Paper short abstract:

I discuss matters of conservation, displacement and environmental justice and consider both the objections of displaced residents to current protection strategies and the need to include concerns of more-than-human actors in the discussion of environmental justice for 21st century conservation.

Paper long abstract:

The Zambezi Region in north-eastern Namibia is part of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA-TFCA) that attracts many tourists and hunters with its magnificent scenery and wildlife. Behind the apparent success of the conservation story - including three national parks, 15 community conservancies, several community forests, and a large forest reserve in the Zambezi Region - one finds a historic conservation trajectory extending far back into the 20th century. In the process of the ‘making of a conservation landscape’ (Bollig and Vehrs, 2021) the inhabitants along the Kwando River - which is an integral part of the conservation landscape - were displaced to the inland areas before the declaration of independence. This not only had a strong impact on their livelihoods, but in some cases also included that residents were forcefully evicted and today are still struggling to either return to their ancestral lands or seek restorative justice from the Namibian government.

In this presentation I explore issues of how a national park was planned and implemented, how local residents perceive the park’s establishment and the injustices embedded therein, how displaced people seek justice today, and to what extent environmental justice and conservation are in conflict when it comes to consider both the needs of human residents and of more-than-human species.