Frédéric Landy

Why Did Leopards Kill Humans in Mumbai but not in Nairobi? Wildlife Management in and Around Urban National Parks

Why did leopards kill humans in Mumbai but not in Nairobi? Our initial hypothesis was that a different form of park management, more in harmony with that of the city, might explain the absence of leopard attacks on humans in Nairobi. We speculated that the actors in the two spheres coordinate their efforts to ensure better oversight of wildlife. This hypothesis was not confirmed. Instead, we see the importance of factors such as predation by leopards on populations of domestic dogs, the landscape configurations of the interfaces between park and city, and the diversity of representations of nature or social disparities, which generate differing vulnerabilities. This leads to a two-level conclusion regarding the role of the national trajectories in these countries of the Global South in respect of environmental concerns and their contribution to the new ways of understanding our relation to nature.

Urban National Parks and the Rich: Friends with Benefits

This chapter poses the question of the inter-relation between the rich, nature and the national parks. It wants to illuminate the role of the (upper) middle classes in the conservation of the urban environment. What is the influence of protected nature on the territorial strategies of the well-to-do population? Conversely, what is the influence of the rich on the national parks in terms of their creation, management and sustainability? To illustrate the answers to this question, the chapter ends by asking what the situation of the national parks would be without the urban rich, and what would become of the urban rich without the national parks. Urban national parks are for the rich both a tool that allows them to consolidate their privileged situation in the city, and a glass ceiling, given that the governing of a park with relevance to the national scale tends to reduce their range of influence. It must be concluded that the rich can be as much of a nuisance as an asset for these parks.

Categorisation of People and Places, Indigenous Peoples and Urban National Parks: Between Eviction, Instrumentality and Empowerment

This chapter points to the difficulty decision makers have in categorising peoples and places. National parks are areas governed by specific rules, which generally prohibit human beings from living within their borders: their categorisation in terms of both spatial boundaries and management rules can either label local dwellers as “encroachers” or legal inhabitants. Similarly, the category of “indigenous peoples” is the product of a political decision that gives or denies certain rights to the groups concerned. This paper is about the links between these two categories of space and people, urban national parks and indigenous peoples. It compares the spatial and political impacts of the categorisation of peoples in Mumbai, Nairobi, Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro. Ethnicity is explored as a marker of environmental governmentality. As such it can be used, recognised or refused in various commercial, political or social enterprises.

The “Poor”, the Park and the City: Policies of Social Stigmatisation Rather Than Inclusion

This chapter outlines the complex and disputed links between poverty and environmental protection/destruction. It then goes on to show how park management policies, though claiming (at least in Rio and Cape Town) affiliation with the integrative paradigm pursued in the great international directives, continue to maintain processes of exclusion and environmental injustice that are reflected in the marginalisation of poor populations. The case of informal housing is also examined, in order to show how the populations of the four cities considered continue to use natural resources despite the fencing of protected spaces, and yet do not constitute a real factor of environmental deterioration, except in Mumbai. In its final part, the chapter discusses the management choices in the four national parks, on the spectrum between entrepreneurial management and nationalisation, assessing the extent to which poor populations are allowed access to nature and the management structures.

Afterword: Seen Through the Eyes of Researchers, Are Practitioners Partners, Research Objects or Hurdles?

The cycle of BiodiverCities conferences has been an interesting tool contributing to exchanges between researchers and practitioners, and between practitioners themselves. However, it was not enough to build long-lasting links or bring out common projects. Practitioners have often been considered as objects of research, or even perceived as hindering research, which is the argument of the second section of this chapter. Why this—if not total, at least dominant—failure? To what extent are researchers responsible? Why did practitioners not show more interest in collaboration? Was it the format or the temporality of the research that did not manage to interest managers? Or are the human and social sciences still not recognised as sufficiently important in the management of national parks with their primary biodiversity conservation objectives, and where human presence is still taboo? All these questions are dealt with in the third section.

Introduction: The Quest for Naturbanity

In this introduction, the neologism “naturbanity” is discussed as an expression of the necessity for cities endowed with a national park to integrate it into their functioning. Conversely, such parks must take into account their location in an urban environment, both as a source of heavy pressures on nature and as a nexus of incentives to support its conservation. What we call the principle of non-exclusivity (neither the city nor the park has a right nor even the possibility to negate the other’s presence) summarises the main argument of our book. The fact that park and city must live together, for better or for worse, must be considered empirically: the challenge of informal settlement encroachment and industrial pollution etc., may be balanced by the support of urban “civil society” for funding parks and awareness of ecosystem services provided by the park to the city, etc. It must also be considered philosophically, since naturbanity blurs the old “ modern” dichotomy of nature/culture: animals and human beings can often jump the physical and ideological wall separating many parks from the adjacent city. This introduction concludes by illuminating the structure of the book.

What Makes Urban National Parks “Urban”? Their Specifics Within the National Systems of Protection

How does the urbanity of Nairobi National Park (NNP) differ from that of other protected areas (PAs)? To address this question our study follows three stages. First, taking the point of view of tourists, it shows how the tourist experience at NNP differs from that at other Kenyan PAs. Next, from the point of view of managers and park rangers it shows what makes NNP different from other PAs. Finally, widening the observation to the metropolitan scale, it emphasises how NPP participates in the fabrication of the city and distinguishes itself from other PAs in Kenya. All these differences make NNP a “metropark”, a type of hybrid space between a “natural park” and an “urban garden” which incarnates a kind of “naturbanity” calling into question the abrupt divide between nature and city.

Conclusion: National Parks Between Urbanisation and Globalisation

As this volume draws to an end, what conclusions can we reach? How can we summarise our findings? For many years the forest of Mumbai’s national park was managed like a “fortress”—not that this prevented leopards from getting out nor thousands of slum dwellers getting in: what has it in common with the fynbos shrub of Cape Town’s national park, which is crisscrossed by asphalt roads as well as numerous economically disparate residential suburbs, which contribute to its image as a world-class city enhanced by the “nature” criterion?

The History of the Four Parks: Favouring or Protecting from Urban Growth, Different Successive Conservation Policies

All four parks studied here reflect histories that can be traced back to colonial times. These trajectories are furthermore not isolated in their geographical places but have been largely shaped by their inclusion and connections at the colonial and global levels. Among the conservation issues that came before biodiversity, two clearly emerge as recurrent issues across the three continents: water governance and forest protection. Today, all urban parks experience new development and extension in the form of environmental networks and ecological connectivity that try to both link the park with the concrete city, and combine the park with other ecological units at the built-up area and regional levels.

POLÍTICAS AMBIENTAIS COMPARADAS ENTRE PAÍSES DO SUL: pressão antrópica em Áreas de Proteção Ambiental Urbanas*

This paper aims to compare the spatial policies and their actions towards the urban areas of environmental protection in two cities, Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Mumbai (India), taking as an organizing element the presence of urban forests in the form of protected conservation areas (Category II , IUCN).Sartori (1981) highlighting similarities and differences is a simple, effective and interesting method to comparative public policies, emphasizing that these elements may be part of local discourse. With this emphasis, we attempt to analyze the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and Cantareira State Park and highlight the factors chosen for comparison: the conversion of forest to urban conservation areas and territorial cons icts between environmental and urban uses. We conclude the article with the analysis of policy strategies.