J. Peter Brosius

Representing communities: Histories and politics of community‐based natural resource management

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a loosely woven transnational movement, based particularly on advocacy by nongovernmental organizations working with local groups and communities, on the one hand, and national and transnational organizations, on the other, to build and extend new versions of environmental and social advocacy that link social justice and environmental management agendas. One of the most significant developments has been the promotion of community‐based natural resource management programs and policies. However, the success of disseminating this paradigm has raised new challenges, as concepts of community, territory, conservation, and indigenous are worked into politically varied plans and programs in disparate sites. We outline a series of themes, questions, and concerns that we believe should be addressed both in the work of scholars engaged in analyzing this emergent agenda, and in the efforts of advocates and donor institutions who are engaged in designing and implementing s...

Analyses and Interventions: Anthropological Engagements with Environmentalism

Recent years have witnessed the rapid proliferation and growth of local, national, and transnational environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), national bureaucracies concerned with environmental management, and transnational institutions charged with implementing various forms of global environmental governance. This proliferation and recent theoretical trends within the discipline have contributed to a dramatic upsurge in interest among anthropologists in analyzing this phenomenon. The present discussion is an attempt to take stock of this current research trend within anthropology and to contextualize it within a larger set of topical and theoretical concerns. I examine some of the theoretical and practical sources of our interest in environmentalism and review a series of recent trends in the anthropological analysis of environmental movements, rhetorics, and representations. I also identify a set of other issues that I believe a critically informed anthropology might address in the production of future ethnographic accounts of environmental discourses, movements, and institutions.

Acknowledging Conservation Trade‐Offs and Embracing Complexity

There is a growing recognition that conservation often entails trade-offs. A focus on trade-offs can open the way to more complete consideration of the variety of positive and negative effects associated with conservation initiatives. In analyzing and working through conservation trade-offs, however, it is important to embrace the complexities inherent in the social context of conservation. In particular, it is important to recognize that the consequences of conservation activities are experienced, perceived, and understood differently from different perspectives, and that these perspectives are embedded in social systems and preexisting power relations. We illustrate the role of trade-offs in conservation and the complexities involved in understanding them with recent debates surrounding REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), a global conservation policy designed to create incentives to reduce tropical deforestation. Often portrayed in terms of the multiple benefits it may provide: poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and climate-change mitigation; REDD may involve substantial trade-offs. The gains of REDD may be associated with a reduction in incentives for industrialized countries to decrease carbon emissions; relocation of deforestation to places unaffected by REDD; increased inequality in places where people who make their livelihood from forests have insecure land tenure; loss of biological and cultural diversity that does not directly align with REDD measurement schemes; and erosion of community-based means of protecting forests. We believe it is important to acknowledge the potential trade-offs involved in conservation initiatives such as REDD and to examine these trade-offs in an open and integrative way that includes a variety of tools, methods, and points of view.

Analyses and Interventions

Recent years have witnessed the rapid proliferation and growth of local, national, and transnational environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), national bureaucracies concerned with environmental management, and transnational institutions charged with implementing various forms of global environmental governance. This proliferation and recent theoretical trends within the discipline have contributed to a dramatic upsurge in interest among anthropologists in analyzing this phenomenon. The present discussion is an attempt to take stock of this current research trend within anthropology and to contextualize it within a larger set of topical and theoretical concerns. I examine some of the theoretical and practical sources of our interest in environmentalism and review a series of recent trends in the anthropological analysis of environmental movements, rhetorics, and representations. I also identify a set of other issues that I believe a critically informed anthropology might address in the production of future ethnographic accounts of environmental discourses, movements, and institutions.

Conservation from AboveImposing Transboundary Conservation

SUMMARY Some years ago there was a proliferation of bottom-up models for conservation under the rubric of community-based conservation. More recently there has been a resurgence of protectionist approaches to conservation, and conservation science has moved to large-scale modeling and planning under rubrics such as ecoregional planning, ecosystem management, and transboundary protected areas. Though recognizing that there are compelling reasons for these shifts, we believe that there are many possible paths to implementation and that it is necessary to maintain community and participation as central precepts of conservation. Our argument proceeds in three stages. First, we examine a series of key concepts and approaches in contemporary conservation that we consider problematic. Second, we describe three current research trajectories that we believe have considerable promise in contributing to the development of future approaches to conservation. Finally, we propose a number of specific measures that we believe will lead toward the implementation of conservation initiatives that are simultaneously more effective, just, and equitable. Central to our argument is the call for a social definition of conservation. We also stress the need for practitioners to devote more effort to building local constituencies for conservation. This approach validates and encourages small-scale, local conservation efforts, links conservation with issues such as soil fertility degradation and loss of traditional food crop varieties, and entails a new kind of relationship between grassroots groups and international organizations.

Seeing (and Doing) Conservation Through Cultural Lenses

In this paper, we first discuss various vantage points gained through the authors’ experience of approaching conservation through a “cultural lens.” We then draw out more general concerns that many anthropologists hold with respect to conservation, summarizing and commenting on the work of the Conservation and Community Working Group within the Anthropology and Environment Section of the American Anthropological Association. Here we focus on both critiques and contributions the discipline of anthropology makes with regard to conservation, and show how anthropologists are moving beyond conservation critiques to engage actively with conservation practice and policy. We conclude with reflections on the possibilities for enhancing transdisciplinary dialogue and practice through reflexive questioning, the adoption of disciplinary humility, and the realization that “cross-border” collaboration among conservation scholars and practitioners can strengthen the political will necessary to stem the growing commoditization and ensuing degradation of the earth’s ecosystems.

Collaborative Event Ethnography: Conservation and development trade-offs at the fourth world conservation congress

Ideas about conservation have shifted dramatically over the last century. From an early focus on state-run parks and protected areas, to the role of local communities and markets in conservation, to engaging the private sector, what conservation is and how we go about doing it continues to evolve (Adams & Hulme 2001; Brosius 2006). While there have been many shifts, in this study we are interested in the recent emphasis on ‘the global’ as the scale at which conservation policies and practices are conceptualised, articulated, and (ideally) implemented (Taylor & Buttel 1992). This shift, or scalingup, is evident in a number of trends: the emergence of ‘big’ international NGOs as key actors in conservation (Chapin 2004); increased emphasis on conservation practice at large, transboundary scales (ecoregions, seascapes) dictated ostensibly by ecology (Brosius & Russell 2003); the continued proliferation of protected areas, the dominant symbol (and measure) of western-influenced nature conservation (Zimmerer 2006); and, of particular interest in our research, the increased use of international meetings and agreements to establish the goals, targets, and means of achieving conservation. This collection of nine papers is a result of research conducted at one such meeting—the Fourth World Conservation Congress (WCC) hosted by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in Barcelona, October 5–14, 2008. The IUCN is the world’s ‘largest global environmental network’, whose stated mission is to ‘influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable’ (http://www.iucn.org/about/). IUCN was originally formed in 1948 as the International Union for the Preservation of Nature, and is a hybrid of government and private interest groups (McCormick 1989). Today, with more

Prior Transcripts, Divergent Paths: Resistance and Acquiescence to Logging in Sarawak, East Malaysia

In 1987, there was an uprising of sorts in the remote interior headwaters of Sarawak, East Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. In March of that year, Penan hunter-gatherers in the Baram and Limbang Districts of Sarawak suddenly erected more than a dozen blockades against logging companies. Since that time, scores of Penan have been arrested for resisting the activities of these companies by erecting more blockades and engaging in other acts of civil disobedience. In doing so, they have achieved a great deal of international reknown among environmentalists, indigenous rights activists, and the Euramerican public at large. Their story has received broad international media coverage, and scores of celebrities, from politician Al Gore and musician Jerry Garcia to Prince Charles, have spoken out on their behalf. The Malaysian government has responded to these efforts with a vigorous media campaign of its own and, in the process, has come to play an increasingly visible

Studying Global Environmental Meetings to Understand Global Environmental Governance: Collaborative Event Ethnography at the Tenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity

This special issue introduces readers to collaborative event ethnography (CEE), a method developed to support the ethnographic study of large global environmental meetings. CEE was applied by a group of seventeen researchers at the Tenth Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) to study the politics of biodiversity conservation. In this introduction, we describe our interests in global environmental meetings as sites where the politics of biodiversity conservation can be observed and as windows into broader governance networks. We specify the types of politics we attend to when observing such meetings and then describe the CBD, its COP, challenges meetings pose for ethnographic researchers, how CEE responds to these challenges generally, and the specifics of our research practices at COP10. Following a summary of the contributed papers, we conclude by reflecting on the evolution of CEE over time.

Locations and representations: Writing in the political present in Sarawak, East Malaysia

Since 1987, the Malaysian state of Sarawak has been the focus of a broad‐based transnational environmental campaign concerned with large‐scale mechanized logging and the dispossession of indigenous communities. In the present discussion I examine a series of concerns relating to my efforts to write a history of the Sarawak campaign. I do so as a way of elucidating the argument that taking seriously the multi‐sitedness of such research projects, particularly those that focus on subaltern social movements, demands that anthropologists and other scholars engaged in the study of such movements rethink the implications of their ethnographic presence and their efforts at representation. This in turn might have a transformative effect on their thinking about the possibility of alternative forms of ethnographic practice.