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
- Convenor:
-
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder
(MPI-EVA)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
With contributions from indigenous peoples, conservation activists and scholars from developing and developed countries we explore grassroots conservation challenges and opportunities, highlighting indigeneity, capacity, funding, interdisciplinary science, mentorship, neocolonialism and media.
Long Abstract:
Increasingly over recent decades conservation scientists promote their interventions for their grassroots bases, community-based engagement, and concordance with local cultural preferences, livelihoods and economic priorities. The practical limits to these claims, the frequent incompatibilities between project objectives and higher levels of governance, the ambiguity of terms such as indigeneity, and the associated fads or fashions that arise in the academic and applied fields of conservation science to address these problems are all well known. Solutions however are less obvious. Critical challenges continue to face local communities and grassroots activists. These include: a) how they can most effectively manage their natural resources; b) how can the satisfactorily address the heterogeneous interests of different community members; c) what strategies most effectively counter external demand for valuable products; d) how local regulations be aligned with those of higher levels of governance; e) what are the best means of addressing the paternalism within (inter)national NGOs; e) what are effective strategies for interfacing with outsiders for assistance in non-local expertise and funding; f) how can local organizations, with often limited funds for research, provide the robust evidence of success increasingly demanded by donor organizations; g) how to manage the often unrealistic expectations left from foreign interventions. We explore these and related issues, so as to provide a forum in which grassroots conservation leaders can exchange their experiences with a target audience that would include other activists, scholars aiming to support local conservationists, and NGO/donors wishing to make their contributions more effective.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
In discussions around conservation, people often ask, “Will the community get on board?” In Ethiopia, the Mursi have lobbied for a CCA since 2008, but until recently they faced opposition from government. We explain the promise of a CCA in Mursiland, and describe the challenges to establishing it.
Paper long abstract:
The Mursi of Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley have lobbied for a community conservation area (CCA) since 2008 – inspired by similar initiatives among the Himba in Namibia, and the Rendille, Samburu, and Maasai in Kenya. Until recently they faced opposition from the Ethiopian government, which had denied them support, and prioritized instead the establishment of sugarcane plantations. In this paper we reflect on the promise of community conservation efforts in the context of state projects that have altered the landscape of the region – including the Gibe III dam that ended the annual flood of the Omo and compromised local people's ability to support themselves through flood recession farming. Protecting wildlife offers the Mursi a way of reasserting ownership of their land and reviving the local economy. A breakthrough for them could open up opportunities to other communities in Ethiopia to assume new responsibility for -- and profit from -- the protection of wildlife. But the initiative also faces challenges, including how to monitor changes in biodiversity, and how to demonstrate success in terms that both locals and outsiders will recognize.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines – through a case study of anti-mining activism in Ghana’s Upper West Region - what impact engagement with transnational advocacy networks has on the lived experience of the communities, activists and organisations that they support.
Paper long abstract:
International support networks often replicate the unequal power dynamics that characterise North-South relations. These power dynamics, in turn, impact the lives of local communities engaged in environmental resistance.
This paper explores this topic through a case study, researched in northern Ghana: there, members of a Dagaabe community near the border with Burkina Faso are resisting the proposed development of a gold mine, supported by a locally-based, internationally-supported organisation. This paper examines how these international relationships influenced the forms that this resistance took, and explores the disjuncts between locally relevant and internationally salient approaches to environmental activism.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper we discuss structural and epistemic violences embedded in the conservation of Caribbean plant genetic resources. We focus on Afrodescendant farmers whose knowledge has been excluded from conservation efforts and propose alternatives including open source seed methods.
Paper long abstract:
For centuries, Afrodescendant farmers in the Caribbean have adapted to economic and environmental stresses by conserving and sharing agrobiodiverse seeds. Yet from the early colonial period, registries of botanical material taken from the tropics were created by the colonial scientist or ‘explorer’, who received all the credit and whose primary interest was in species of economic value to them, which were largely archived elsewhere. Spatial, techno-scientific and moral infrastructures for storing, using and valuing Caribbean plant genetic resources (PGR) continue to reinforce structural and epistemic violences of colonisation, enclosing seeds and excluding direct access and benefit sharing by West Indian scientists and farmers. As a result, Afrodescendant seed savers continue to be marginalised and dispossessed while grappling with climate change pressures. It is time for this situation to be rectified, and in a way that includes Afrodescendant majorities in PGR information sharing, storage, use, and benefits. In this talk we will: 1) explain how (post)colonial seed infrastructures for accessing, curating and sharing information about Caribbean PGR have contributed to racialized processes of structural and epistemic violence; 2) explain how this experience exemplifies long-standing patterns of appropriation and marginalisation of Indigenous interests in the global gene-bank model of conservation; and 3) explore whether and how digital and open source seed methods can be used to co-create alternative seed infrastructures for the sharing, storage, use and benefits of Afrodescendant seeds and knowledges. Our ultimate aim is to decolonise Caribbean PGR by developing innovative, culturally appropriate strategies for seed sovereignty.
Paper short abstract:
'Grassroots' as a term comes out of post-modern development speak and is firmly rooted in neo-liberal practice, particularly in the developing world. Three decades of experience working in development and conservation, both built and natural heritage, forms the basis of this paper.
Paper long abstract:
Development in late apartheid South Africa was largely led by NGOs who were internationally funded and were engaged directly with communities using sustainable development principles. These included grassroots development, stakeholder participation and broadened consultation - all elements which were lacking in the top-down development initiatives of the Nationalist Government. Because of this, working within the conservation industry, transfer of these principles in practice in both environmental and built environment conservation, is well-documented. This is in addition to preferential legislations which support indigenous priorities and perceptions and market the panacea of tourism as a sustainable and viable form of community development and social mobility.
At the same time, these practices have become bywords of the current government, but often given lip-service which minimises the impacts of the basic principles. Further, it is rapidly emerging that the fundamentally western-based legislations which have been promulgated since 1994 allow for multiple interpretations which complicates the issue. This paper critically addresses these principles by bringing to light nuances, challenges and dark areas of interculturality which are useful factors in considering in conservation work, and also raises alerts to remaining anthropologically mobile and agile in planning, implementation of methodologies and interpreting information in a post-truth and post-colonial world.