Producing hybrid forests in the Congo Basin: A political ecology of the landscape approach to conservation |
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| Institution: | 1. School of Management, Queensland University of Technology, Australia;2. School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Australia;1. University College London, Australia, Torrens Building, 220 Victoria Square, Adelaide 5000, Australia;2. Centre for Law and Environment, University College London, Bentham House, Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1H0EG, United Kingdom;3. Department of Geography, University College London, Pearson Building, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK;1. Institute of International Forestry and Forest Products, Technical University of Dresden, Cotta Bau, Pienner Str. 7, 01737 Tharandt, Germany;2. Department of Forest Management, University of Khartoum, 13314 Shambat, Sudan;1. Center for Multidisciplinary Research on Chiapas and the South Border (CIMSUR), National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), María Adelina Flores 34, 29230 San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chis., Mexico;2. Knowledge Technology and Innovation (KTI) Group, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN, The Netherlands;1. Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA 02125, USA;2. Institute for Agriculture and the Environment, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia;3. Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore, India |
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| Abstract: | Environmental conservation is increasingly operated through partnerships among state, private, and civil society actors, yet little is known empirically about how such collectives function and with what livelihood and governance outcomes. The landscape approach to conservation (known also as the ecosystem approach) is one such hybrid governance platform. Implemented worldwide over the past decade by international NGOs, the landscape approach employs the ‘ecosystem principles’ of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In spite of its prominence as a conservation and development strategy, little political ecology scholarship has considered the landscape approach. This article offers a case study of a conservation landscape in the Congo Basin, the Tri-National de la Sangha (TNS), which connects tropical forests in Cameroon, Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic. Led by NGOs, the TNS has since 2001 relied on partnerships among logging companies, safari hunters, the state, and local communities. Although the landscape approach purports to facilitate re-negotiations of user rights, resource access patterns in the TNS appear to have molded to pre-existing power relations. Rather than incorporating local concerns and capabilities into management, local knowledge is discredited and livelihoods are marginalized. As a result, management occurs through spatially-demarcated zones, contrasting the fluidity of interactions among diverse groups: both human (loggers, hunter-gatherers, safari guides, NGOs) and non-human (trees, elephants). These findings are situated within a burgeoning literature on neoliberal environmental governance, and suggest that ensuring ecologically and socially positive outcomes will require careful and iterative attention to linkages between ecological processes and evolving power dynamics. |
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| Keywords: | Cameroon Conservation landscape Ecosystem approach Neoliberal conservation Tropical forest Wildlife |
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