Mara J. Goldman

Evolution of models to support community and policy action with science: Balancing pastoral livelihoods and wildlife conservation in savannas of East Africa

We developed a “continual engagement” model to better integrate knowledge from policy makers, communities, and researchers with the goal of promoting more effective action to balance poverty alleviation and wildlife conservation in 4 pastoral ecosystems of East Africa. The model involved the creation of a core boundary-spanning team, including community facilitators, a policy facilitator, and transdisciplinary researchers, responsible for linking with a wide range of actors from local to global scales. Collaborative researcher−facilitator community teams integrated local and scientific knowledge to help communities and policy makers improve herd quality and health, expand biodiversity payment schemes, develop land-use plans, and fully engage together in pastoral and wildlife policy development. This model focused on the creation of hybrid scientific−local knowledge highly relevant to community and policy maker needs. The facilitation team learned to be more effective by focusing on noncontroversial livelihood issues before addressing more difficult wildlife issues, using strategic and periodic engagement with most partners instead of continual engagement, and reducing costs by providing new scientific information only when deemed essential. We conclude by examining the role of facilitation in redressing asymmetries in power in researcher−community−policy maker teams, the role of individual values and character in establishing trust, and how to sustain knowledge-action links when project funding ends.

Constructing connectivity: conservation corridors and conservation politics in East African rangelands.

Conservation corridors are perhaps the most visible expression of the new landscape conservation boom. Seen as the essential connecting structure across increasingly fragmented landscapes, corridors offer a structural solution to the complex problem of maintaining functional ecological connectivity. Yet the ability of corridors to connect landscapes and wildlife populations functionally remains unknown. Why then are corridors so popular in academic, practitioner, and policy circles? To explore this question I utilize two concepts—boundary objects and standardized packages—from science and technology studies to show how corridors are being constructed both as naturally occurring entities and as the best possible conservation solution, in some cases foreclosing other possibilities. The flexibility of the term (as a boundary object) combined with a standard set of tools, methods, and theories to support it, makes corridors an accessible concept across social worlds. A case study of the Tarangire Manyara Ecosystem of northern Tanzania, however, suggests that the very flexibility of corridors can backfire, once enmeshed in the local politics of wildlife conservation. When the voices of the concerned community members are heard, political and ecological challenges to corridors emerge.

Tracking Wildebeest, Locating Knowledge: Maasai and Conservation Biology Understandings of Wildebeest Behavior in Northern Tanzania

In this paper I argue for building dialogues between scientific and Maasai knowledge articulations, utilizing knowledge of wildebeest as an example. By locating Maasai and scientific knowledges regarding a particular subject (wildebeest) in relation to each other—in discourse and in practice—my intention is to create the space for their active engagement. I strive to (1) expose the situatedness, strengths, and weaknesses of both Maasai knowledge and scientific knowledge, and (2) illustrate the conditions within which collaborative dialogues can be constructed between the situated knowledges or knowledge spaces embodied by Maasai and conservation scientists. In doing so I hope to contribute to a shift in theoretical debates regarding knowledge integration for natural-resource management, away from ‘building bridges’ and towards the building of dialogues.

Maintaining Complex Relations with Large Cats: Maasai and Lions in Kenya and Tanzania

Research and conservation efforts often occur in areas outside of national parks where people live, often side-by-side and sometimes in conflict with large carnivores. In Tanzania and Kenya much of this work employs a human–wildlife conflict perspective and is based in Maasai areas, where many of the few remaining lions exist. We argue that while Maasai do come into conflict with lions, their relationship with the large cats is far more complex and includes positive dimensions. With quantitative and qualitative data, including Maasai narratives, we illustrate the nuanced ways in which Maasai relate with lions. Our aim is to highlight the complexity of Maasai perceptions of lions and the importance of understanding these complexities for improved lion conservation. The article contributes to a broader research agenda on human–wildlife interactions, the importance of perceptions, and the value of ethnographic research in conservation science.

Book review: Savannas of Our Birth: People, Wildlife, and Change in East Africa

Book detailsReid, RSSavannas of Our Birth: People, Wildlife, and Change in East Africa.Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; 2012.Hardcover, 416 pages; ISBN: 9780520273559

Circulating Wildlife: Capturing the Complexity of Wildlife Movements in the Tarangire Ecosystem in Northern Tanzania from a Mixed Method, Multiply Situated Perspective

While wildlife conservation practices have been exposed as being inherently political, the science behind wildlife monitoring is often less explored. In this chapter I expose the politics associated with wildlife monitoring by addressing the methodological challenges involved in counting and tracking migratory wildlife—from scientific and Maasai perspectives. I focus on an area in northern Tanzania where wildlife do not abide by conservation boundaries and share the landscape with people and livestock, challenging any ontological divide of nature from society. I contrast how local Maasai know wildlife in this space with different scientific approaches. The chapter highlights the benefits of a Critical Physical Geography approach that recognizes multiple ways of knowing ‘nature’, through ecological and ethnographic methods that are always informed by political-ethical concerns.

Beyond payments for ecosystem services: considerations of trust, livelihoods and tenure security in community-based conservation projects

In the search for successful community-based conservation models there has been a substantial focus on payment for ecosystem services. Such payments are measurable inputs that are often associated with conservation success. A closer look suggests a more complex, historically and culturally contingent picture. We argue that a focus on payment for ecosystem services as a defining factor for success in community conservation risks overlooking other, more significant processes. In particular, we argue for the importance of (1) tenure and livelihood security and (2) relations of trust, communication and respect. We draw on case studies from East Africa, but the findings are relevant for global community-based conservation endeavours.

A personal issue: feminist standpoint theory, epistemologies of ignorance, and perceptions of HIV transmission among northern Tanzanian wildlife conservation professionals

Abstract Drawing on ten months of qualitative research from 2009/10, we present a case study of situated HIV transmission knowledge claims among wildlife conservation actors in northern Tanzania. Utilizing feminist standpoint theory and epistemologies of ignorance, this article explores why a single professional group consistently articulated divergent explanations of the causal forces shaping on-going HIV transmission dynamics. Elite respondents were more likely to consistently attribute viral transmission to individual-level behaviors, while non-elite conservation actors more often situated HIV transmission dynamics in relation to extra-personal structural forces. This case study reveals the experiential grounding of HIV-related knowledge claims; illuminates the partiality of authoritative knowledge and the intersections of practices of power, embodied understandings and socio-structural location with hierarchical matrices of status and privilege; disrupts the presumed accuracy of certain forms of knowledge by foregrounding the insights of those in positions of subordination; and exposes ineffectual HIV/AIDS interventions in northern Tanzania.

Challenging Nature: Local Knowledge, Agroscience, and Food Security in Tanga Region, Tanzania

Painting with broad brush strokes, vigorously applied, enables the original, engaging, and innovative contributions of this book; at the same time, this approach imposes some chief limitations. On one hand, the broad themes serve to uncover a pulsating flow of ideas about nature, culture, and human experience across a mosaic of the nineteenth-century world’s vast spectrum of frontiers and “contact zones.” On the other hand, they tend to gloss over significant differences. Sachs, an environmentalist and former environmental journalist (his own experiences, especially travel across the landscapes of the western United States, are sprinkled throughout the book as engaging vignettes), is deeply committed to connecting this nineteenth-century current both forward to contemporary environmentalism and backward in time to Humboldt. Yet the connections are sketchy in both historical directions. The subsequent flow of these ideas through the twentieth century, for example, is charted through such diverse figures as Carl Sauer, Lewis Mumford, David Harvey, and Yi-Fu Tuan. Although geographers may take special interest, it is the differences, rather than similarities, that have defined not only the human–environment cornerstone of their scholarship but also the contours of modern geography. Broadness of the brush strokes also imposes limits on the capacity to make connections to Humboldt’s influence. Mostly, the influence is found in the mode of personal inspiration (through Humboldt’s renown and writings—principally Personal Narrative and Cosmos), rather than through certain ideas, models, or methods per se. In the case of Melville, moreover, the book fails to demonstrate a particular awareness of Humboldt’s works. It is also noteworthy that substantive scholarly depictions of “Humboldtian science”—such as the work of Canon—have treated nineteenth-century Americans at length, although their treatments are distinct. The distinctiveness of Sachs’s “Humboldt Current” is spurred by his concern about the future of environmentalism. Sachs sees environmentalism as needing to advance a socially just place for people, including the relatively disempowered who often live or work in places of paramount environmental interest. Toward this end his argument for the potential usefulness of Humboldt-style precursors is based on brilliantly original and nonpresentist historiography; nonetheless, it must be seen also within the context of such previous biographical interpretations of Humboldt as cosmopolitan internationalist and national unificationist (see Rupke’s recent meta-biography of Humboldt). Humboldt as environmental Romanticist fits neatly with the portraiture style of Sachs’s broad brush strokes. This perspective puts the greatest degree of emphasis on both the originality of Humboldt’s overall contributions and his influential impressionistic nature–culture fusions that are an abiding legacy (while skirting those Enlightenment-type activities of Humboldt that were more centered on specific concepts and certain scientific activities).