Tor A. Benjaminsen

ADVANCING A POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSES

In the past decade international and national environmental policy and action have been dominated by issues generally defined as global environmental problems. In this article, we identify the major discourses associated with four global environmental issues: deforestation, desertification, biodiversity use and climate change. These discourses are analysed in terms of their messages, narrative structures and policy prescriptions. We find striking parallels in the nature and structure of the discourses and in their illegibility at the local scale. In each of the four areas there is a global environmental management discourse representing a technocentric worldview by which blueprints based on external policy interventions can solve global environmental dilemmas. Each issue also has a contrasting populist discourse that portrays local actors as victims of external interventions bringing about degradation and exploitation. The managerial discourses dominate in all four issues, but important inputs are also supplied to political decisions from populist discourses. There are, in addition, heterodox ideas and denial claims in each of these areas, to a greater or lesser extent, in which the existence or severity of the environmental problem are questioned. We present evidence from location-specific research which does not fit easily with the dominant managerialist nor with the populist discourses. The research shows that policy-making institutions are distanced from the resource users and that local scale environmental management moves with a distinct dynamic and experiences alternative manifestations of environmental change and livelihood imperatives.

Conservation, green/blue grabbing and accumulation by dispossession in Tanzania

This article shows how wildlife and marine conservation in Tanzania lead to forms of ‘green’ or ‘blue grabbing’. Dispossession of local peoples land and resources has been gradual and piecemeal in some cases, while it involved violence in other cases. It does not primarily take the usual form of privatization of land. The spaces involved are still formally state or village land. It is rather the benefits from the land and natural resources that contribute to capital accumulation by more powerful actors (rent-seeking state officials, transnational conservation organizations, tourism companies, and the State Treasury). In both cases, restrictions on local resource use are justified by degradation narratives, while financial benefits from tourism are drained from local communities within a system lacking in transparent information sharing. Contrary to other forms of primitive accumulation, this dispossession is not primarily for wage labour or linked to creation of a labour reserve. It is the wide-open spaces without its users that are valued by conservation organizations and the tourism industry. The introduction of ‘community-based conservation’ worked as a key mechanism for accumulation by dispossession allowing conservation a foothold in village lands. This foothold produced the conditions under which subsequent dispossessions could take place.

Does climate change drive land-use conflicts in the Sahel?

While climate change scenarios for the Sahel vary and are uncertain, the most popularized prediction says there will progressively be drier conditions with more erratic rainfall. According to some, an increase in violent conflicts over scarce resources should also be expected. This article investigates the climate–conflict nexus in detail, focusing on a distinct area at the heart of the Sahel, the inland delta of the Niger river in the Mopti region of Mali. Two complementary analytical approaches are applied. The first consists of collection and analysis of court data on land-use conflicts, 1992–2009, from the regional Court of Appeal in Mopti. A comparison of the conflict data with statistics on contemporaneous climatic conditions gives little substance to claims that climate variability is an important driver of these conflicts. Second, we carried out a qualitative analysis of one of the many land-use conflicts in the region. Again, we find that factors other than those directly related to environmental conditions and resource scarcity dominate as plausible explanations of the violent conflict. We argue that three structural factors are the main drivers behind these conflicts: agricultural encroachment that obstructed the mobility of herders and livestock, opportunistic behavior of rural actors as a consequence of an increasing political vacuum, and corruption and rent seeking among government officials.

Land Reform, Range Ecology, and Carrying Capacities in Namaqualand, South Africa

Abstract In South African rangeland management, there is a long history of using the notion of carrying capacity as a central planning tool for environmental conservation and agricultural modernization. Today, in the new South Africa, the “need” for livestock keepers to adhere to a defined carrying capacity in order to conserve rangeland resources and to achieve economic development remains an institutionalized “fact.” In this article, we use interviews, livestock and rainfall data, policy documents, and aerial photos to discuss the idea of carrying capacity as it is currently used in the implementation of land reform in Namaqualand in the Northern Cape Province. This article is a contribution at the interface of human ecology and political ecology, linking environmental issues to economic constraints, land rights, social justice, and values. Policymakers and extension services usually see carrying capacity as a purely technical issue. We argue that this is problematic because it gives privilege to environmental sustainability and to one particular perception of the ideal landscape at the expense of livelihood security and poverty alleviation. It also perpetuates the colonial myth that the private ranch system is an ideal one, independent of disparate production goals and unequal economic opportunities and constraints, and it ignores evidence going back more than half a century that the Namaqualand range is capable of sustaining livestock densities far greater than those recommended. The winners that emerge from the current policy focus on carrying capacity are the few emergent black commercial farmers as well as conservationist interests; the losers are the majority of poor stockowners in the communal areas.

Natural Resource Management, Paradigm Shifts, and the Decentralization Reform in Mali

The mainstream view in natural resource management in African drylands has been that local people are responsible for natural resource degradation. Today, alternative views or new paradigms are emerging in several fields. These new paradigms, which support decentralization of natural resource management, are discussed in relation to the ongoing decentralization process in Mali. During the colonial period, heavily centralized governments were installed in all the French colonies. This structure was maintained by Malian governments after independence. However, following the recent transition to democracy, a decentralizing reform is being implemented. It is presently not clear whether these reforms will lead to mere deconcentration, involving the redistribution of administrative responsibilities within the central government, or whether Mali is heading toward real decentralization, devolving decision making powers to local communities. The gestion de terroir approach, which may be a useful tool in achieving decentralization in farming communities, would, in pastoral areas, cause more damage than benefit.

The Death of an Elephant: Conservation Discourses Versus Practices in Africa

Environmental conservation in Africa is predominantly presented by key actors in terms of a win–win discourse involving community participation and benefits. By using two case studies from Tanzania and South Africa, we demonstrate how the conservation practices observed do not fit the win–win discourse, but are more in line with the ‘fortress conservation’ that previously dominated both discourse and practice. The Tanzanian case shows how conservation practices may be associated with recentralization instead of devolution and economic marginalization instead of poverty alleviation. The South African case demonstrates that even in a clear‐cut case of fortress conservation, the rhetoric of the win–win discourse is applied. Furthermore, we argue that international conservationists as well as African authorities have their interests served by a presentation of conservation as advantageous to local people. Conservation NGOs are primarily concerned with extending large‐scale protection of landscapes even if poor people have to bear the costs. African governments also try to attract tourist investments. In addition, in the Tanzanian case, the wildlife sector provides an opportunity for personal rent‐seeking for government officials. Both conservation NGOs and African governments apply the win–win discourse to justify their interventions. One may argue, however, that practising the fortress approach might be counter‐productive to wildlife conservation, for instance by producing more opposition to conservation in the form of local killings of elephants.

The population–agriculture–environment nexus in the Malian cotton zone

Abstract Since the late 1950s, production of both cash-crop cotton and food crops has increased immensely in the Malian cotton zone. The response of farmers to external incentives or obstacles has been swift. In an opportunistic way, farmers seem to seek immediate and maximum profits. This has been particularly evident with the boom in both cotton and food crop production after the devaluation of the CFA franc in January 1994. Such reactions support the idea that it is not only African pastoral production systems which are non-equilibrial and opportunistic, but that this also characterises farming communities. Furthermore, the agricultural development in the cotton zone is regularly said to cause serious environmental degradation mainly through deforestation and soil depletion. The paper questions this view. The environmental transformation taking place is analysed, but whether this transformation represents ‘degradation’ or ‘improvement’ is largely a normative question subject to the values and environmental perceptions of the individual actors.

Fuelwood and Desertification: Sahel Orthodoxies Discussed on the Basis of Field Data From the Gourma Region in Mali

Abatraetr Until recently orthodoxies on fuelwood and desertification have formed the cornerstones of mainstream views in research and development related to natural resources in the Sahel. Based on an empirical study of the fuelwood situation in the Gourma region in Mali, this article throws a critical light on these viewpoints. There is no relationship between deforestation and domestic fuelwood consumption in the Gourma. The fuelwood used comes from dry wood collected from dead trees. Collection distances are, however, getting longer; so people need to use more time for the collection of wood, or more of their liited incomes have to be spent on buying fuelwood. Therefore, the fuelwood problem in the Gourma is of a social and economic rather than an ecological character. Sahel orthodoxies, which are manifested in the national Malian plan to fight desertification, are used by the Water and Forests Service to justify their policy of harassment towards the rural poor. These orthodox beliefs about environmental issues in drylands are generalizations which tend to gloss over important regional diversities. The data presented should therefore not be used to create new orthodoxies. They should rather be regarded as a warning not to use generalizations on local realities about which there is no reliable information.

Fuelwood, Timber and Deforestation in the Himalayas The Case of Basho Valley, Baltistan Region, Pakistan

Abstract During the past century the “Theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation” has dominated mainstream views concerning natural resource management in the Himalayan region. The main tenet of this theory is that increased human population has resulted in increased demands for natural resources, leading to severe resource depletion, especially deforestation. In this article, we use local data on fuelwood consumption and timber extraction from Basho Valley in northern Pakistan to investigate whether such general perceptions regarding forest depletion can be supported by an empirical case study. The results of this study indicate that local fuelwood collection is not the main cause of deforestation. Instead, the estimated deforestation of about 30% during the last 3 decades is primarily due to commercial harvesting and mismanagement by the government. A large amount of dead fallen wood and green trees was sold by the government or was taken out by a “timber mafia” that emerged during the main period of commercial harvesting in the 1970s and 80s. Thus, it is commercial and illegal harvesting that has left the forest in such a depleted state that it can no longer withstand the pressure from local use.

Guerrilla agriculture? A biopolitical guide to illicit cultivation within an IUCN Category II protected area

Protected areas now encompass nearly 13 percent of Earths terrestrial surface. Crucially, such protection often denotes exclusion – of farmers, of pastoralists and of forest-dwelling people. Engaging with the biopolitical implications of these displacements, this paper explores the emergence of an increasingly widespread type of resistance to conservation in the developing world: guerrilla agriculture, or the illicit cultivation of food within spaces zoned exclusively for the preservation of nonhuman life. In doing so, it undertakes a comparative analysis of three groups of farmers at Mount Elgon, Uganda, which support an overarching strategy of illegal cultivation with a variety of nonviolent, militant, discursive and formal-legal tactics. Far from passive victims of global economic and environmental change, we demonstrate how the struggles of farmers at Mount Elgon are frequently effective at carving out spaces of relative autonomy from both conservationists and the Ugandan state apparatus.