Sub-theme 9. Conservation, environmental justice and the commons
Panel 9.11.
Commons in the face of 30x30: bottom up and top-down responses
Common lands and waters and their communities can be strong contributors to environmental protection, covering large parts of the planet. In light of the Convention of Biological Diversity discussions on how much of the planet to protect, a debate has ensued on both percentages as well as ways in which this kind of conservation could occur. On the one hand, some call for strict measures to protect 30% to half of the earth. On the other hand, some Indigenous peoples call for protection of 80% of their lands under their leadership. In terms of methods, Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs) and Territories of Life (ICCAs) provide ways for common lands and waters to be recognized for their contributions to conservation, as do convivial conservation models.
Here we look consider how common lands and waters and their custodians are impacted by this changing policy sphere. Will they flourish and be recognized, or will these commons be grabbed and further diminished? In this panel, we seek contributions which show both commons-led actions to protect their territories, as well as those led by the state which may result in a variety of responses from commons-grabbing to co-management. What strategies are used by local communities? How do communities defend their territories from commons-grabbing under the new international conservation regime? What discourses and legal settings are or can be used to defend the commons? Contributions from the North and the South are welcome.
1. Conservation, Land Dispossession, and Resistance in Africa
1Department of Geography, University of Bergen, Norway, 2Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
While conservation organizations work to expand the network of protected areas in Africa to 30 percent or more of terrestrial land area, the flip side of such expansion is the mounting dispossession of rural land users, including subsistence-oriented farmers and pastoralists. This may result in forced migration to urban areas or elsewhere, but also to various forms of resistance: both covert and more overt instances of opposition to conservation. This paper examines the risks and determinants of these variable constellations of overt resistance. In doing so, it assesses whether or to what extent recent developments in violent resistance, including the growth of jihadist groups, can be linked to the expansion of a top-down environmental conservation agenda. Drawing on case studies from throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, the paper suggests that mainstream conservation interventions often underestimate the risks of local resistance to these initiatives. In a similar vein, ideology-focused explanations of violent extremism also tend to overlook the material determinants of violence and associated grievances rooted in the loss of access to land, natural resources, and customary forms of livelihood. Empirical studies of the latter factors—and particularly those which eschew single-factor determinism in favor of qualitative, multifactor explanation or contextualization—represent a promising new area for future research on resistance to conservation in political ecology, critical agrarian studies, and related fields.
2. A legacy of loss? Protected area expansion into Gabon’s Batéké Plateaux land commons
University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Gabon has committed to increase its conservation protection to 30% by 2030, in line with the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Global Biodiversity Framework. One area currently under consideration is the Parc National des Plateaux Batéké (PNPB) established in 2002, comprising vast areas of Batéké common lands and ancient savannas. These commons are de facto customary systems, but are not recognised in law, with most land belonging to the state. Its initial gazettement restricted access for livelihood and cultural practices. A new consultation to expand the PNPB is underway, using an FPIC process. Based on interviews from 2007 and 2022, we find that although local communities acknowledge that they are being consulted for the first time about park creation, they view the new proposal as a legacy of loss, especially in light of the 2002 gazettement. However, it was not the first time they have been subject to land appropriation. Colonial and post-colonial resettlement efforts (1950s-1960s) forcibly displaced Batéké villages from their commons. Using interviews and policy analysis, we trace how resettlement policy, the creation and proposed extension of the PNPB contribute to serial dispossession of people from their commons. Protected area creation and expansion efforts must avoid dispossession by collaborating with local communities, focusing on sustainable use protected area categories, and recognising cultural landscapes, Territories of Life (ICCA), and Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures. Now is the time to reverse the trend of serial dispossession and to promote policies that recognise the contribution of commons to biodiversity conservation.
3. Ibola Dja Bana Ba Massaha: the journey to legally recognized territories of life in Gabon
Nsombou Abalghe-Dzal Association (NADA), Gabon
Since August 2020, the Kota community of Massaha in northeastern Gabon has been striving to save their intact sacred forest and biocultural heritage from industrial logging. Should they succeed — as of December 2022, their struggle continues — this area would be Gabon’s first community-driven protected/conserved area. We will explore this historic dossier in terms of actions and responses: who has done what, and how have others responded? Actors include the community of Massaha (and the diversity of actors that comprise it), local and national Gabonese administration, logging companies, local civil society and media, international academics and NGOs. We will reflect on the current state of rights and responsibilities across these actors, and lessons learned for the legal recognition of territories of life (ICCAs) in Gabon.
4. The Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve and the role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in its establishment
Mamirauá Institute, Braziil
Protected areas, born in their modern conception from the Yellowstone National Park experience in the USA, were adopted globally as possibilities for controlling the territory, for safeguarding biodiversity and scenic landscapes. Its conventional strategy of “fences and fines” historically excluded the presence of human beings from their territories of life, a vision fraught with environmental racism and unilateral governance processes. In the Amazon region, despite the classic model of exclusion of people having been adopted in some areas, the practical and ethical unfeasibility of such perspective made it impossible to be widely adopt, inspiring reinterpretations of the concept of protected areas. In Brazil, Sustainable Development Reserves were born from the realization of the impossibility of conservation initiatives without taking into account the lives of people who directly depend on the natural resources that surround them, especially those who have unique material and symbolic relationships. The Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve, the first protected area of this category, had its institutionalization led by scientists and technicians, but with great emphasis on the importance of shared governance processes between the State and the Amazonian Indigenous Peoples and local community residents. This new category of protected area, widely adopted in Brazil, emphasizes the need for co-production of knowledge based on science and the traditional knowledge for the management of the territory. This Paper Abstract seeks to reflect on the process of establishing this new category of protected area and the role of IPLCs in this historical process.
