Sub-theme 9. Conservation, environmental justice and the commons
Panel 9.5.
Contesting Human-wildlife interactions in the context of the commons
Humans and wildlife coexist in multiple ways around the world, but socio-environmental challenges are putting coexistence under new pressures. A growing body of literature sheds new light on the increasing pressures to conserve large carnivores and other charismatic megafauna, which have become the main object of intervention in conservation projects. Individual or collective actors at various levels face new challenges to develop strategies for coexistence that go beyond regulating human-wildlife interactions into the realm of socio-political relations. Building on political ecology approaches, this panel explores the diversity and plurality of commoning institutions and rules that govern the interaction between humans and wildlife, casting new light on their recent history of institutional change. Across geographies, commons are often places of conviviality (Büscher and Fletcher, 2020) and constitute essential examples of constitutionality (Haller et al., 2016), directly framing and redefining coexistence practices. However, as global conservation becomes an uneven playing field in which powerful actors embrace western knowledge systems against local worldviews, processes such as commons grabbing and green enclosures have the potential to disrupt patterns of commoning and coexistence. This panel invites contributions from a broad range of theoretical and methodological approaches which take a critical stance toward different conservation strategies while advancing the understanding of how the management and functioning of commons have changed historically.
Keywords: human-wildlife interactions, commons, coexistence, collective-action institutions, constitutionality, conviviality
Panel 9.5. A
1. Convivial Constitutionality: The question of the commons for institution building processes in human-predator relations
Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, Switzerland
Theoretically based on the constitutionality approach (Haller, Acciaioli and Rist 2016), convivial constitutionality explores the possibility that bottom-up institution-building processes could provide for crafting sustainable coping strategies in order to achieve a co-existence of predators and humans. Convival constitutionality questions the often assumed human-predator conflict and proposes that it should rather be considered as a human-human conflict due to different understandings of conservation within a heterogeneous field of actors. Conservation initiatives often create local conflicts because of their lack of acceptance on the local level and also the inherent commons grabbing processes in which conservation agencies are involved: These are removing access to cultural landscape ecosystems and related common pool resources often previously managed as common property. Furthermore, the perception of predators living in pure nature contexts is at odds with views of indigenous and local communities. For them what is called ‘nature’ in scientific and administrative terms is seen as cultural landscapes managed by common property institutions. These often include rules of conviviality between humans, animals and the spiritual world which are seen as part of the commons people live in and thus also as ‘commoners’. A combined new institutionalism and political ecology approach including a historical perspective of institutional change helps to analyze conflicts with state and conservation actors using a naturalist ontology (Descola), while convivial constitutionality can provide the next step to create platforms for participatory bottom-up institution building processes.
2. Of wolves, sheep and people: on the socio-ecological interrelationships in the Romanian Carpathians
Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, Switzerland
In large parts of Western Europe, the wolf was considered extinct for a period of more than 150 years, before sporadically re-entering the area in the 1990s. Not so in Romania, whose wolf population is estimated never to have fallen below 1,500 individuals despite historically heavy hunting. The wolf population once distributed over the whole territory of today’s Romania is found now mainly in the Carpathian arc. Characteristic of the Romanian Carpathians is that the collectivization strategy of the socialist regime did not penetrate into the hilly, sometimes even mountainous areas. As a result, historically developed local-ecological knowledge, local institutions as well as the use of collective pasture resources have maintained. Three core elements of a convivial and constitutional way of life in a shared landscape. But historical-political processes, such as socialism, forest and land restitution, EU accession, migrant labor movements, institutional- and land-use-change challenge ways of coexistence between humans and wolves and force socio-ecological systems to adapt. At the same time, since the 1990s, the wolf has been experiencing an attribution of value in the context of conservation. Fortress conservation strategies place the protection of wolves and other wildlife above the interests and land use claims of local people. In particular, the establishment of protected areas poses challenges to land and forest commons and local livelihoods.
This paper highlights the interplay between the wolf as state property and global conservation interest, collective resources as commoners’ property and herding practices as a private/collective matter in the historic and contemporary southern Carpathians of Romania.
3. Pathways to Giraffe-Human conflict and coexistence in eastern Kenya
1Somali Giraffe Project, Kenya, 2University of British Columbia, Canada, 3University of Waterloo, Canada, 4Northern Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, Canada
Giraffe populations are declining across Africa due to numerous reasons including habitat loss, poaching, civil strife and human-giraffe conflict. Notwithstanding these factors, while giraffes play an important ecosystem role in the African savannah and the socio-economic well-being of African communities, less attention has been paid to human dimensions of giraffe conservation. To contribute to this, we collected information on human-giraffe conflict (HGC) in eastern Kenya. In particular, we explored general attitudes, risk perceptions and the drivers of giraffe sightings. We used quantitative questionnaires (n = 400) and applied descriptive statistics and tabulations to summarize findings. On average, respondents generally possessed positive attitudes towards giraffe and were very interested in seeing giraffes on their land. In terms of risk perception, on average, respondents did not see giraffes as a risk to personal, children’s, disease transfer, cattle and their land. Competition for water , lack of awareness, giraffe habitat encroachment and poverty were raised as the four main areas of conflict between giraffes and locals. With the dimensions of the conference theme “on value addition on commons”, as well as responses from the survey, we propose awareness creation, capacity building, livelihoods diversification and the promotion of gender equity and inclusivity to transform the conflict. This work provides a basis for action by the community and the policy makers to promote giraffe-farmers co-existence in eastern Kenya.
4. Competing Land-Use Claims in Elephant Habitat
University of Bern, Switzerland
Bannerghatta National Park (BNP), an urban forest adjacent to Bengaluru, is one of India’s most fragmented Asiatic elephant habitats. Crop raids by elephants in the surrounding villages are a regular event in Bannerghatta, especially during the harvest season. Linear intrusions, urban/industrial expansion, and mining are some threats to this habitat. Scientists have repeatedly iterated the importance of this forest ecosystem for the long-term survival of the city of Bengaluru. Protecting the endangered Elephas Maximus Indicus, a keystone species, is a sure way of ensuring the well-being of the forest. However, conservation efforts here routinely ignore large infrastructure projects and instead focus on channelling funds for costly (but ineffective) human-elephant conflict mitigation measures in an insidious process of alienating local communities from the forest environments. Recent studies on elephant behaviour have shown that individuals are adapting to the anthropogenic changes in the landscape. The importance of including and strengthening local knowledge systems and cultural norms conducive to conservation is well documented. In this scenario, competing land-use claims lead to more conflict and conservation programs by formal institutions that ignore the plurality and complexity of institutions remain ineffective. This paper looks at 4 case studies (including that of marginalised and powerful agents) using formal and informal institutions to lay claims to the land in and around BNP, revealing the complexity and the deep contradictions within institutional pluralism in BNP. The situational analysis of these interconnected case studies shows the power relations between the agents, the information asymmetry, and the role of cultural norms in this setting.
5. Conservation Marginality, Spatial (in)Justice and Biodiversity Conservation in Cape Town City
1University of Cape Town, South Africa, 2Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), South Africa
The City of Cape Metropole has 24 Nature Reserves, which fall within the Cape Floristic Region (CFR). Although the CFR is the smallest of the world’s six floral kingdoms, it is the richest in terms of biodiversity. This rich biodiversity is under serious threat due to a variety of reasons, including agriculture, urban housing, etc. Critically, poor communities living next to some of these reserves have been marginalised in both the proclamation and management of the reserves. In the absence of a convivial, just and restorative plan for the relationship between people and nature by the City, conservation sites become highly contested. The reserves become focal points for slowly chipping away at the legacy of the colonial vestiges of unjust old-style nature conservation by communities on the margins. The City becomes compelled to choose between nature and people, a binary in a country where nature reserves have historically been associated with violent land dispossession and other forms of spatial injustices. Using four nature reserves belonging to the City, we demonstrate how communities on the margins (geographically and management-wise) react and deal with such marginalisation. We argue that the City needs to explore ways that produce non-violent and convivial relationships between people and nature that transcend old physical, economic and social fences, and conceptions of property. This study explores themes of the urban conservation in the context of extreme poverty and spatial justice for communities living on the margins of conservation in the city of Cape Town.
Panel 9.5. B
1. Convivial Fences? Private property, trespass, and the need for spatial justice in South African conservation
Wageningen University, Netherlands
In contemporary South Africa, fences are ubiquitous. From urban centers to rural landscapes, fences are everywhere, dividing properties, fortifying estates, and protecting private interests. In conservation, likewise, fences are instrumental in legally assigning property rights over wildlife. Furthermore, they are deemed necessary to avoid human-wildlife conflict, save human and animal lives and, most of all, to safeguard wildlife properties for the benefit of their state or private owners. This obsession with fences and private property has, in practice, meant that colonial and apartheid-era racialized spatial injustices are not only often maintained, but also progressively hardened in the democratic era. Overcoming these injustices thus inevitably means confronting the question of private property and the fences that protect them. This paper does so by connecting debates on fences, private property and wildlife protection to emerging discussions around convivial conservation that seek to transform the conservation sector by combining biodiversity conservation with social justice concerns. It asks the question: can fences ever be convivial? The answer, just like fences themselves, is not straightforward. Reflecting on this question based on empirical evidence from different conservation landscapes, the paper argues that the idea and practice of trespass might be useful as part of a ‘process of unmaking’ to help challenge continuing processes of dispossession, injustice and unsustainable forms of conservation.
2. Thinking with bears. Tools for meaningful human-wildlife coexistence
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Brown bears (Ursus arctos) are strictly protected within the European Union, although they are no longer considered endangered in countries spanning the Carpathian Mountains. At the same time, bears’ recent strong comeback poses significant challenges to understanding regional wildlife conservation policies, including new ways of fostering coexistence and dealing with human-wildlife conflict. By looking at two study cases from Romania, the paper argues that the theoretical toolkit offered by the convivial turn in conservation is an effective way to understand human-bear coexistence in the complex spatial contexts of the Carpathian region as it can bring to the fore existing and long-established practices of sharing the landscape. The paper spotlights a range of institutionally regulated commoning practices associated with transhumance, religious celebrations, farming and dwelling which have evolved organically and constituted the backbone of sharing the landscape. Under intense pressure, they are still integrated into broader socio-ecological systems that transgress nature-culture dichotomies and are closer to what has recently been described as principles of conviviality. These principles will be critically scrutinized against more conventional approaches to brown bear conservation in the region, from active management and development of various forms of wildlife tourism to trophy hunting and attempts to address wildlife crime and bear trafficking. The paper is based on four months of multispecies ethnographic engagements in various areas of the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, complemented by data obtained from twenty expert interviews and a range of knowledge exchange events with key stakeholders.
3. Co-habitation in the Amazon: The jaguar between conservation organizations and local institutions
University of Bern, Switzerland
Indigenous communities and large carnivores such as the jaguar have lived alongside each other for centuries in the Amazon. Humans have established functioning rule-systems in order to manage co-habitation with these apex predators. However, a look back in history shows how colonization and settler practices have influenced and changed, sometimes even eradicated, prior existing institutions which were based on shamanistic knowledge of conviviality. Also, common-pool resource management systems have been altered or even replaced by private property and state ownership.
Today, conservation organizations put a lot of effort into the protection of flagship species, one of which is again the jaguar. With a few exceptions, local institutions are usually not sufficiently considered in their policies and multinational organizations struggle to embrace the concept of the Commons and work with communally owned territories. The contrast between on-the-ground, pragmatic local practices of co-habitation clash with Western ideas of sustainable human-wildlife interaction and conservation practices.
This paper looks at the interplay between local and global strategies of co-habitation with large carnivores, with the jaguar in the Ecuadorian Amazon as an example.
4. Lions Inc. Selling the commons for a handful of magic beans.
University of Berne, Switzerland
By all means, the savannah is a natural environment, is it not? Pastoralists are merely visitors to this grand African wilderness and use the natural grass lands to feed their cattle. But they do this unsustainably, their herds grow too large, their own population growth out of control. The natural savannah and all the wildlife are being threatened. What could possibly be done but separate the threat from this pristine, dwindling nature?
From the perspective of classical conservation biology and related disciplines, this has been the understanding of the issues in Kenya and beyond for a long time. To this day major actors in the conservation landscape of Kenya continue to follow and feed these narratives, while at the same time, growing their enterprise and power through transnational networks of financing and truth building. Therewith, expanding also the intellectual property over what nature is next to physical and legal measures to secure the landscape for a particular image of it. And although there are various camps within calling for change and experimenting with alternatives, powerful elites are hard to sway. In this political ecology the thought of reworking the actual history of the landscapes and gaining understanding of the loss of the commons seems a Sisyphean task. This presentation explores a case study in northern Kenya to demonstrate the wide divide between those whose understandings and powers shape landscapes and ontological realities.
