Bram Büscher

From hope to crisis and back again? A critical history of the global CBNRM narrative.

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has been on the ascendancy for several decades and plays a leading role in conservation strategies worldwide. Arriving out of a desire to rectify the human costs associated with coercive conservation, CBNRM sought to return the stewardship of biodiversity and natural resources to local communities through participation, empowerment and decentralization. Today, however, scholars and practitioners suggest that CBNRM is experiencing a crisis of identity and purpose, with even the most positive examples experiencing only fleeting success due to major deficiencies. Six case studies from around the world offer a history of how and why the global CBNRM narrative has unfolded over time and space. While CBNRM emerged with promise and hope, it often ended in less than ideal outcomes when institutionalized and reconfigured in design and practice. Nevertheless, despite the current crisis, there is scope for refocusing on the original ideals of CBNRM: ensuring social justice, material well-being and environmental integrity.

Accumulation by Conservation

Following the financial crisis and its aftermath, it is clear that the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation have become even more intense and plunged the global economy into unprecedented turmoil and urgency. Governments, business leaders and other elite agents are frantically searching for a new, more stable mode of accumulation. Arguably the most promising is what we call ‘Accumulation by Conservation’ (AbC): a mode of accumulation that takes the negative environmental contradictions of contemporary capitalism as its departure for a newfound ‘sustainable’ model of accumulation for the future. Under slogans such as payments for environmental services, the Green Economy, and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, public, private and non-governmental sectors seek ways to turn the non-material use of nature into capital that can simultaneously ‘save’ the environment and establish long-term modes of capital accumulation. In the paper, we conceptualise and interrogate the grand claim of AbC and argue that it should be seen as a denial of the negative environmental impacts of ‘business as usual’ capitalism. We evaluate AbCs attempt to compel nature to pay for itself and conclude by speculating whether this dynamic signals the impending end of the current global cycle of accumulation altogether.

Questioning REDD+ and the future of market-based conservation.

Robert Fletcher,∗ ¶ Wolfram Dressler,† Bram Büscher,∗ and Zachary R. Anderson‡ ∗Sociology of Development and Change, Wageningen University, De Leeuwenborch, Hollandseweg 1, 6707 KN Wageningen, Netherlands †School of Geography, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Melbourne, Australia ‡Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Room 5047, Toronto, ON M55 3G3, Canada

Social research and biodiversity conservation.

There is now widespread agreement that social research is relevant to conservation (Mascia et al. 2003). Extensive efforts have been made to improve communication between natural and social scientists interested in conservation (e.g., Buscher & Wolmer 2007; Adams 2008). However, this communication has been described as a “dialog of the deaf” (Agrawal & Ostrom 2006) and is challenging personally and professionally (Campbell 2005; Brosius 2006; Fox et al. 2006). The search for more effective communication continues (Redford 2011) and is aided by—among other things—textbooks of social science methods for conservation (e.g., Newing 2011) and the Society for Conservation Biology’s Social Sciences Working Group, established in 2003. Despite these efforts, we believe that the role and place of social research in conservation remains a major source of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and contention among conservation researchers. There are problems of method (e.g., use of both qualitative and quantitative methods in social research), of epistemology (e.g., positivist versus postpositivist, and problem solving versus critical approaches), of understanding (it takes time to become expert in any discipline), and of language (terminology and writing styles can make publications effectively incomprehensible, or at least deeply unattractive and difficult, for people trained in a different discipline). None of these problems is unique to interdisciplinary engagement between conservation biology and social research (e.g., Lele & Norgaard 2005; Barry & Born 2013), but they are nonetheless important in this context. In this article, we seek to contribute to interdisciplinary communication and understanding by describing

Seeking 'telos' in the 'transfrontier'? Neoliberalism and the transcending of community conservation in Southern Africa

In Southern Africa the last ten years have seen a rather dramatic shift in donor and state interest and funding from ‘community conservation’ to ‘transfrontier conservation’. The new trend broadens the aim of conservation–development interventions to also include interstate cooperation. The article critically analyzes this development within a wider shift in neoliberal politics. It is argued that this broader shift helped create the right ‘enabling environment’ for the transfrontier conservation discourse to be presented as an all-embracing and unifying ideological ‘model of meaning’. Moreover, underlying neoliberalisms contemporary political conduct is a strong reassertion and the actual neo-liberalisation of the state. It is this move that has truly enabled the ‘transfrontier’ to revive the telos of conservation in Southern Africa.

The militarization of anti-poaching: undermining long term goals?

Conservation is at a critical juncture because of the increase in poaching which threatens key species. Poaching is a major public concern, as indicated by the rises in rhino and elephant poaching, the United for Wildlife Initiative and the London Declaration, signed by 46 countries in February 2014. This is accompanied by an increasing calls for a more forceful response, especially to tackle the involvement of organized crime in wildlife trafficking. However, there is a risk that this will be counter-productive. Further, such calls are based on a series of assumptions which are worthy of greater scrutiny. First, calls for militarization are based on the idea that poverty drives poaching. Yet, poaching and trafficking are changing because of the shifting dynamics of poverty in supply countries, coupled with changing patterns of wealth in consumer markets. Second, the ways increases in poaching are being linked to global security threats, notably from Al Shabaab are poorly evidenced and yet circulate in powerful policy circles. There is a risk that militarization will place more heavily armed rangers in the centre of some of the most complex regional conflicts in the world (such as the Horn of Africa and Central Africa/Sahel region).

Toward a new understanding of the links between poverty and illegal wildlife hunting

Abstract Conservation organizations have increasingly raised concerns about escalating rates of illegal hunting and trade in wildlife. Previous studies have concluded that people hunt illegally because they are financially poor or lack alternative livelihood strategies. However, there has been little attempt to develop a richer understanding of the motivations behind contemporary illegal wildlife hunting. As a first step, we reviewed the academic and policy literatures on poaching and illegal wildlife use and considered the meanings of poverty and the relative importance of structure and individual agency. We placed motivations for illegal wildlife hunting within the context of the complex history of how wildlife laws were initially designed and enforced to indicate how hunting practices by specific communities were criminalized. We also considered the nature of poverty and the reasons for economic deprivation in particular communities to indicate how particular understandings of poverty as material deprivation ultimately shape approaches to illegal wildlife hunting. We found there is a need for a much better understanding of what poverty is and what motivates people to hunt illegally.

Half-Earth or Whole Earth? Radical ideas for conservation, and their implications

We question whether the increasingly popular, radical idea of turning half the Earth into a network of protected areas is either feasible or just. We argue that this Half-Earth plan would have widespread negative consequences for human populations and would not meet its conservation objectives. It offers no agenda for managing biodiversity within a human half of Earth. We call instead for alternative radical action that is both more effective and more equitable, focused directly on the main drivers of biodiversity loss by shifting the global economy from its current foundation in growth while simultaneously redressing inequality.

Nature 2.0: Exploring and theorizing the links between new media and nature conservation

Web 2.0 and social media applications that allow people to share, co-create and rate online content are crucial new ways for conservation organizations to reach audiences and for concerned individuals and organizations to be (seen as) ‘green’. These dynamics are rapidly changing the politics and political economy of nature conservation. By developing the concept of ‘nature 2.0’ and building on empirical insights, the article explores and theorizes these changes. It argues that online activities stimulate and complicate the commodification of biodiversity and help to reimagine ideas, ideals and experiences of (‘pristine’) nature. By exploring the implications of these arguments in relation to several key themes in new media studies, the article aims to provide building blocks for further investigations into the world of nature 2.0 and the effects of new media on human–nature dynamics more broadly.

Reassessing Fortress Conservation? New Media and the Politics of Distinction in Kruger National Park

The idea of protected areas as fortress conservation has long been debated and heavily criticized. In practice, however, the paradigm is alive and well and has, in some cases and especially due to rapid increases in poaching, seen major reinforcements. This article contributes to discussions that aim to reassess fortress conservation ideas and practices by analyzing how new online media are changing the politics of access to and control over increasingly militarized protected areas. Focusing on South Africas Kruger National Park, one of the most iconic and mediated conservation areas globally, this article argues that new media such as online groups, webcams, and mobile phone apps encourage a new politics of social distinction in relation to the park and what it represents. These politics of distinction lead to complex new ways in which the boundaries of “fortress Kruger” are rendered (more) permeable and (more) restrictive at the same time. The article concludes that it is precisely through rendering park boundaries more permeable that new media technologies could help to reinforce the racialized and unequal hierarchies of the social order that fortress conservation was built on.