mundo Negro Fraternity Award in 2018 (Spain) and was among Time Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment in 2008. Silas is currently Country Manager of IDH Landscape Program in Liberia.
Short bio:
Lecturer in the school of natural resources. Currently a PhD fellow at Stellenbosch University. Research area; Protected area governance, livelihoods and conservation. The aim of the research is to contribute to the body of knowledge for improving governance and economics of protected areas.
Additional details:
I am a Zambian national with an MSc in Agroforestry and an MSc in Forests and livelihoods, with experience working with communities that are natural resource dependent and understanding of their role in PA governance and conservation. I have experience as a SAGE facilitator since I have participated in the SAGE assessment for Rufunsa, Mufunta and Namwala Game Management Areas (GMA) in Zambia.