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- Convenors:
-
Cory Rodgers
(University of Oxford)
Matthew Porges (University of Oxford)
Ariell Ahearn Ligham (Oxford University)
Greta Semplici (European University Institute)
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- Chair:
-
Dawn Chatty
(University of Oxford)
- Discussants:
-
Marcus Colchester
J. Terrence McCabe (University of Colorado)
- Format:
- Roundtable
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The 2002 Dana Declaration on Mobile Peoples and Conservation was the first major effort to incorporate mobile peoples scholarship into mainstream development and conservation policies. This roundtable will examine the impact of the declaration and explore directions for a prospective Dana+20 update.
Long Abstract:
Academic research on the contemporary challenges faced by mobile peoples initially came together in the late 1970s, when the Commission on Nomadic Peoples was established alongside the peer-reviewed journal Nomadic Peoples. These platforms paved the way for the 2002 Dana Declaration on Mobile Peoples and Conservation, which was one of the earliest global campaigns to bring critical scholarship on mobile peoples to bear on policy and practice. A shorter Dana+10 statement in 2012 updated the original declaration in several key areas.
As we approach the 20-year anniversary of the Dana Declaration, there is need for reflection on major ecological, technological and political shifts over the past two decades. This roundtable discussion would be chaired by Professor Dawn Chatty, who led the Standing Committee for the Dana Declaration. It would bring together senior scholars involved in the 2002 Dana Declaration - including Professor Terrence McCabe and Marcus Colchester - as well as junior scholars whose recent fieldwork with pastoralists and other mobile peoples provides insight on contemporary policy challenges.
The aim of this discussion is to examine core themes from the Dana Declaration as well as the Dana+10 statement and explore directions for a prospective Dana+20 update for next year. Short presentations and discussions would address how mainstream paradigms of sustainability and development have affected mobile peoples; interrogate "sedentist biases" in our epistemic infrastructures; and identify avenues for improved engagement with mobile populations on the interrelated priorities of conservation, climate adaptation / resilience, habitat loss, and human-animal entanglements.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Land use change, evolving aspirations and changes in social institutions among Maasai pastoralists are posing opportunities and challenges to wildlife conservation and development in the Tarangire-Simanjiro Ecosystem in Northern Tanzania,
Paper long abstract:
Tarangire National Park (TNP) is considered central to what is referred to as the Tarangire-Simanjiro Ecosystem in Northern Tanzania, and is considered globally important for biodiversity conservation, and is ranked second to the Serengeti for its high concentration of migratory mammals in East Africa. It also represents the highest density of elephants per sq km of any protected area in Tanzania. TNP is considered a dry season park with wildlife migrating out of the park during the wet season and returning to the park as the dry season progresses. Although considered as a critically important area for wildlife, about 85 % of the Tarangire-Simanjiro ecosystem consists of village and private lands without any protected status. This creates a distinctive problem for wildlife conservation due to the extensive migration of wildlife, in particular zebra and wildebeest, which migrate 60 to 80 kilometers into the Simanjiro plains during the wet season. For approximately six months out of the year, Maasai pastoralists share the nutrient rich grasslands with the migratory wildlife, but as the dry season sets in the wildlife return to the park while the Maasai and their livestock remain in the Simanjiro plains. In this paper I summarize 16 years of research, conducted by myself and colleagues, among Maasai pastoral people and discuss how the adoption and expansion of cultivation is converting rangeland to cultivated land; how changes in social institutions have resulted in constraints to the movement of people and livestock; and how aspirations of what is considered a “good life” by Maasai men and women of different generations poses both challenges and opportunities for the conservation of wildlife and the development of pastoral peoples.
Paper short abstract:
This paper proposes a tentative framework for conceptualising ‘sedentism’ as a fundamental set of assumptions in which development thinking is entrenched and which undermines mobile livelihoods and lifeways, even where states and development actors are not explicitly committed to sedentarisation.
Paper long abstract:
Nomadic people have long been subject to forced settlement, mobility restrictions, and discriminatory legal regimes implemented with the express objective of making them sedentary. While policies that explicitly call for forced sedentarisation have largely fallen to the wayside with advancements in international human rights law and the rise of more people-oriented approaches to conservation and development, the epistemic basis of sedentism lives on in many contemporary policies. Even where states and development actors are not explicitly committed to sedentarisation, the sedentist imaginary through which development is envisioned continues to undermine mobile peoples’ livelihoods and lifeways.
As its contribution to the discussion in the roundtable, this presentation proposes a conceptual framework for considering sedentism as a fundamental set of assumptions in which contemporary development thinking is entrenched. I will begin with a brief outline of the ‘sedentist development’ framework derived by the collaborative project Re-imagining Development for Mobile Peoples, a cross-regional comparative study of development policies at five locations in Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mauritania and Mongolia that are home to nomadic or peripatetic communities. Based on a review of relevant literature as well as short case studies in each of these sites, the project attempted to extract some of the cross-cutting trends in policy and practice that influence the degree to which mobile peoples are accommodated, excluded or otherwise affected. Five key dimensions of sedentism are described, and potential corollaries for comprehending sedentism in contemporary conservation policies are outlined for further discussion.