The decline of a model community-based conservation project: Governance, capacity, and devolution in Mahenye, Zimbabwe

This paper reports the results of our research, conducted from June to August 2004, on the community-based conservation project in Mahenye, Zimbabwe. Previous studies have described this project as a model example of Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE program. We explore the project’s recent performance within the context of the country’s post-2000 political and economic crisis and address the implications of our findings for arguments supporting devolution of authority for natural resource management to the community level. These issues are related in that calls for devolution are at least partly contingent on the demonstrated capacity of local institutions to manage projects in the community interest despite difficult circumstances. In our research, we found that outcomes in Mahenye have deteriorated sharply from conditions described in earlier studies. We found further that local failures of leadership combined with the withdrawal of outside agencies responsible for oversight and assistance may be more to blame for this decline than the ongoing national turmoil. Our results suggest that even in apparently successful conservation and development projects, local participatory decision-making institutions are fragile and require continuing external support. Consequently, we argue for caution in promoting full devolution of authority to the community level without safeguards to maintain good governance and adequate capacity.     

Participation in payments for ecosystem services: Case studies from the Lacandon rainforest, Mexico

Understanding people’s willingness to participate in projects and programmes of payments for ecosystem services (PES) has not been a key analytical concern of the scholarly literature around this new field of environmental policy and practice. This paper analyses participation in four communities benefiting from payments for biodiversity and carbon fixation in Mexico, and contrasts the results for each case with neighbouring communities that do not receive payments. We take a holistic approach that accounts for procedural rules, actors’ interactions, institutions and values, and individuals’ characteristics. We show that the nature of PES rules and the effectiveness of communication with government officers and NGOs influence resource managers’ ability and willingness to participate. We highlight community size, resource managers’ ability to diversify livelihood activities and local perspectives on the conservation of common forests, particularly sacred values and intergenerational concerns on forest conservation, as critical participation drivers. This analysis provides insights on why and how these new institutions may be attractive for some resource managers and permits to draw some recommendations for the future design of PES projects and programmes.     

Neoliberalizing environmental governance? Land trusts, private conservation and nature on the Oak Ridges Moraine

With recent changes in the ways that state agencies are implementing their environmental policies, the line between public and private is becoming increasingly blurred. This includes shifts from state-led implementation of environmental policies to conservation plans that are implemented and managed by multi-sectoral networks of governments, the private sector and environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). This paper examines land trusts as private conservation initiatives that become part of neoliberal governance arrangements and partnerships that challenge our conceptions of environmental preservation and democratic participation. The paper starts with an examination of the concept of neoliberalized environmental governance. Next, it addresses the shifting social constructions of property and land in the context of protecting large scale ecosystems. Through a case study of the extension of new environmental governance arrangements on the Oak Ridges Moraine in Ontario, we examine the relationships that have formed between different levels of the state and environmental non-governmental organizations. Finally, we analyze the expansion of land trusts and private conservation initiatives that are predicated on private land ownership and the commodification of nature, the emerging discourses and practices of private conservation, and how these are implicated in the privatization and neoliberalization of nature.     

Interviewing landed elites in post-war Guatemala

This essay explores the methodological challenges of conducting ethnographic research among economic and managerial elites in Guatemala’s landed sector during the country’s post-war transition. Guatemala’s 34-year civil war ended with peace accords in 1996. From the mid 1990s through 2001, I conducted interviews with leading representatives of the private sector in Guatemala, including the owners and top managers of the country’s sugar plantations. The Guatemalan sugar elite describes itself as the new face of the private sector in Central America, implementing “corporate social responsibility” programs linked to the World Bank and other international agencies. Questions of access and interview dynamics are often discussed in relation to qualitative research on “elites.” Yet, I found the interview process to be less complicated than I anticipated. Of greater concern were the problems of research dissemination and praxis. The experience discussed here raises questions about whether research on particular elite groups can be sustained over long periods of time.     

Power and the hierarchy of knowledge: A review of a decade of the World Bank’s relationship with South Africa

This article presents a case study of the World Bank’s relationship with South Africa to argue that the Bank uses its knowledge brokering role as a device to facilitate the development of a lending relationship with countries that may initially be reluctant to enter into this kind of engagement. This article reviews the World Bank’s 10-year effort to develop a lending relationship with South Africa. The Bank inserted itself into the country in the early 1990s at the outset of its democratic transformation. Throughout the decade, South Africa acceded to the Bank’s policy interventions through technical assistance rather than through a concerted lending programme. In doing so, South Africa internalized the Bank’s market-driven political economy framework underlying its technical assistance programme. The country’s application of the Bank’s knowledge has had questionable outcomes for its development agenda. While the Bank’s ‘expert’ interventions may have offered valuable technical insights, it neglected the politics of distribution that are embedded in a more localized knowledge formation process. The result has led to the instrumentalization of local governance and undermined the engagement of civil society actors in the construction of a democratic state at the local level.     

Wildlife management and land reform in southeastern Zimbabwe: a compatible pairing or a contradiction in terms?

This paper examines the melding of two discourses in southeastern Zimbabwe: land reform and wildlife management. The former seeks to redistribute large, ‘under-utilized’ landholdings to smallholders whilst the latter needs extensive land holdings to be viable. These two discourses are rooted in very different models of development. The land reform exercise emphasizes direct redistribution, equity and land for crops; whilst the wildlife management discourse tends to stress maximizing foreign exchange earnings, encouraging public-private partnerships and trickle down. Yet there has been a recent flurry of interest in the development of ‘wildlife models’ for land reform which would combine the two. This paper investigates whether the competing discourses about land for smallholders and wildlife-based land reform are compatible or can be successfully reconciled. It traces the ways they have come together in Zimbabwe’s southeast lowveld and examines the ‘science’ and politics underlying their melding. Finally it explores the potential implications for rural people’s livelihoods of this development. It concludes that land reform and wildlife management can be reconciled, but probably not in a particularly equitable way: it is more likely to provide an opening for an equitable land reform agenda to be usurped by local and non-local elites with wildlife interests.     

Payments for environmental services as neoliberal market-based forest conservation in Vietnam: Panacea or problem?

Recently in Vietnam, a coalition of international NGOs, donors and government officials have been promoting market-based forest conservation projects in the form of payments for environmental services (PES) as a win–win for both conservation and development objectives; Vietnam is now the first country in Southeast Asia with a national law on PES. This article provides a macro survey of how market-based instruments for forest conservation have expanded in Vietnam, particularly in relation to a long dominant state sector. Yet an assessment of Vietnam’s PES pilot projects indicates that they do not follow predicted orthodox “neoliberalization of nature” approaches in their use of market instruments, particularly in regards to privatization, retreat of the state, and capitalization of commodities. The article explores how it is that a strong state role in forest management can continue to dominate even in more market-oriented approaches. Finally, the article analyzes PES’s potential for success or failure in tackling the underlying causes for forest degradation. Ultimately, the article argues that PES is likely to be unable to tackle several of the key underlying causes for deforestation, namely, uneven land tenure and a lack of participation by local communities in conservation, given that PES is unlikely to be considerably different than past attempts at forest management.     

Environmental literacy in interpreting endangered sustainability: Case studies from Thailand and the Sudan

This paper examines how people explain reasons and impacts of environmental change in the low-rain savanna of the central Sudan and mountainous forest lands of northern Thailand. The explanations are analyzed by using the concept of environmental literacy, which refers to the people’s ability to grasp the environment and its interactions. The paper aims to study people’s conceptions of the environment, which compose one factor in directing their behavior. For the study, rural inhabitants in the State of North Kordofan, the Sudan, and the Chiang Mai Province in Thailand were interviewed.It was noted that an individual’s capability to understand the environment is alone insufficient to address environmental problems because the efficient alleviation of the problems requires collective actions at all levels, and because of factors beyond an individual’s control. However, the results supported the assumption that the local people have knowledge of their environment that may help in developing sustainable environmental management practices. The main advantages of using the environmental literacy concept are argued to be its dynamic and synthetic essence, its link to sustainable behavior, and wide applicability in various contexts within heterogeneous communities.     

甘肃省主要生态地质环境问题及环境保护对策研究

甘肃省是一个生态地质环境十分脆弱的省份。水土流失、土地荒漠化、土壤盐渍化等地质环境问题突出;森林及植被覆盖率低,涵养水源功能弱,环境自净能力差;环境污染现象严重。并且随经济的发展与资源的消耗,生态环境呈恶化之势,已直接影响着人民群众的生存和地方经济的发展。本文重点分析生态地质环境现状,为合理开发利用国土资源、制定地方经济发展规划、促进区域经济可持续发展和生态环境建设及保护提供科学依据。     

Threatened wetlands and ecologically sensitive ecosystems management in Bangladesh

Wetlands constitute a part of human heritage. It has played a significant role in the development of human culture and society. More over it contains very rich components of biodiversity of local, national, and regional significance. They also provide habitat for a variety of resident and migratory waterfowl, a significant number of endangered species, and a large number of commercially important species. Mangrove wetlands are unique environments of floral-faunal assemblages, providing a complex detritus-based food-web for a number of marine and brackish water organisms. Wetlands in Bangladesh have great importance for the country’s economic, industrial, ecological, socioeconomic, and cultural aspects. There are five types of wetlands available in Bangladesh, such as saltwater wetlands, freshwater wetlands, palustrine wetlands, lacustrine wetlands, and manmade wetlands. There are 43 designated wetlands, and some are under threat from indiscriminate utilization, encroachments and reclamation, urbanization and drawbacks from agricultural development, and flood control. Almost 50% of the country’s people are directly dependent on wetlands resources. The vast majority of the poor people in the wetlands areas are dependent on wetlands resources for their nourishment. Wetlands have potential and have been recognized as a driving force for biodiversity conservation and rural socioeconomic improvement. Smart-use of wetlands can solve the ecosystems problems in the floodplain areas. A comprehensive analysis of the various issues leading to wetlands degradation is made in this study. The country needs an adequate interdisciplinary policy and political will to implement it for sustainable management and protection of wetlands and ecologically sensitive ecosystems in Bangladesh. Therefore, a reliable data bank is provided in this study to enhance the conservation measures initiated by the Government.     

Easing conservation? Conservation easements, public accountability and neoliberalism

This paper examines the use of conservation easements, with a focus on California. Conservation easements are now the dominant tool used for private land conservation in the United States. Easements are in many ways a paradigmatic neoliberal environmental policy tool. They privatize and re-scale a great deal of land conservation decision-making authority; they are market-based; they provide financial incentives for participation rather than punishment for non-compliance; and they commodify new property rights. However, these neoliberalisms are incorporated in uneven, and sometimes contradictory, ways that emphasize the gulf between neoliberal ideologies and “actually existing neoliberalisms.” Most critically, as a result of extensive public funding and management, conservation easements are not nearly as private (and thus not as neatly neoliberal) as they sometimes seem. Conservation easements are often heralded as a “win–win” land conservation strategy. I argue that the extent to which conservation easements may be construed as win–win solutions depends a great deal on who is included in the calculation of winners and losers. I contend that using and governing easements as if they are private elides complex questions about larger public costs and benefits. This obscures the large number of people and institutions (both state and private) that will likely need to be involved in governing conservation easements in the long term.     

A critical political ecology of cotton and soil fertility in Mali

The aim of this article is to analyse the influence of commodified cotton production on soil fertility in southern Mali. From the late 1950s and until recently, production of both cash-crop cotton and food crops have increased rapidly in this region, giving it a reputation of being an African ‘success story’. The flip side of this economic success is, however, said to be environmental degradation especially in terms of loss of soil fertility. We collected 273 soil samples in 19 villages located in various zones of land use intensity. In each village, the samples were collected on up to six different land use types varying with intensification. The analysis of the soil samples showed that soil fertility was highest in the sacred groves that have been protected and never cultivated. However, comparing soils under continuous cultivation and soils under fallow no clear trends in soil fertility were found. Cotton yields have declined since the early 1990s, while the total use of fertilisers has increased. This is often interpreted as proof of soil exhaustion, but there is no clear indication in this study that cotton-cereal rotation as practiced by smallholders in southern Mali reduces soil fertility. We argue that the decline in yields has been caused by an extensification process. Cotton fields expanded rapidly, due to attractive cotton prices in the 1990s, leading to falling investments per ha and cultivation of more marginal lands. These findings also have implications for a political ecology of commodity production and lead us to argue for an open-ended and empirically based ‘critical political ecology’.     

The politics of barstool biology: Environmental knowledge and power in greater Northern Yellowstone

Critical researchers of underdevelopment have established a well-known record celebrating the environmental knowledges of subsistence communities in contested wildlife conservation zones. Similar battles are being fought over science, uncertainty, and wild animals in the American west, however, with far less attention to local epistemologies. Often dismissed as “barstool biology”, the ecological knowledges of local hunters in the Northern Yellowstone ecosystem are rooted in environmental experience and situated politics. How does local hunter knowledge diverge or converge with that of state officials, environmentalists, ranchers, and other constituencies, and to what effect on wildlife management policy? This paper seeks to answer that question, reviewing recent research amongst local resource users, managers, and activists in Montana. By rendering empirical the question of local knowledge around America’s oldest national park, rather than trying to “read it off” political affiliation, education, or livelihood, a clearer picture of power, knowledge, and conservation emerges. The results suggest that emerging management policies have developed from the discursive alliance of landowners, outfitters, and environmentalists, shifting priorities towards enclosure and exclusion in wildlife at the expense of other silent constituencies.     

Crocodile crimes: people versus wildlife and the politics of postcolonial conservation on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe

This article is about the politics of conservation in postcolonial Southern Africa. It focuses on the process and consequences of redefining the Nile crocodile as an endangered species and explores the linked local and international, commercial and conservationist interests that allowed the animal to re-establish itself in state-protected waterways in colonial and postcolonial contexts. It investigates the effects of the animal’s successful re-accommodation by examining conflicts between crocodiles and the fishing communities sharing space on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe. Fishermen’s hostile representations of the animal emphasize competition for fish, harassment, fear, loss of assets and loss of life. Their fear of crocodiles is heightened by the animal’s entanglement in local social life, through its association with witchcraft. The article emphasizes the importance of considering both hegemonic and marginalized ideas about animals in the light of the material interactions, relations of power and historical contexts that shape them. Understanding the attitudes and circumstances of the local communities who bear the physical and economic costs of living with dangerous animals is important--it threatens the future of conservation programmes and reveals the potential for significant abuses to accompany the conservation of wildlife in postcolonial contexts.     

Retailing local food in the Scottish-English borders: A supply chain perspective

Local food is championed as one alternative response to industrial systems of food production and supply. While advocacy for local food is high, there is a lack of empirical evidence about the actual shape and scale of such food supply chains, especially from a retail perspective. Using supply chain diagrams, this paper presents a summary of ‘new’ agro-food geographies for five different retail types—farm shops, butchers, caterers, specialist shops, supermarkets/department stores—that all source local food from suppliers in the Scottish-English borders. Presented as five separate ‘shopping trips’, the paper examines where, how and why retailers source local food. Results reveal the complex nature of local food systems, especially in terms of intra-sector competitive dynamics (with a notable tension between direct forms of retail and established (independent) retailers), links and overlaps with ‘normal’ food retail systems and elastic notions of the ‘local’. The paper also draws a key distinction between locally produced and locally supplied food products.     

Virtual moralities: The mainstreaming of Fairtrade in Kenyan tea fields

Fairtrade was founded to alleviate poverty and economic injustice through a market-based form of solidarity exchange. Yet with the increasing participation of transnational food corporations in Fairtrade sourcing, new questions are emerging on the extent to which the model offers an alternative to the inimical tendencies of neoliberalism. Drawing on a qualitative research project of Kenyan Fairtrade tea, this paper examines how the process of corporate mainstreaming influences the structure and outcomes of Fairtrade, and specifically the challenges it poses for the realization of Fairtrade’s development aspirations. It argues firstly that whilst tea producers have experienced tangible benefits from Fairtrade’s social premium, these development ‘gifts’ have been conferred through processes marked less by collaboration and consent than by patronage and exclusion. These contradictions are often glossed by the symbolic force of Fairtrade’s key tenets - empowerment, participation, and justice - which simultaneously serve to neutralize critique and mystify the functions that Fairtrade performs for the political economy of development and neoliberalism. Second, building on recent critiques of corporate social responsibility, the paper explores how certain neoliberal rationalities are emboldened through Fairtrade, as a process of mainstreaming installs new metrics of governance (standards, certification, participation) that are at once moral and technocratic, voluntary and coercive, and inclusionary and marginalizing. The paper concludes that these technologies have divested exchange of mutuality, as the totemic features of neoliberal regulation - standards, procedures and protocols - increasingly render north south partnerships ever more virtual and depoliticized.     

Identifying children’s perspectives on anti-social behaviour: Variations by home area and the implications

The paper examines the views of children living in contrasting British suburbs: exploring their perceptions of the occurrence of anti-social behaviour (ASB), their anxieties about different types of incident, and their views on appropriate punishments. Based on interviews with over 260 children aged 11–16 years, and 44 adults with a professional involvement in ASB, the evidence shows that the influence of home area on children’s perspectives of ASB varies according to the type of ASB under consideration. For ‘interpersonal’ ASB, children appear especially sensitive in the poorer area, where this ASB is much more common. Theories of normalisation regarding interpersonal ASB are not supported, as children in the poorer area are sensitised to the problems, rather than hardened, arguing for an urgent policy response. Regarding environmental ASB and the role of home area, the findings are reversed, and theories of normalisation are supported. Children’s lesser concerns about environmental ASB in the poorer, most affected area, pose rather different challenges to policy-makers, arguing for the selection of effective reduction measures at a local level, designed to better reflect the differing views of children in different areas. Identifying children’s perspectives brings new understandings to the multiple geographies of ASB, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between different types of ASB and raising awareness of the ways in which children’s perspectives may be similar and different from adults’ views. Our findings argue strongly for the central role of area in theoretical and applied ASB research, and a continuing emphasis on ‘the local’.     

Shifting frames for local people and forests in a global heritage: the Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary in the context of Thailand’s globalization and modernization

Focusing on the case of the World Heritage Site and Wildlife Sanctuary Thung Yai Naresuan, the paper sketches the interdependences of international and national forest and conservation policies in Thailand since the middle of the 19th century. In the context of Thailand’s globalization and modernization, these policies resulted in a coercing conservationism which focuses increasingly on the so-called ‘hill tribe’ ethnic minority groups. The shifting cultural and political framings of the area that became a national wildlife sanctuary and a ‘global heritage’ reflect external economic, political, and ideological interests. The people of the Karen ethnic minority group who live in the sanctuary are conceived of as a disruptive factor and never have had a chance to participate in these framings. After the designation of the area as a World Heritage Site, the remaining villages face increasing pressure from the Royal Forest Department which is trying to remove them with the help of the Military. Drawing on the different vested interests and the relativity of cultural conceptualizations, the paper questions the external framing, pointing to three major problems that are raised with regard to Thung Yai, but are symptomatic of modern conservationism at large: inconsistencies between normative claims and political practice; distortions of scale between conceptions designed at different levels of social space from the local to the global, and; the problem to reconcile conflicting cultural patterns and conceptualizations. The paper argues for a reframing of the conflict to conceive the Karen in Thung Yai as an integral part of the ‘global heritage’.     

Whiteness, space and alternative food practice

The paper demonstrates how whiteness is produced in progressive non-profit efforts to promote sustainable farming and food security in the US. I explore whiteness by addressing the spatial dimensions of this food politics. I draw on feminist and materialist theories of nature, space and difference as well as research conducted between 2003 and the present. Whiteness emerges spatially in efforts to increase food access, support farmers and provide organic food to consumers. It clusters and expands through resource allocation to particular organizations and programs and through participation in non-profit conferences. Community food’s discourse builds on a late-modern and, in practice, ‘white’ combination of science and ideology concerning healthful food and healthy bodies. Whiteness in alternative food efforts rests, as well, on inequalities of wealth that serve both to enable different food economies and to separate people by their ability to consume. It is latent in the support of romanticized notions of community, but also in the more active support for coalition-building across social differences. These well-intentioned food practices reveal both the transformative potential of progressive whiteness and its capacity to become exclusionary in spite of itself. Whiteness coheres precisely, therefore, in the act of ‘doing good’.     

Oil pipeline construction in Eastern Siberia: Implications for indigenous people

Traditional economic activities, lifestyles and customs of many indigenous peoples in the Russian North, such as reindeer herding, hunting and fishing, are closely linked to quality of the natural environment. These traditional activities that constitute the core of indigenous cultures are impacted by extractive sector activities conducted in and around traditional territories of indigenous peoples. This paper examines implications of an oil pipeline development in Eastern Siberia on the Evenki community in the Aldan district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). It examines community concerns about potential environmental damage and impacts on traditional livelihood. The paper analyses the interaction of indigenous communities with the pipeline project through interrogation of elements such as impact assessment, consultation, compensation, benefits, communication and public activism. The paper discusses how state policy and industry’s approach towards land rights and public participation affects the position of indigenous peoples and discusses barriers for their effective engagement. The analysis shows a number of policy failures in the protection of traditional natural resource use of indigenous peoples and provision of benefits with regards to the extractive sector that leave indigenous peoples marginalised in the process of development. There is a need to involve indigenous peoples on the basis of dialogue and partnership, improve regulation and shift industry’s approach towards consideration and engagement.