Sub-theme 9. Conservation, environmental justice and the commons
Panel 9.13.
Exploring the potential of indigenous and community-led innovative governance schemes towards a more just conservation
Nature conservation initiatives such as protected areas, REDD+, and other top-down approaches have been criticized for severely limiting Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC)’s access to their commons, and at worst, dispossessing them from their ancestral territories and resources. However, there also exist successful examples of innovative governance schemes where IPLC were able to establish alliances with the State or other conservation actors to keep, regain, or even strengthen some level of sovereignty over their lands. These innovations include for instance protected areas co-management mechanisms, IPLC conserved territories and areas (or “Territories of Life”), locally managed marine areas (LLMAs), and the Amazon Indigenous REDD.
Under which condition can conservation initiatives become an empowering tool for IPLC to assert their land rights, beyond enabling their mere participation? What are the outcomes of IPLC-led conservation governance schemes on IPLC’s well-being and on nature conservation? What are barriers and opportunities for the establishment of such schemes? And what policies should be designed to support them? Finally, to which extend may IPLC-led governance schemes actually influence the mainstream conservation regime, including its underlying values? From a decolonial and environmental justice perspective, these are some of the questions that we propose to explore in this panel. We invite papers based on empirical studies from different parts of the world, but we also welcome review studies and conceptual and methodological contributions that can help us to reflect on these topics.
Accepted Papers
Short Introduction: Exploring the potential of indigenous and community-led innovative conservation governance schemes: Setting the stage
1Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Switzerland, 2Wyss Academy for Nature, University of Bern, Switzerland
Nature conservation initiatives such as protected areas, REDD+, and other top-down approaches have been criticized for severely limiting Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC)’s access to their commons, and at worst, dispossessing them from their ancestral territories and resources. However, there also exist successful examples of innovative governance schemes where IPLC were able to establish alliances with the State or other conservation actors to keep, regain, or even strengthen some level of sovereignty over their lands. These innovations include for instance protected areas co-management mechanisms, IPLC conserved territories and areas (or “Territories of Life”), locally managed marine areas (LLMAs), and the Amazon Indigenous REDD.
In this introductory paper, based on a review of the most important literature in the field, the panel chairs will set the stage on this important topic. They will also introduce the session’s guiding questions and contributions.
1. Co-producing conservation: Conditions shaping the integration of indigenous and western scientific knowledge systems in decision-making processes
1School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, USA, 2School of Geography, Development and Environment, University of Arizona, USA
Recent studies hypothesize that the integration of indigenous and western scientific knowledge systems in decision-making processes can lead to more sustainable and just conservation outcomes. We use a comparative case study research design to analyse governance processes of two protected areas – Bears Ears National Monument and Chaco Culture National Historical Park, US – as critical cases in this regard. Both cases encompass an ecologically intact desert, thousands of archaeological sites left by the ancestors of Native American tribes, and abundant energy resources resulting in long-lasting conflicts between resource extraction and environmental conservation. Bears Ears is co-managed by the federal government and a five-member commission consisting of five sovereign Native American tribes, whereas Chaco is solely managed by the federal government. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and document and archival research. Data were analysed according to a qualitative content analysis approach. The results of the Bears Ears case demonstrate how alliances between conservation organizations and tribes can deliver sustainability transformations and create tangible solutions legible to decision-makers that fulfil ecological and tribal conservation goals. The Chaco case shows how competing interests between and within tribes led to the formation of two opposing groups: one, a coalition between conservation organizations and tribes, and another solely tribal group. The comparative study provides insights on (i) how a meaningful knowledge co-production needs to treat traditional and conventional knowledge systems with equal respect and (ii) how co-production processes could face insurmountable challenges if resource interests within and between tribes compete.
2. Facing conflicts with innovations: socio-ecological governance innovations of Muchik peasant commoners in the Chaparri Nature Reserve, Lambayeque, Peru
KU Leuven, Belgium
Growing socio-environmental conflicts coupled with the incapacity and unwillingness of the public sector to meet society demands for conservation, encouraged Latin American conservationists to diversify their governance approaches. Participatory and people-centered approaches were fostered by establishing PAs led by the civil society, private actors, and peasant and indigenous communities. The Chaparri Nature Reserve is considered a pioneer in community-based private conservation. This reserve was created by request of the community Muchik Santa Catalina de Chongoyape, becoming in 2001 the first Peruvian private protected area (PPA) led by a peasant community, with more than 80% of their communal lands given for conservation. Predominantly self-managed, Chaparri promoted research, environmental education, and ecotourism at a small scale, which created initial bridges between conservation and sustainable productive activities. However, in the last years, many initiatives were jeopardized due to a long-lasting conflict caused by an irrigation megaproject promoted for the extension of the agricultural frontier. This paper aims to contribute to the common’s literature with an in-depth analysis of innovations in governance in new spaces for conservation. The case of Chaparri illustrates the emergence of PPAs as a new governance approach for just conservation, which fosters new socio-political cultures and inclusive institutions connected to conservation while resisting land and water grabbing threats. By exerting a newfound agency, the commoners of Chaparri are developing alternatives to counteract this adverse context, recover from oppression and re-create their identities and local ties through a (re-)connection with nature conservation.
3. Institutionalization of the community level on the Argentina’s Chaco dry forest. The case of the “Bosques Nativos y Communidad” project.
Lab PRODIG, Université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne, France
Since the end of the 1990s, Argentina has benefited from several international funds for the implementation of its environmental policy. Initially devoted to institutional and administrative strengthening and to the creation of protected areas, the projects have gradually taken into account the productive dimension of forest areas. Lately their objectives have come closer to those of rural development projects. They have also especially focused on one eco-region: the dry forests of the Chaco. This paper would define the processes of institutionalization of the community level implied in the implementation of one of these projects called “Bosques Nativos y Communidad” (Native Forest and Community) and implemented by the World Bank and the Argentine Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development between 2016 and 2021. Based on a case study in a village in the Salado Norte area in the province of Santiago del Estero, I will show that Ostrom’s designs principles do not allow us to characterize the forest management practices of the so-called “communities” but provide a frame to understand the multiple spatial, social, environmental or economic impacts of a project that claims strong affinity to the community forest management objectives. This will ultimately lead me to illustrate the differences and interactions between the « underground commons » (Harney & Motin, 2013) and the institutionalized commons in the context of the forests of the Argentina’s Chaco.
4. Indigenous Nations of the southwestern region of the Peruvian Amazon: new governance of protected natural areas?
SIT World Learning and ICCA Consortium, Peru
Since the 70s, in the southwestern region of the Peruvian Amazon, the process of establishing protected areas in the territories of indigenous peoples began. Almost all of these protected areas were established without regard to indigenous peoples’ land tenure rights over these spaces. Although there is a model in Peru that seeks to incorporate the participation of these indigenous peoples (Communal Reserves) in the management of these protected areas, there are serious questions about their true institutional purposes. This is even more serious when it comes to other conservation categories such as National Parks and National Reserves.
In the Madre de Dios Region of Peru there are two national parks, a national reserve, a communal reserve and an area reserved for indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation not considered for conservation. In all these cases, since 2013, indigenous peoples have begun to progressively develop processes of self-proclamation and self-government of their ancestral territories following the international framework of indigenous peoples’ rights. Their visions seem to be to recover their legitimate rights to their ancestral territories as a common good of their peoples. The question that this lecture aims to answer is: what is the relationship of the self-proclamation of these nations with the governance of these protected areas in their ancestral territories?
5. Forests in transition, people in motion: The livelihood bricolage in conservation and development in Central Vietnam
Wyss Academy for Nature, University of Bern, Switzerland
Vietnam’s forests are in transition. Underneath the superficial smooth curve of forest cover statistics, more complex transitions have occurred. These are long-term outcomes of state-led policies and interventions to transform upland forests into a sustainable multi-functional forest frontier. How do uplanders, whose culture was traditionally based on shifting cultivation, hunting, and non-timber forest products collection, deal with these changes? In terms of ‘livelihood bricolage’, the paper describes how local people have transformed livelihood portfolios to enhance resilience capacity to cope with the changes in their living landscape. The successive state-led conservation interventions have established a system of rules on conserving forests, banned and transformed local forest practices, but provided lucrative opportunities from large-scale restoration programs, tree plantations, and community-based forest management initiatives. Far from being passive victims of conservation, the villagers have been enrolled actively in the state-making processes. They have navigated between conservation initiatives, institutions, markets, and local ecological conditions and adopted new forest management attitudes and behaviors into their daily practice. Beyond ‘finding a way to live’, aspirations towards modernity and the pride of the ethnic identity have inspired local villagers to form their new forest livelihood patterns and gradually become the ‘new forest people’. The paper provides insightful evidence to highlight the leadership role of local communities in determining their own development path to living in harmony with nature and coping with changes. Their local knowledge equips them with experiences and expertise to ‘bricolage’ practical and
