- Sociology of Development and Change Group
De Leeuwenborch, Hollandseweg 1
Wageningen University and Research
6707 KN Wageningen
The Netherlands
Rob Fletcher
Wageningen University, Sociology of Development and Change, Faculty Member
- Development Studies, Political Ecology, Environmental Governance, Conservation, Ecotourism, Climate Change, and 10 moreNeoliberalism, Anarchist Studies, Critical Geography, Human Geography, Cultural Geography, International Development, Anthropology, Radical Geography, Political Geography, and Sustainable Developmentedit
- Associate Professor in the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen Universityedit
Global biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate, leading to calls for urgent change in how humans govern, conserve, and live with non-human species. It is argued that this change must be radical and transformative, and must challenge... more
Global biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate, leading to calls for urgent change in how humans govern, conserve, and live with non-human species. It is argued that this change must be radical and transformative, and must challenge the structures and systems that shape biodiversity conservation. This book brings together a diverse group of authors to explore the potential for transforming biodiversity conservation, focusing on one particular proposal called convivial conservation: a vision, framework, and set of principles for a more socially just, democratic and inclusive form of biodiversity governance.
Drawing on a rich mix of disciplinary perspectives and diverse case studies centering on human-wildlife interactions, the authors demonstrate the potential for transformation in biodiversity conservation that supports human-wildlife coexistence. The authors argue that this desired transformation will only be possible if the status quo is truly disrupted, and that convivial conservation has the potential to contribute to this disruption. However, convivial conservation must evolve in response to, and in harmony with, a plurality of ideas and perspectives, and resist becoming another top-down mode of conservation. To this end, a rich mix of visions, ideas, and pathways are put forward to move convivial conservation from principles to practice.
The wealth of ideas offered in this collection provides important insights for students, academics, policy-makers, conservation professionals, and anyone who wants to think differently about biodiversity conservation and explore how it can be transformed towards a more just and abundant future.
Drawing on a rich mix of disciplinary perspectives and diverse case studies centering on human-wildlife interactions, the authors demonstrate the potential for transformation in biodiversity conservation that supports human-wildlife coexistence. The authors argue that this desired transformation will only be possible if the status quo is truly disrupted, and that convivial conservation has the potential to contribute to this disruption. However, convivial conservation must evolve in response to, and in harmony with, a plurality of ideas and perspectives, and resist becoming another top-down mode of conservation. To this end, a rich mix of visions, ideas, and pathways are put forward to move convivial conservation from principles to practice.
The wealth of ideas offered in this collection provides important insights for students, academics, policy-makers, conservation professionals, and anyone who wants to think differently about biodiversity conservation and explore how it can be transformed towards a more just and abundant future.
Research Interests:
Failing Forward documents the global rise of neoliberal conservation as a response to biodiversity loss and unpacks how this approach has managed to "fail forward" over time despite its ineffectiveness. At its core, neoliberal... more
Failing Forward documents the global rise of neoliberal conservation as a response to biodiversity loss and unpacks how this approach has managed to "fail forward" over time despite its ineffectiveness. At its core, neoliberal conservation promotes market-based instruments intended to reconcile environmental preservation and economic development by harnessing preservation itself as the source of both conservation finance and capital accumulation more generally. Robert Fletcher describes how this project has developed over the past several decades along with the expanding network of organizations and actors that have come together around its promotion. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, he explores why this strategy continues to captivate states, nongovernmental organizations, international financial institutions, and the private sector alike despite its significant deficiencies. Ultimately, Fletcher contends, neoliberal conservation should be understood as a failed attempt to render global capitalism sustainable in the face of its intensifying social and ecological contradictions. Consequently, the only viable alternative capable of simultaneously achieving both environmental sustainability and social equity is a concerted program of "degrowth" grounded in post-capitalist principles.
Research Interests:
Conservation needs a revolution. This is the only way it can contribute to the drastic transformations needed to come to a truly sustainable model of development. The good news is that conservation is ready for revolution. Heated debates... more
Conservation needs a revolution. This is the only way it can contribute to the drastic transformations needed to come to a truly sustainable model of development. The good news is that conservation is ready for revolution. Heated debates about the rise of the Anthropocene and the current ‘sixth extinction’ crisis demonstrate an urgent need and desire to move beyond mainstream approaches. Yet the conservation community is deeply divided over where to go from here. Some want to place ‘half earth’ into protected areas. Others want to move away from parks to focus on unexpected and ‘new’ natures. Many believe conservation requires full integration into capitalist production processes.
Building a razor-sharp critique of current conservation proposals and their contradictions, Büscher and Fletcher argue that the Anthropocene challenge demands something bigger, better and bolder. Something truly revolutionary. They propose convivial conservation as the way forward. This approach goes beyond protected areas and faith in markets to incorporate the needs of humans and nonhumans within integrated and just landscapes. Theoretically astute and practically relevant, The Conservation Revolution offers a manifesto for conservation in the twenty-first century—a clarion call that cannot be ignored.
Building a razor-sharp critique of current conservation proposals and their contradictions, Büscher and Fletcher argue that the Anthropocene challenge demands something bigger, better and bolder. Something truly revolutionary. They propose convivial conservation as the way forward. This approach goes beyond protected areas and faith in markets to incorporate the needs of humans and nonhumans within integrated and just landscapes. Theoretically astute and practically relevant, The Conservation Revolution offers a manifesto for conservation in the twenty-first century—a clarion call that cannot be ignored.
Research Interests:
The worldwide development of ecotourism—including adventures such as mountain climbing and whitewater rafting, as well as more pedestrian pursuits such as birdwatching—has been extensively studied, but until now little attention has been... more
The worldwide development of ecotourism—including adventures such as mountain climbing and whitewater rafting, as well as more pedestrian pursuits such as birdwatching—has been extensively studied, but until now little attention has been paid to why vacationers choose to take part in what are often physically and emotionally strenuous endeavors. Drawing on ethnographic research and his own experiences working as an ecotour guide throughout the United States and Latin America, Robert Fletcher argues that participation in rigorous outdoor activities resonates with the particular cultural values of the white, upper-middle-class Westerners who are the majority of ecotourists. Navigating 13,000-foot mountain peaks or treacherous river rapids demands deferral of gratification, perseverance through suffering, and a willingness to assume risks in pursuit of continuous progress. In this way, characteristics originally cultivated for professional success have been transferred to the leisure realm at a moment when traditional avenues for achievement in the public sphere seem largely exhausted. At the same time, ecotourism provides a temporary escape from the ostensible ills of modern society by offering a transcendent "wilderness" experience that contrasts with the indoor, sedentary, mental labor characteristically performed by white-collar workers.
Despite its tiny size and seeming marginality to world affairs, the Central American republic of Costa Rica has long been considered an important site for experimentation in cutting-edge environmental policy. From protected area... more
Despite its tiny size and seeming marginality to world affairs, the Central American republic of Costa Rica has long been considered an important site for experimentation in cutting-edge environmental policy. From protected area management to ecotourism to payment for environmental services (PES) and beyond, for the past half-century the country has successfully positioned itself at the forefront of novel trends in environmental governance and sustainable development. Yet the increasingly urgent dilemma of how to achieve equitable economic development in a world of ecosystem decline and climate change presents new challenges, testing Costa Rica’s ability to remain a leader in innovative environmental governance.
This book explores these challenges, how Costa Rica is responding to them, and the lessons this holds for current and future trends regarding environmental governance and sustainable development. It provides the first comprehensive assessment of successes and challenges as they play out in a variety of sectors, including agricultural development, biodiversity conservation, water management, resource extraction, and climate change policy.
By framing Costa Rica as an “ecolaboratory,” the contributors in this volume examine the lessons learned and offer a path for the future of sustainable development research and policy in Central America and beyond.
This book explores these challenges, how Costa Rica is responding to them, and the lessons this holds for current and future trends regarding environmental governance and sustainable development. It provides the first comprehensive assessment of successes and challenges as they play out in a variety of sectors, including agricultural development, biodiversity conservation, water management, resource extraction, and climate change policy.
By framing Costa Rica as an “ecolaboratory,” the contributors in this volume examine the lessons learned and offer a path for the future of sustainable development research and policy in Central America and beyond.
Research Interests:
"Can “market forces” solve the world’s environmental problems? The stakes are undeniably high. With wildlife populations and biodiversity riches threatened across the globe, it is obvious that new and innovative methods of addressing the... more
"Can “market forces” solve the world’s environmental problems? The stakes are undeniably high. With wildlife populations and biodiversity riches threatened across the globe, it is obvious that new and innovative methods of addressing the crisis are vital to the future of the planet. But is “the market” the answer?
As public funding for conservation efforts grows ever scarcer and the private sector is brimming with ideas about how its role can grow—along with its profits—market forces have found their way into environmental management to a degree unimaginable only a few years ago. Ecotourism, biodiversity derivatives, payment for environmental services (PES), and new conservation finance instruments such as species banking, carbon trading, and biodiversity derivatives are only some of the market mechanisms that have sprung into being. This is “Nature™ Inc.”: a fast-growing frontier of networks, activities, knowledge, and regulations that are rapidly changing the relations between people and nature on both global and local scales.
Nature™ Inc. brings together cutting-edge research by respected scholars from around the world to analyze how “neoliberal conservation” is reshaping human–nature relations that have been fashioned over two centuries of capitalist development. Contributors synthesize and contribute to a growing body of academic literature that cuts across the disciplinary boundaries of geography, sociology, anthropology, political science, and development studies to critically interrogate the increasing emphasis on neoliberal market-based mechanisms in environmental conservation. They all grapple with one overriding question: can capitalist market mechanisms resolve the environmental problems they have helped create?
"
As public funding for conservation efforts grows ever scarcer and the private sector is brimming with ideas about how its role can grow—along with its profits—market forces have found their way into environmental management to a degree unimaginable only a few years ago. Ecotourism, biodiversity derivatives, payment for environmental services (PES), and new conservation finance instruments such as species banking, carbon trading, and biodiversity derivatives are only some of the market mechanisms that have sprung into being. This is “Nature™ Inc.”: a fast-growing frontier of networks, activities, knowledge, and regulations that are rapidly changing the relations between people and nature on both global and local scales.
Nature™ Inc. brings together cutting-edge research by respected scholars from around the world to analyze how “neoliberal conservation” is reshaping human–nature relations that have been fashioned over two centuries of capitalist development. Contributors synthesize and contribute to a growing body of academic literature that cuts across the disciplinary boundaries of geography, sociology, anthropology, political science, and development studies to critically interrogate the increasing emphasis on neoliberal market-based mechanisms in environmental conservation. They all grapple with one overriding question: can capitalist market mechanisms resolve the environmental problems they have helped create?
"
This thought-provoking book is divided into two parts, each of which contains four chapters. In Part I, titled “Rethinking Resistance,” contributors assert that “resistance” continues to hold utility as both an analytic concept and mode... more
This thought-provoking book is divided into two parts, each of which contains four chapters. In Part I, titled “Rethinking Resistance,” contributors assert that “resistance” continues to hold utility as both an analytic concept and mode of action in the world, and therefore demands renewed engagement. Part II contains essays that offer novel frames for addressing progressive social change that might serve to replace “resistance” entirely, and thus is entitled “Thinking Beyond.”
Within political ecology research, a dominant focus on the hard physicality of the world limits engagement with how events taking place on land mediate and are mediated by other material spaces like the atmosphere. This article engages... more
Within political ecology research, a dominant focus on the hard physicality of the world limits engagement
with how events taking place on land mediate and are mediated by other material spaces like the
atmosphere. This article engages with burgeoning research on the extraction–conservation nexus to show
how the clearly demarcated land-based boundaries on which nexus thinking relies limit an awareness of how
processes of conservation and extraction cohere and take shape in and through the aerial atmosphere. The
article substantiates this argument with case studies on Guyana and Suriname, two countries that have been
working on avoiding deforestation through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
for over a decade in the aim of mitigating climate change. In each case, we examine three years of news
reporting on recent, major oil finds in the Guyana-Suriname Basin. The news reports, set against longer
term research, demonstrate a narrative pivot from “green,” land-based avoided deforestation narratives to
“black,” offshore extractive ones. The reports show that reference to the competing atmospheric effects of
the mutual pursuit of these activities is scarce, even at a time of rapidly intensifying climate change. Hence,
we argue that a voluminous analysis of the extraction–conservation nexus integrating a vertical awareness of
the ever-present and unbounded atmosphere harbors potential for orienting a less contradictory politics of
climate change—one that recognizes how activities deemed oppositional on land take shape in the shared,
unbounded atmosphere. These activities consequently go on to affect other spaces and places in indirect,
often unpredictable ways.
with how events taking place on land mediate and are mediated by other material spaces like the
atmosphere. This article engages with burgeoning research on the extraction–conservation nexus to show
how the clearly demarcated land-based boundaries on which nexus thinking relies limit an awareness of how
processes of conservation and extraction cohere and take shape in and through the aerial atmosphere. The
article substantiates this argument with case studies on Guyana and Suriname, two countries that have been
working on avoiding deforestation through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
for over a decade in the aim of mitigating climate change. In each case, we examine three years of news
reporting on recent, major oil finds in the Guyana-Suriname Basin. The news reports, set against longer
term research, demonstrate a narrative pivot from “green,” land-based avoided deforestation narratives to
“black,” offshore extractive ones. The reports show that reference to the competing atmospheric effects of
the mutual pursuit of these activities is scarce, even at a time of rapidly intensifying climate change. Hence,
we argue that a voluminous analysis of the extraction–conservation nexus integrating a vertical awareness of
the ever-present and unbounded atmosphere harbors potential for orienting a less contradictory politics of
climate change—one that recognizes how activities deemed oppositional on land take shape in the shared,
unbounded atmosphere. These activities consequently go on to affect other spaces and places in indirect,
often unpredictable ways.
Research Interests:
the necessity and consequences of the exponential growth in tourism activity experienced throughout the world over the past half-century have been increasingly questioned by an expanding body of activists and critical researchers. One of... more
the necessity and consequences of the exponential growth in tourism activity experienced throughout the world over the past half-century have been increasingly questioned by an expanding body of activists and critical researchers. One of the emerging responses within this debate concerns calls for reversing the trend in pursuit of touristic 'degrowth'. this discussion has been inspired by a longstanding body of research problematizing the imperative and consequences of economic growth more generally, initiated by natural and social scientists. this article offers a state-of-the-art overview of the application of degrowth perspectives to discussions of (sustainable) tourism development and outlines a future agenda for research and praxis continuing this important line of inquiry.
Research Interests:
While tourism has been a core feature of the global economy for more than a century, over the past several decades, it has been a central component of a worldwide process of neoliberalization in particular. Neoliberalization describes a... more
While tourism has been a core feature of the global economy for more than a century, over the past several decades, it has been a central component of a worldwide process of neoliberalization in particular. Neoliberalization describes a political-economic programme of 'free trade' embodying interrelated principles of deregulation, decentralization, marketization, privatization and commodification. Grounded in a critique of the postwar welfare state, it was first introduced into public administration in the Us and Western europe in the 1980s, then spread worldwide in the next decade via structural adjustment programmes (saPs) incorporated into international development planning. as one of the world's largest industries, tourism development has been a key component of this process. in this way, tourism policy in many places has been progressively neoliberalized, while in turn tourism development has thus served as a key component of neoliberalization more generally, helping to progressively bind the world within a single integrated economy. hence, tourism can be understood not only as a key site of neoliberalization, but a central means by which neoliberalization spreads as well. in the process, tourism development has played a key role in helping to stabilize a neoliberal capitalist economy riddled with fundamental contradictions that subject it to periodic crises. this article explores how this dynamic developed, where it stands at present, and how it is likely to evolve in the future as the contradictions underlying neoliberal capitalism continue to unfold.
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This contribution aims to advance consideration of the potential and pitfalls entailed in discussions of degrowth within tourism development. Many mass tourist destinations suffer from saturation impacting local working conditions, access... more
This contribution aims to advance consideration of the potential and pitfalls entailed in discussions of degrowth within tourism development. Many mass tourist destinations suffer from saturation impacting local working conditions, access to housing and the collective enjoyment of public goods, among the many common drawbacks of so-called 'overtourism'. Yet proposals to address the negative impacts of mass tourism can become contradictory or even counterproductive. In one manifestation of this dynamic, prominent industry actors increasingly claim to have embraced the agenda of touristic degrowth by focusing on what is euphemistically termed 'quality tourism' (fewer tourists who spend more money), which in reality designates elite travel by the most powerful and wealthy social classes. But just as recession is not degrowth, neither can such elitization be considered genuine touristic degrowth, because it does not address the industry's general eco-social overreach via measures to promote social and environmental justice as degrowth advocates. It could thus instead be labelled 'fake' degrowth. By contrast, fair degrowth is defined by a decrease in the flow of energy and materials per capita, in a planned and democratic way, to contribute to equitable redistribution of resource use and access.
Research Interests:
This article advances a novel analytical framework for investigating the influence of political-economic processes in human-wildlife interactions (HWI) to support efforts to transform wildlife conservation governance. To date, the... more
This article advances a novel analytical framework for investigating the influence of political-economic processes in human-wildlife interactions (HWI) to support efforts to transform wildlife conservation governance. To date, the majority of research and advocacy addressing HWI focuses on micro-level processes, while even the small body of existing literature exploring social dimensions of such interactions has largely neglected attention to political-economic forces. This is consonant with efforts to transform conservation policy and practice more broadly, which tend to emphasize "circular" change within current political-economic structures rather than "axial" transformation aiming to transcend these structures themselves. Our analysis thus advances understanding of potential for axial transformation in HWI via confrontation with, and "unmaking" of, constraining political-economic structures. It does so through cross-site analysis of conservation policy and practice in relation to three apex predator species (lions, jaguars and wolves) in varied geographic and socio-political contexts, grounded in qualitative ethnographic study within the different sites by members of an international research team. We explore how the relative power of different political-economic interests within each case influences how the animals are perceived and valued, and how this in turn influences conservation interventions and their impact on HWI within these spaces. We term this analysis of the "production-protection nexus" (the interrelation between process of resource extraction and conservation, respectively) in rural landscapes. We emphasize importance of attention to this formative nexus both within and across specific locales in growing global efforts to transform situations of human-wildlife conflict into less contentious coexistence.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article examines the politics of emerging partnerships among big-tech corporations, big international nongovernmental organisations (BINGOs) and bilaterals that promote the uptake and implementation of 'smart technologies' in... more
This article examines the politics of emerging partnerships among big-tech corporations, big international nongovernmental organisations (BINGOs) and bilaterals that promote the uptake and implementation of 'smart technologies' in biodiversity conservation. Despite growing global recognition of Indigenous and local peoples' rights to forests, lands, and oceans as central to socially just and successful conservation, new initiatives to conserve 30% of the Earth's territory by 2030 ('30 × 30') under the United Nations' (UN) post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework largely continue to neglect their existing customary rights and uses of biodiverse territories. The consequences of this have become evident in new global conservation partnerships that are taking a 'technological turn'. 'Smart technologies' that rely on artificial intelligence (AI) and complex hardware, such as camera traps, drones, and smartphones, enable new forms of surveillance and securitisation through and beyond conventional conservation practices. Despite their potential to exacerbate social injustices against historically marginalised groups, the situated character of smart technology impacts and outcomes often remain unquestioned by mainstream conservation actors. Our paper shows how the dominant discourses framing such technology as successful and innovative across global and local partnerships belies its potential to: 1) inflict considerable violence upon local and Indigenous peoples; and 2) neglect the main political economic drivers of biodiversity loss. Drawing on examples from Palawan Island, the Philippines, we show how these global-local governance partnerships have valorised the potential success of smart technology for biodiversity conservation in situ without considering how they may adversely impact Indigenous and local peoples' rights and livelihoods, while at the same time neglecting and depoliticising the violence of capitalist extractivist expansion.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Across parts of Southeast Asia, coastal governance strategies have drawn on 'ecotourism' initiatives for 'sustainable development' by constructing captivating imaginaries of coastal places and people as sites of touristic production and... more
Across parts of Southeast Asia, coastal governance strategies have drawn on 'ecotourism' initiatives for 'sustainable development' by constructing captivating imaginaries of coastal places and people as sites of touristic production and consumption. Increasingly, representations of exotic and pristine coastal natures are reproduced virtually in support of this campaign through Web 2.0 platforms and their underlying algorithms. As ecotourism expands in the region, growing networks of social media users coproduce and consume abstract virtual natures with profound consequences for coastal peoples and ecosystems. In particular, Instagram, a popular photo sharing social media platform, has become central to reifying and distorting complex coastal realities. Drawing on a case from El Nido, Palawan Island, the Philippines, our paper examines how the virtual representation of coastal places and people on Instagram accelerate coastal transformations. Our results reveal how the political economy of coastal governance and the platform capitalism of social media converge to accelerate ecotourism in ways that realign virtual ideals and material realities. As virtual imaginaries shape coastal realities, new forms of exclusion and misrepresentation of people and places drive the displacement of local fishers, violence against activists, and coastal degradation. Bringing together research exploring (mass) ecotourism, platform capitalism and virtualism, we argue that greater scholarly attention should be placed on how new digital actors and platform algorithms influence how coastal peoples and places are imagined, consumed and subject to violence over time.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Convivial conservation has been put forward as a radical alternative to transform prevailing mainstream approaches that aim to address global concerns of biodiversity loss and extinction. This special issue includes contributions from... more
Convivial conservation has been put forward as a radical alternative to transform prevailing mainstream approaches that aim to address global concerns of biodiversity loss and extinction. This special issue includes contributions from diverse disciplinary and geographical perspectives which critically examine convivial conservation’s potential in theory and practice and explore both possibilities and challenges for the approach’s transformative ambitions. This introduction focuses on three issues which the contributions highlight as critical for facilitating transformation of mainstream conservation. First, the different ways in which key dimensions of justice — epistemic, distributive, and participatory and multi-species justice — intersect with the convivial conservation proposal, and how potential injustices might be mitigated. Second, how convivial conservation approaches the potential to facilitate human and non-human coexistence. Third, how transformative methodologies and innovative conceptual lenses can be used to further develop convivial conservation. The diverse contributions show that convivial conservation has clear potential to be transformative. However, to realise this potential, convivial conservation must avoid previous proposals’ pitfalls, such as trying to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and being too narrowly focused. Instead, convivial conservation must continue to evolve in response to engagement with a plurality of perspectives, experiences, ideas and methodologies from around the world.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Critical research concerning ecotourism has revealed the activity’s socio-economic impacts, including low-wage employment-based dependencies for many rural communities. While these dynamics are important, a crucial aspect of the... more
Critical research concerning ecotourism has revealed the activity’s
socio-economic impacts, including low-wage employment-based
dependencies for many rural communities. While these dynamics
are important, a crucial aspect of the ecotourism industry that
falls outside this conventional sort of dependency is land use
dynamics, specifically land use change, sales and entrepreneurship.
We examine these dynamics in Corbett Tiger Reserve, India, where
promotion of (eco)tourism since the 1990s has influenced significant
changes in local land use. These changes were initially facilitated
by outsiders buying land and setting up hotels and resorts
in villages adjoining the Reserve. Empirical research reveals that
while this initial boom of outsiders buying land has waned, land
owning villagers are now setting up tourism enterprises on their
own land, thereby diversifying land use from agriculture to tourism.
Critical agrarian research has shown that material and symbolic
factors influence farmers’ decision-making regarding land use
change. An agrarian studies perspective thus facilitates a nuanced
understanding of tourism-related land use diversification and
change. By bringing agrarian and ecotourism studies approaches
together here, we contribute to both by emphasising the importance
of (eco)tourism in agrarian change and of attention to land
use change in ecotourism studies to understand how rural people
negotiate and navigate (eco)tourism in relation to land use. We
also contribute to tourism geographies more broadly by highlighting
how land use decision-making shapes local spaces in the
course of ecotourism development. We draw attention to the
broader processes of and impacts of ecotourism that shift generational
rural land use influenced by changing values of land outside
a protected area. Rendering land touristifiable deepens
villagers’ dependence on the market and alienates them from their
land. Ecotourism commodifies nature, and we show that this commodification extends to rural land outside of ecotourism zones
per se.
socio-economic impacts, including low-wage employment-based
dependencies for many rural communities. While these dynamics
are important, a crucial aspect of the ecotourism industry that
falls outside this conventional sort of dependency is land use
dynamics, specifically land use change, sales and entrepreneurship.
We examine these dynamics in Corbett Tiger Reserve, India, where
promotion of (eco)tourism since the 1990s has influenced significant
changes in local land use. These changes were initially facilitated
by outsiders buying land and setting up hotels and resorts
in villages adjoining the Reserve. Empirical research reveals that
while this initial boom of outsiders buying land has waned, land
owning villagers are now setting up tourism enterprises on their
own land, thereby diversifying land use from agriculture to tourism.
Critical agrarian research has shown that material and symbolic
factors influence farmers’ decision-making regarding land use
change. An agrarian studies perspective thus facilitates a nuanced
understanding of tourism-related land use diversification and
change. By bringing agrarian and ecotourism studies approaches
together here, we contribute to both by emphasising the importance
of (eco)tourism in agrarian change and of attention to land
use change in ecotourism studies to understand how rural people
negotiate and navigate (eco)tourism in relation to land use. We
also contribute to tourism geographies more broadly by highlighting
how land use decision-making shapes local spaces in the
course of ecotourism development. We draw attention to the
broader processes of and impacts of ecotourism that shift generational
rural land use influenced by changing values of land outside
a protected area. Rendering land touristifiable deepens
villagers’ dependence on the market and alienates them from their
land. Ecotourism commodifies nature, and we show that this commodification extends to rural land outside of ecotourism zones
per se.
Research Interests:
News coverage of noteworthy environmental events is often fleeting, moving from one spectacle to another and rarely retaining global attention. But in August 2019, news of Amazon rainforest fires spread seemingly as quickly as the fires... more
News coverage of noteworthy environmental events is often fleeting, moving from one spectacle to another and rarely retaining global attention. But in August 2019, news of Amazon rainforest fires spread seemingly as quickly as the fires themselves, with sustained global coverage and funding pouring into environmental organizations. Yet Amazon fires regularly occur and fires were simultaneously burning in other important Brazilian biomes, with some causing worse damage. What was it about the 2019 Amazon fires that elicited such a strong and persistent global response? In this paper, we draw on distinctions between slow/immediate (Nixon, 2011) and structural/direct violence (Galtung, 1969) to answer this question. We argue that the Amazon's reputation as a global treasure and its association with climate change and biodiversity through 'giantness' (Slater, 2002) meant that the fires' local spectacular violence became felt as an instant global threat, shifting perceptions of violence from slow to immediate. Moreover, as the identified instigator of the violence, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro became a sort of 'bridge' between structural and direct dimensions of violence, thus making the violence personal. These three dynamics combined to enhance visibility of the Amazon's destruction and its connection to planetary stability, thereby inspiring the 2019 fires' extraordinary reactions. Through this analysis, the paper contributes to psychological literature on perceptions of ecological crises and to discussions in political ecology/geography concerning violent environments by demonstrating how and why both the slow and structural violence of the global climate and biodiversity crises can be rendered more visible via localized effects.
Research Interests:
A growing body of critical research interrogates the tendency within international conservation circles to present interventions as successful, even when evidence points to substantial negative impacts. The flip side of this 'selling'... more
A growing body of critical research interrogates the tendency within international conservation circles to present interventions as successful, even when evidence points to substantial negative impacts. The flip side of this 'selling' success is a growing emphasis on the importance of embracing and even celebrating failure. Yet this important trend in international conservation policymaking has yet to be examined in depth. We address this research gap by first tracing the origins of the embracing failure narrative, linking it to the historical handling of failure in conservation and in fields such as business management and international development. We then explore the implications of this framing of failure for international conservation policy and practice by examining relevant policy literature and illustrative case studies in Tanzania and Peru. Based on this analysis, we demonstrate how a 'right to fail' can justify both continuing and discontinuing conservation interventions in highly problematic ways. We show how the framing of failure as a positive outcome for global learning can reduce accountability for significant and long-lasting negative consequences of failed interventions. Furthermore, the emphasis on approaches to learning that employ narrow technical frames can depoliticize issues and limit possibilities to fundamentally question and transform dominant conservation models with histories of persistent failure. Consequently, we argue that by affording interventions the 'right to fail', conservation actors with a stake in dominant models have taken control of failure discourse in ways that reinforce instead of undermine their ability to 'sell' success amidst negative (or limited) local outcomes. While it is of course important to acknowledge failure in order not to repeat it, we caution against embracing failure in ways that may further exacerbate conservation injustices and hinder transformative societal change. We advocate instead for an explicitly political approach to addressing failure in conservation.
Research Interests:
Multiple proposals for transforming biodiversity conservation have been put forward, yet critical exploration of how transformative change is conceptualised in this context is lacking. Drawing on transformations to sustainability... more
Multiple proposals for transforming biodiversity conservation have been put forward, yet critical exploration of how transformative change is conceptualised in this context is lacking. Drawing on transformations to sustainability scholarship, we review recent proposals for transformative change in biodiversity conservation, considering the suggested goals and means of transformation. We outline the crucial role for critical social scientific inquiry in transformative change by highlighting two core contributions. First, critical social science is an analytical device that politicises and pluralises debates and second, it can help facililitate the identification of transformative alternatives. We then show how such a critical social science approach is operationalised within the CONVIVA (Towards Convivial Conservation: Governing Human-Wildlife Interactions in the Anthropocene) project to pursue transformative change in biodiversity conservation.
This article describes a case of human-bear cohabitation in the Rodopi mountains (Yagodina-Trigrad area) of Bulgaria. The lack of protected areas in the region and the increasing number of brown bears (Ursus arctos) have resulted in both... more
This article describes a case of human-bear cohabitation in the Rodopi mountains (Yagodina-Trigrad area) of Bulgaria. The lack of protected areas in the region and the increasing number of brown bears (Ursus arctos) have resulted in both human-wildlife conflicts and the development of mechanisms and practices to facilitate cohabitation in the absence of formal rules to regulate coexistence of human and nonhuman species. However, these mechanisms and practices are currently undergoing transformations due to newfound protection of the species under national and EU legislation, respectively. The paper explores these dynamics through a case study of relatively successful cohabitation in the region. Our analysis identifies and outlines local adaptation and conservation mechanisms developed to live with bears as well as strategies to benefit from the bears' presence. In this way, the study contributes to current debates concerning how to best facilitate 'convivial conservation' promoting coexistence between humans and wildlife by identifying factors in this case that have facilitated a bottom-up approach to cohabitation that might be tested or adopted for use in similar situations elsewhere.
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Potential to identify and cultivate forms of post-capitalism in tourism development has yet to be explored in depth in current research. Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, and hence a powerful global political and... more
Potential to identify and cultivate forms of post-capitalism in tourism development has yet to be explored in depth in current research. Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, and hence a powerful global political and socio-economic force. Yet numerous problems associated with conventional tourism development have been documented over the years, problems now greatly exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Calls for sustainable tourism development have long sought to address such issues and set the industry on a better course. Yet such calls tend to still promote continued growth as the basis of the tourism industry’s development, while mounting demands for “degrowth” suggest that growth is itself the fundamental problem that needs to be addressed in discussion of sustainability in tourism and elsewhere. This critique asserts that incessant growth is intrinsic to capitalist development, and hence to tourism’s role as one of the main forms of global capitalist expansion. Touristic degrowth would therefore necessitate postcapitalist practices aiming to socialise the tourism industry. While a substantial body of research has explored how tourism functions as an expression of a capitalist political economy, thus far no research has systematically explored what post-capitalist tourism might look like or how to achieve it. Applying Erik Olin Wright’s 2019 innovative typology for conceptualizing different forms of post-capitalism as components of an overarching strategy for “eroding capitalism” to a series of illustrative allows for exploration of their potential to contribute to an analogous strategy to similarly “erode tourism” as a quintessential capitalist industry.
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The question of how to transform human-wildlife relations from conflict to coexistence, rather than merely mitigating conflicts, has become a central focus of research and practice. In this article, we address this important question by... more
The question of how to transform human-wildlife relations from conflict to coexistence, rather than merely mitigating conflicts, has become a central focus of research and practice. In this article, we address this important question by exploring the factors that may contribute to promoting successful coexistence between humans and brown bears within Europe and elsewhere. We do this through comparative analysis of two cases in rural Bulgaria evidencing different degrees of conflict and coexistence between members of the two species. Through this comparison, we highlight the main factors that lead to conflict in our problem case as well as those that might help to instead foster coexistence. We situate this analysis within growing discussion of convivial conservation as a novel approach intended to transform conservation policy and practice throughout the world that emphasizes the importance of attending to the overarching social and politicaleconomic processes encompassing human-wildlife interaction in order to influence the latter. In this way, we contribute to research and discussion concerning how to transform human-wildlife conflict (HWC) into convivial coexistence more broadly by demonstrating how attention to the immediate circumstances of human-wildlife encounter in such efforts should be complemented by promotion of more inclusive, democratic forms of decision-making, and egalitarian distribution of economic resources.
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Researchers have highlighted a conspicuous dearth of analysis focused on political-economic structures and processes in the rapidly expanding literature exploring human-wildlife conflict and coexistence. In this paper, we respond by... more
Researchers have highlighted a conspicuous dearth of analysis focused on political-economic structures and processes in the rapidly expanding literature exploring human-wildlife conflict and coexistence. In this paper, we respond by highlighting the importance of attending to the influence of such dynamics in understanding and addressing both conflict and coexistence in human-wildlife interactions in particular locations and well as across levels and scales. We describe how analysis from the perspective of the capitalist political economy and the "uneven geographical development" (UGD) it produces can help to shed light on how different forms of such interaction arise in specific places and times. We illustrate this mode of analysis through comparative discussion of two contrasting case studies of human-wildlife interaction in Costa Rica and Bulgaria. We demonstrate how the particular positioning of our research sites within the overarching societiesas well as each society's positioning within an evolving capitalist world-systemencourages either conflict or coexistence between people and wildlife depending on this positioning. We conclude by calling for more researchers to also explore the overarching political-economic structures shaping human-wildlife interaction in their own contexts of study in order to more effectively address this important formative factor in patterns of conflict as well as coexistence.
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This article explores a case of human–wildlife cohabitation in the Rodopi mountains of Bulgaria, wherein people and brown bears (Ursus arctos) have adapted to living together in relative harmony. While this is due to a variety of factors,... more
This article explores a case of human–wildlife cohabitation in the Rodopi mountains of Bulgaria, wherein people and brown bears (Ursus arctos) have adapted to living together in relative harmony. While this is due to a variety of factors, chief among these is the way both people and bears appear to pursue knowledge of one another and act on this knowledge so as to actively minimize potential for conflict. We draw on this case to contribute to growing discussion concerning how nonhumans should be understood and included within conservation policymaking. While conservation has conventionally been understood as something humans do on behalf of other species, a growing body of “more-than-human” research challenges this perspective as “anthropocentric” in arguing that nonhumans should be considered “co-constitutive actors” of the spaces they occupy. Based on this understanding, some go so far as to assert that a “multispecies ethics” demands that nonhumans be actively included in decision-making concerning such spaces’ governance. While our study indeed demonstrates that both humans and bears seem to mold their behavior in relation to their sensing of the other’s behavior, it also demonstrates that knowledge of bears’ behavior is ultimately always interpreted by humans in conservation management. Moreover, different groups of stakeholders hold different knowledge of bears that influence their attitudes and behavior towards the animals. The study thus raises important questions concerning how to incorporate bears (and other nonhumans) within conservation decision-making, and whose knowledge should be privileged in the process.
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Multiple proposals for transforming biodiversity conservation have been put forward, yet critical exploration of how transformative change is conceptualised in this context is lacking. Drawing on transformations to sustainability... more
Multiple proposals for transforming biodiversity conservation have been put forward, yet critical exploration of how transformative change is conceptualised in this context is lacking. Drawing on transformations to sustainability scholarship, we review recent proposals for transformative
change in biodiversity conservation, considering the suggested goals and means of transformation. We outline the crucial role for critical social scientific inquiry in transformative change by highlighting two core contributions. First, critical social science is an analytical device that politicises and pluralises debates and second, it can help facililitate the identification of transformative alternatives. We then show how such a critical social science approach is operationalised within the CONVIVA
(Towards Convivial Conservation: Governing Human-Wildlife Interactions in the Anthropocene) project to pursue transformative change in biodiversity conservation.
change in biodiversity conservation, considering the suggested goals and means of transformation. We outline the crucial role for critical social scientific inquiry in transformative change by highlighting two core contributions. First, critical social science is an analytical device that politicises and pluralises debates and second, it can help facililitate the identification of transformative alternatives. We then show how such a critical social science approach is operationalised within the CONVIVA
(Towards Convivial Conservation: Governing Human-Wildlife Interactions in the Anthropocene) project to pursue transformative change in biodiversity conservation.
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This paper examines the role of tourism in promoting peace around transboundary protected areas (TBPA) in conflict-affected regions through a case study of the Virunga TBPA straddling the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.... more
This paper examines the role of tourism in promoting peace around
transboundary protected areas (TBPA) in conflict-affected regions through a case study of the Virunga TBPA straddling the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. Also praised as ‘peace parks’, TBPAs embody the rationale that stimulating a tourism economy in shared conservation spaces will provide incentives for formerly antagonistic states and actors to cooperate. Virunga TBPA exemplifies this strategy by promoting high-end gorilla tourism in a region scarred by longstanding conflict. Drawing on twelve months of fieldwork, we found that these optimistic aspirations are contradicted by militarisation of the three National Parks constituting the TBPA, as well as prevalence of violence and political segregation among the countries. As park authorities sell ‘feelings of security’ by framing their neighbours as threats in order to attract visitors, intrastate competition and conflict intensifies. Peace tourism rhetoric and revenues allow the governments to justify and finance the militarisation as necessary to protect ‘their’ tourists while concealing their security interests in protecting national borders. This contradiction between tourism’s ostensive ‘peace dividend’ and the violence it generates within transboundary conservation efforts poses the question: what kind of ‘peace’ can be generated through tourism, and for whom?
transboundary protected areas (TBPA) in conflict-affected regions through a case study of the Virunga TBPA straddling the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. Also praised as ‘peace parks’, TBPAs embody the rationale that stimulating a tourism economy in shared conservation spaces will provide incentives for formerly antagonistic states and actors to cooperate. Virunga TBPA exemplifies this strategy by promoting high-end gorilla tourism in a region scarred by longstanding conflict. Drawing on twelve months of fieldwork, we found that these optimistic aspirations are contradicted by militarisation of the three National Parks constituting the TBPA, as well as prevalence of violence and political segregation among the countries. As park authorities sell ‘feelings of security’ by framing their neighbours as threats in order to attract visitors, intrastate competition and conflict intensifies. Peace tourism rhetoric and revenues allow the governments to justify and finance the militarisation as necessary to protect ‘their’ tourists while concealing their security interests in protecting national borders. This contradiction between tourism’s ostensive ‘peace dividend’ and the violence it generates within transboundary conservation efforts poses the question: what kind of ‘peace’ can be generated through tourism, and for whom?
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This paper explores local perceptions of the landscape in a small highland community near Haa, Bhutan. Through the lens of ethnoecology, it documents a storied landscape in which an animist cosmology, underpinned by Buddhism, shapes local... more
This paper explores local perceptions of the landscape in a small highland community near Haa, Bhutan. Through the lens of ethnoecology, it documents a storied landscape in which an animist cosmology, underpinned by Buddhism, shapes local subjectivities in particular ways that influence behaviour in relation to this landscape. We draw on this case to contribute to a growing body of research exploring how environmental governance understood as Foucauldian-inspired ‘environmentality’ works to create ‘environmental subjects’. While initial work in this area describes a monolithic environmentality, more recent research outlines multiple environmentalities (neoliberal, disciplinary, sovereign and truth) to demonstrate how processes of subject formation occur differently in relation to each of these. Within this research, however, attention to truth environmentality and the particular forms
of environmental subjectivity it cultivates has been largely absent thus far. Our analysis addresses this gap by exploring how members of the herding community in the case under investigation describe relationships with a set of cosmological entities that motivate specific self-understandings leading to conservation-conducive behaviour. In
this way, our analysis highlights how this particular approach to the ‘conduct of conduct’ works to shape specific environmental subjectivities beyond those currently highlighted in the burgeoning environmentalities literature.
of environmental subjectivity it cultivates has been largely absent thus far. Our analysis addresses this gap by exploring how members of the herding community in the case under investigation describe relationships with a set of cosmological entities that motivate specific self-understandings leading to conservation-conducive behaviour. In
this way, our analysis highlights how this particular approach to the ‘conduct of conduct’ works to shape specific environmental subjectivities beyond those currently highlighted in the burgeoning environmentalities literature.
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This introduction to the special collection explores how a revised or expanded understanding of 'environmentality' can further our analysis of the evermore complex terrain of environmental politics today. We offer an outline of the... more
This introduction to the special collection explores how a revised or expanded understanding of 'environmentality' can further our analysis of the evermore complex terrain of environmental politics today. We offer an outline of the literature from which the discussion emerges and how the subsequent articles both engage with and depart from it. We describe the origin of the 'green governmentality' discussion following the rise of global sustainable development discourse. We then explain how this initial exploration was subsequently complicated by introduction of two further lines of investigation: (1) attention to the micropolitics of community-based natural resource management; and (2) extrapolation from this to describe the different forms of green governmentality within which such local practices are situated as well as the multiple scales at which environmental governance is exercised. Following this, we outline a range of critiques to which this burgeoning research has also been subject and the fruitful lines of future research to which they point. We finish by describing how the various contributions to this collection engage with different aspects of this multifaceted discussion as the basis for further engagement by other researchers in the years ahead.
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This article advances a proposal for conservation basic income (CBI) as a novel strategy for funding biodiversity conservation that moves beyond widely promoted market-based instruments (MBIs). This CBI proposal responds to two important... more
This article advances a proposal for conservation basic income (CBI) as a novel strategy for funding biodiversity conservation that moves beyond widely promoted market-based instruments (MBIs). This CBI proposal responds to two important empirical developments. The first concerns growing discussions around cash transfer programs (CTPs) and universal basic income (UBI). These are increasingly implemented or piloted yet do not usually take into account environmental issues including biodiversity conservation. The second relates to MBIs like payments for ecosystem services (PES) and REDD+ (reduced emissions through avoided deforestation and forest degradation). In practice, these programs have not only commonly failed to halt biodiversity loss and alleviate poverty but have also largely abandoned their market-based origins, leading to calls for moving beyond market-based conservation entirely. We conclude that the time is right to integrate and transcend these existing mechanisms to develop conservation basic income as part of a broader paradigm shift towards convivial conservation that foregrounds concerns for social justice and equity.
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Tourism development affects prominent city centres worldwide, causing social unrest that has been labelled “tourism-phobia.” This article problematizes the recent appearance of this term by unravelling the links between the materiality of... more
Tourism development affects prominent city centres worldwide, causing social unrest that has been labelled “tourism-phobia.” This article problematizes the recent appearance of this term by unravelling the links between the materiality of contemporary urban tourism and the response it receives from social movements opposing its expansion. We endeavour to understand the meaning that different actors involved in the city's touristification attach to this term, and in particular the perceptions of citizens’ movements that claim to espouse not tourism-phobia but urban-philia. To analyze these dynamics, we draw on Lefebvre’s discussion of the “right to the city” to highlight the extractive productive relations characterizing the tourism industry and the contestations such relations trigger. Taking the example of two Spanish cities (Barcelona and Palma), our findings indicate that the social malaise found in tourist oversaturation is due to the disruption it causes to everyday life, including price increases and rising rents. Consequently, the discomfort popular mobilisations have generated among the ruling class has led the latter to disqualify and even criminalise the former’s legitimate claims under the label of tourism-phobia. To conclude, we call
for a future research agenda in pursuit of social justice and equity around re-touristification, detouristification or even tourist degrowth.
for a future research agenda in pursuit of social justice and equity around re-touristification, detouristification or even tourist degrowth.
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This article outlines a conceptual framework and research agenda for exploring the relationship between tourism and degrowth. Rapid and uneven expansion of tourism as a response to the 2008 economic crisis has proceeded in parallel with... more
This article outlines a conceptual framework and research agenda for
exploring the relationship between tourism and degrowth. Rapid and
uneven expansion of tourism as a response to the 2008 economic crisis
has proceeded in parallel with the rise of social discontent concerning
so-called “overtourism.” Despite decades of concerted global effort to
achieve sustainable development, meanwhile, socioecological conflicts
and inequality have rarely reversed, but in fact increased in many places.
Degrowth, understood as both social theory and social movement, has emerged within the context of this global crisis. Yet thus far the vibrant degrowth discussion has yet to engage systematically with the tourism industry in particular, while by the same token tourism research has largely neglected explicit discussion of degrowth. We bring the two discussions together here to interrogate their complementarity. Identifying a growth imperative in the basic structure of the capitalist economy, we contend that mounting critique of overtourism can be understood as a structural response to the ravages of capitalist development more broadly. Debate concerning overtourism thus offers a valuable opportunity to re-politicize discussion of tourism development
generally. We contribute to this discussion by exploring of the potential for degrowth to facilitate a truly sustainable tourism.
exploring the relationship between tourism and degrowth. Rapid and
uneven expansion of tourism as a response to the 2008 economic crisis
has proceeded in parallel with the rise of social discontent concerning
so-called “overtourism.” Despite decades of concerted global effort to
achieve sustainable development, meanwhile, socioecological conflicts
and inequality have rarely reversed, but in fact increased in many places.
Degrowth, understood as both social theory and social movement, has emerged within the context of this global crisis. Yet thus far the vibrant degrowth discussion has yet to engage systematically with the tourism industry in particular, while by the same token tourism research has largely neglected explicit discussion of degrowth. We bring the two discussions together here to interrogate their complementarity. Identifying a growth imperative in the basic structure of the capitalist economy, we contend that mounting critique of overtourism can be understood as a structural response to the ravages of capitalist development more broadly. Debate concerning overtourism thus offers a valuable opportunity to re-politicize discussion of tourism development
generally. We contribute to this discussion by exploring of the potential for degrowth to facilitate a truly sustainable tourism.
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This article investigates assertions that new philanthropic web 2.0 initiatives can empower Internet users to further social and environmental change. It focuses on two ostensibly “free” web 2.0 initiatives aimed at nature conservation:... more
This article investigates assertions that new philanthropic web 2.0
initiatives can empower Internet users to further social and
environmental change. It focuses on two ostensibly “free” web 2.0
initiatives aimed at nature conservation: “Greenvolved” and “Safari
Challenge Zoo Adventure.” With Greenvolved, clicking on one’s favorite
projects is supposed to support conservation initiatives whereas in Safari
Challenge users interact through gaming on the virtual African
savannahs to conserve online nature, thereby supporting various offline
humanitarian projects. Drawing on discussions of “philanthrocapitalism”
and “nature 2.0,” our analysis demonstrates that such “popular
philanthrocapitalist” initiatives do not support empowering collective
action but instead depoliticize and commodify environmental activism.
Such initiatives thereby allow neoliberal capitalism to further extend its
reach under the pretense of empowering those whom it marginalizes.
initiatives can empower Internet users to further social and
environmental change. It focuses on two ostensibly “free” web 2.0
initiatives aimed at nature conservation: “Greenvolved” and “Safari
Challenge Zoo Adventure.” With Greenvolved, clicking on one’s favorite
projects is supposed to support conservation initiatives whereas in Safari
Challenge users interact through gaming on the virtual African
savannahs to conserve online nature, thereby supporting various offline
humanitarian projects. Drawing on discussions of “philanthrocapitalism”
and “nature 2.0,” our analysis demonstrates that such “popular
philanthrocapitalist” initiatives do not support empowering collective
action but instead depoliticize and commodify environmental activism.
Such initiatives thereby allow neoliberal capitalism to further extend its
reach under the pretense of empowering those whom it marginalizes.
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This article outlines a novel framework for investigating complex intersections among divergent approaches to enacting environmental governance. I term this the study of ‘‘diverse ecologies.’’ The framework builds on J.K. Gibson-Graham’s... more
This article outlines a novel framework for investigating complex intersections among divergent approaches to enacting environmental governance. I term this the study of ‘‘diverse ecologies.’’ The framework builds on J.K. Gibson-Graham’s influential ‘‘diverse economies’’ perspective but seeks to integrate this with research in political ecology that devotes greater attention to issues of structural power. In particular, the article draws on growing analysis of environmental governance
as a form of ‘‘environmentality’’ building on Foucault’s influential governmentality analytic. While early literature in this area overlooked the multiple forms of environmentality that may intersect within a given context, more recent research emphasizes this diversity. Integrating multiple environmentalities and diverse economies perspectives thus provides the grounding for the "diverse ecologies’’ framework outlined herein. The framework’s application is illustrated through analysis of a popular payment for environmental services program in Costa Rica.
as a form of ‘‘environmentality’’ building on Foucault’s influential governmentality analytic. While early literature in this area overlooked the multiple forms of environmentality that may intersect within a given context, more recent research emphasizes this diversity. Integrating multiple environmentalities and diverse economies perspectives thus provides the grounding for the "diverse ecologies’’ framework outlined herein. The framework’s application is illustrated through analysis of a popular payment for environmental services program in Costa Rica.
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This article proposes an innovative analytical framework for investigating processes of neoliberalization and its articulation with 'alternative' governance arrangements. It is by now well-established that neoliberalism is a variegated... more
This article proposes an innovative analytical framework for investigating processes of neoliberalization and its articulation with 'alternative' governance arrangements. It is by now well-established that neoliberalism is a variegated processes that manifests differently in diverse contexts. Yet how to actually conceptualize and investigate this variegation remains unclear: we lack a comparative framework for analyzing how different dimensions of neoliberalization manifest within a given context as well as how these articulate with non-neoliberal modes of governance. To address this lacuna, the framework proposed here begins with a multidimensional understanding of neoliberalization as comprising an overarching philosophy, a set of general principles through which this philosophy is expressed, the specific policies via which these principles are implemented and the forms of subjectivity all of this seeks to cultivate. It then integrates an approach to distinguishing 'multiple governmentalities' derived from recently published work by Michel Foucault to understand neoliberalism as a particular governmentality that may articulate with others. To complete the ensemble, it draws on 'diverse economies' perspectives pioneered by J.K. Gibson-Graham to assess the relationship between particular governance strategies and on-the-ground practices. The resulting synthetic framework affords multidimensional investigation of the complex ways that different elements of neoliberalization may articulate with distinct forms of governance in both planners' visions and concrete execution by practitioners. Its utility is illustrated through a case study of Costa Rica's payment for environmental services (PES) program, which exbibits a complex form of articulated neoliberalization in practice.
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Environmental conservation finds itself in desperate times. Saving nature, to be sure, has never been an easy proposition. But the arrival of the Anthropocene - the alleged new phase of world history in which humans dominate the... more
Environmental conservation finds itself in desperate times. Saving nature, to be sure, has never been an easy proposition. But the arrival of the Anthropocene - the alleged new phase of world history in which humans dominate the earth-system seems to have upped the ante dramatically; the choices facing the conservation community have now become particularly stark. Several proposals for revolutionising conservation have been proposed, including ‘new’ conservation, ‘half Earth’ and more. These have triggered heated debates and potential for (contemplating) radical change. Here, we argue that these do not take political economic realities seriously enough and hence cannot lead us forward. Another approach to conservation is needed, one that takes seriously our economic system’s structural pressures, violent socio-ecological realities, cascading extinctions and increasingly authoritarian politics. We propose an alternative termed ‘convivial conservation’. Convivial conservation is a vision, a politics and a set of governance principles that realistically respond to the core pressures of our time. Drawing on a variety of perspectives in social theory and movements from around the globe, it proposes a post-capitalist approach to conservation that promotes radical equity, structural transformation and environmental justice and so contributes to an overarching movement to create a more equal and sustainable world.
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How does ecotourism – conventionally characterized by its pursuit of a “natural” experience – confront assertions that “nature is over” attendant to growing promotion of the “Anthropocene”? One increasingly prominent strategy is to try to... more
How does ecotourism – conventionally characterized by its pursuit of a
“natural” experience – confront assertions that “nature is over” attendant
to growing promotion of the “Anthropocene”? One increasingly
prominent strategy is to try to harness this “end of nature” itself as a
novel tourism “product”. If the Anthropocene is better understood as
the Capitalocene, as some contend, then this strategy can be viewed as
a paradigmatic example of disaster capitalism in which crises precipitated by capitalist processes are themselves exploited as new forms of accumulation. In this way, engagement with the Anthropocene
becomes the latest in a series of spatio-temporal “fixes” that the tourism
industry can be seen to provide to the capitalist system in general. Here
I explore this dynamic by examining several ways in which the prospect
of the loss of “natural” resources are promoted as the basis of tourism
experience: disaster tourism; extinction tourism; voluntourism; development tourism; and, increasingly, self-consciously Anthropocene tourism as well. Via such strategies, Anthropocene tourism exemplifies capitalism’s astonishing capacity for self-renewal through creative destruction, sustaining itself in a “post-nature” world by continuing to market social and environmental awareness and action even while shifting from pursuit of nonhuman “nature” previously grounding these aims.
“natural” experience – confront assertions that “nature is over” attendant
to growing promotion of the “Anthropocene”? One increasingly
prominent strategy is to try to harness this “end of nature” itself as a
novel tourism “product”. If the Anthropocene is better understood as
the Capitalocene, as some contend, then this strategy can be viewed as
a paradigmatic example of disaster capitalism in which crises precipitated by capitalist processes are themselves exploited as new forms of accumulation. In this way, engagement with the Anthropocene
becomes the latest in a series of spatio-temporal “fixes” that the tourism
industry can be seen to provide to the capitalist system in general. Here
I explore this dynamic by examining several ways in which the prospect
of the loss of “natural” resources are promoted as the basis of tourism
experience: disaster tourism; extinction tourism; voluntourism; development tourism; and, increasingly, self-consciously Anthropocene tourism as well. Via such strategies, Anthropocene tourism exemplifies capitalism’s astonishing capacity for self-renewal through creative destruction, sustaining itself in a “post-nature” world by continuing to market social and environmental awareness and action even while shifting from pursuit of nonhuman “nature” previously grounding these aims.
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This paper examines how state and non-state actors govern through pursuing speculative conservation among resource-dependent people who must renegotiate altered livelihoods amidst extractivism in ruptured landscapes. As donor aid declines... more
This paper examines how state and non-state actors govern through pursuing speculative conservation among resource-dependent people who must renegotiate altered livelihoods amidst extractivism in ruptured landscapes. As donor aid declines and changes form, bilaterals, state agencies, and civil society now pursue advocacy in overlapping spaces of intensifying extractivism and speculative gov-ernance in the ruptured frontiers of Southeast Asia. In these spaces, bilaterals and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) struggle to work with upland farmers who negotiate the contrasting expectations of the abstract, speculative nature of conservation initiatives and the lucrative nature of extractive labour in the face of dramatic transformations of agrarian livelihoods and landscapes. Through a case study of the Philippine uplands, we demonstrate that as speculative conservation unfolds and manifests within and beyond these landscapes, it endeavours to revalue nature monetarily in ways that help reorganise labour and capital in an effort to overcome the exhaustion of capital wrought by rupture. We propose that during moments of rupture speculative conservation coproduces value from ruin by renewing and preserving capital flows.
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This contribution addresses the growing global trend to promote ‘natural capital accounting’ (NCA) in support of environmental conservation. NCA seeks to harness the economic value of conserved nature to incentivize local resource users... more
This contribution addresses the growing global trend to promote ‘natural capital accounting’ (NCA) in support of environmental conservation. NCA seeks to harness the economic value of conserved nature to incentivize local resource users to forgo the opportunity costs of extractive activities. We suggest that this represents a form of neoliberal biopower/biopolitics seeking to defend life by demonstrating its ‘profitability’ and hence right to exist. While little finance actually reaches communities through this strategy, substantial funding still flows into the idea of ‘natural capital’ as the basis of improving rural livelihoods. Drawing on two cases in Southeast Asia, we show that NCA initiatives may compel some local people to value ecosystem services in financial terms, yet in most cases this perspective remains partial and fragmented in communities where such initiatives produce a range of unintended outcomes. When the envisioned environmental markets fail to develop and benefits remain largely intangible, NCA fails to meet the growing material aspirations of farmers while also offering little if any bulwark against their using forests more intensively and/or enrolling in lucrative extractive enterprise. We thus conclude that NCA in practice may become the antithesis of conservation by actually encouraging the resource extraction it intends to combat.
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This article introduces the special issue on ‘Political Ecologies of Green Wars’ and the research papers comprising it. While state-authorised and state-directed forms of violence in support of conservation have been evident in many... more
This article introduces the special issue on ‘Political Ecologies of Green Wars’ and the research papers comprising it. While state-authorised and state-directed forms of violence in support of conservation have been evident in many places for quite some time, the current scope, scale and rhetorical justification of the violent defence of biodiversity seem quite unprecedented in the history of global conservation. We, therefore, ask whether and how the term green wars may be appropriate to describe this new intensity of violence and the changes in environmental governance it signifies. In bringing together a number of important recent discussions around green grabbing, green militarisation/violence, green economy, neoliberal conservation and biopower, amongst others, the special issue emphasises the increasingly central role of environmental and conservation concerns within the global political
economy as a whole. In the process, it also points towards an overarching conceptual framing for understanding these conjoined dynamics in terms of an ‘intensification of pressure’ precipitated by the combined yet uneven magnification and integration of power and capital within the world today. Consequently, we argue that the concept of green wars potentially heralds the new twenty-first century ‘real-politik’ of the centrality of violence and conflict both to the neoliberal political economy and to environmental conservation, and their integrated socio-ecological manifestations and effects.
economy as a whole. In the process, it also points towards an overarching conceptual framing for understanding these conjoined dynamics in terms of an ‘intensification of pressure’ precipitated by the combined yet uneven magnification and integration of power and capital within the world today. Consequently, we argue that the concept of green wars potentially heralds the new twenty-first century ‘real-politik’ of the centrality of violence and conflict both to the neoliberal political economy and to environmental conservation, and their integrated socio-ecological manifestations and effects.
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Tourism in Ghana has been developing rapidly over the last decade. By marketing over a dozen “community ecotourism” sites, particularly around monkey and forest sanctuaries, Ghana hopes to attract travellers to spend money in the country... more
Tourism in Ghana has been developing rapidly over the last decade. By marketing over a dozen “community ecotourism” sites, particularly around monkey and forest sanctuaries, Ghana hopes to attract travellers to spend money in the country and so aid local development and protect natural resources. This paper analyses this trend, outlining several contradictions in the country’s national branding of “authenticity” in ecotourism and how this takes local shape in the case of the Tafi-Atome monkey sanctuary in Eastern Ghana. We propose that actors on different levels in Ghana appear to market and brand ecotourism according to a “script” that directs and influences local ecotourism practices in ways that obscure these contradictions and thereby enable continuation of and belief in the script. We conclude that this “ecotourism script” is central to the promotion and implementation of ecotourism in general, and needed to maintain the belief that the activity is an important conservation and development panacea.
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A B S T R A C T This article reviews an emerging body of research applying a " multiple governmentalities " perspective derived from Michel Foucault to the study of environmental politics. Previous application of the popular... more
A B S T R A C T This article reviews an emerging body of research applying a " multiple governmentalities " perspective derived from Michel Foucault to the study of environmental politics. Previous application of the popular govern-mentality concept to understand such politics had largely overlooked the multiple forms of governmentality, described in Foucault's later work, that may intersect in a given context. This paper outlines the evolution of Foucault's discussion of governmentality and its implications for the study of environmental politics. It then reviews recent research concerning environmental politics employing a multiple governmentalities perspective. It finishes by distilling overarching patterns from this literature and suggesting new directions for future research to explore.
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This paper examines how Southern Andean Patagonia has been increasingly incorporated within networks of global capital since the 1990s. Once defined by military violence against indigenous societies, white settler colonialism, and... more
This paper examines how Southern Andean Patagonia has been increasingly incorporated within networks of global capital since the 1990s. Once defined by military violence against indigenous societies, white settler colonialism, and livestock farming, this remote region has become an iconic center for green development in Latin America. This article develops the argument that a regional territorial imaginary—grounded in a history of borderland geopolitics—has facilitated this recent shift towards green development across the resource domains of land conservation, hydropower, and forestry. The discussion addresses the different ways in which forests, waterways, and protected areas (public and private) have been integrated into a hegemonic vision promoting eco-regionalism among state, corporate, and civil society actors. This analysis thus contributes to scholarship on global capitalism, natural resource governance, and green development in Latin America by developing the concept of the regional territorial imaginary to describe these dynamics. This analytic highlights how processes of capitalist specialization and region-alization occur through the open-ended consolidation of master images that build upon spatial histories, transnational regimes of representational value, and political struggles
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The predominant focus within the growing body of research addressing ‘green violence’ – that employed in the name of protecting nonhuman natures – has been the exercise of such violence by representatives of nation-state regimes. Largely... more
The predominant focus within the growing body of research addressing ‘green violence’ – that employed in the name of protecting nonhuman natures – has been the exercise of such violence by representatives of nation-state regimes. Largely overlooked thus far, therefore, is a remarkably similar discussion conducted among civil society environmental activists, who have long debated the legitimacy of employing analogous forms of violence in their own defense of ‘nature.’ Juxtaposing these two discussions, this article explores how green violence has been discussed and contested among state and non-state actors, respectively. At stake in this discussion is the essential question of when, and by whom, green violence can be legitimately exercised. This question, in turn, raises the related question of who can legitimately employ ‘biopower’ when both state and non-state actors commonly justify green violence with quite similar claims to be acting in defense of imperiled forms of non-human life. In addressing these questions, this analysis suggests that we may need to rethink how biopower is being mobilised in the contemporary world wherein the nation-state political order is increasingly challenged by manifold forces
while environmental concerns have at the same time come to be seen as one of the principle security threats to states, their subjects, as well as life as a whole.
while environmental concerns have at the same time come to be seen as one of the principle security threats to states, their subjects, as well as life as a whole.
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Neoliberal conservation describes a dynamic wherein prominent organizations around the world concerned with biodiversity protection have increasingly adopted strategies and mechanisms that seek to reconcile conservation with economic... more
Neoliberal conservation describes a dynamic wherein prominent organizations around the world concerned with biodiversity protection have increasingly adopted strategies and mechanisms that seek to reconcile conservation with economic development by harnessing economic markets as putative mechanisms for financing nature conservation. Since the turn of the millennium, a vibrant discussion around this topic has arisen across anthropology, geography, and related fields. Within this discussion, the rise of neoliberal conservation is generally treated as part of more widespread processes of neoliberalization occurring throughout the global economy since the 1980s, promoting a constellation of core principles including privatization, marketization, decentralization, deregulation, and commodification. Neoliberal conservation arose out of a growing concern among prominent conservation organizations to include poverty reduction and economic development within their mandates as well as to capture additional funding via partnerships with wealthy corporations. It is commonly implemented through a series of so-called market-based instruments (MBIs), including ecotourism, payment for environmental services (PES), and biodiversity and wetlands banking, as well as financial mechanisms such as green bonds.
However, evidence suggests that promotion of neoliberal conservation rarely achieves intended outcomes in actual implementation. This has led some researchers to argue that these activities are thus not neoliberal at all, while others defend this characterization within an understanding of neoliberalization as a variegated process. Researchers also point to the rise of right-wing authoritarianism as a potential challenge to neoliberal hegemony, yet the implications of this trend for conservation policy and practice remain little explored. Thus, the important open question is raised of whether neoliberal conservation was the product of a particular political era that is coming to an end, and if so, what will arise in its aftermath.
However, evidence suggests that promotion of neoliberal conservation rarely achieves intended outcomes in actual implementation. This has led some researchers to argue that these activities are thus not neoliberal at all, while others defend this characterization within an understanding of neoliberalization as a variegated process. Researchers also point to the rise of right-wing authoritarianism as a potential challenge to neoliberal hegemony, yet the implications of this trend for conservation policy and practice remain little explored. Thus, the important open question is raised of whether neoliberal conservation was the product of a particular political era that is coming to an end, and if so, what will arise in its aftermath.
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Si bien el turismo ha sido una pieza clave de la economía mundial durante más de un siglo, en las últimas décadas ha sido de forma particular un componente central de un proceso mundial de neoliberalización. La neoliberalización describe... more
Si bien el turismo ha sido una pieza clave de la economía mundial durante más de un siglo, en las últimas décadas ha sido de forma particular un componente central de un proceso mundial de neoliberalización. La neoliberalización describe un programa político-económico de «libre comercio» que integra de manera interrelacionada los mecanismos de desregulación, descentralización, mercantilización, privatización y mercantilización. Este programa se fundó sobre la crítica del Estado de bienestar durante la posguerra. Se introdujo por primera vez en la administración pública en los Estados Unidos y Euro-pa Occidental en la década de los ochenta, y luego se difundió por todo el mundo en década siguiente a través de programas de ajuste estructural (PAE) incorporados en la planificación del desarrollo internacional. Siendo una de las industrias más grandes del mundo, el desarrollo del turismo ha sido un componente clave de este proceso. De esta manera, la política turística ha sido progresivamente neoliberalizada en muchos lugares, mientras que, a su vez, el desarrollo turístico ha servido como un componente clave de la neoli-beralización en general, jugando así un papel relevante en la consolidación de una sola economía integrada a nivel mundial. Por lo tanto, el turismo puede entenderse no solo como un componente clave de la neoliberalización, sino como un medio clave a través del cual el neoliberalismo se propaga. En el proceso, el desarrollo turístico ha desempeñado un papel crucial para ayudar a estabilizar una economía capitalista neoliberal plagada de contradicciones fundamentales sometida a crisis periódicas. Este capítulo explora cómo se ha desarrollado esta dinámica, dónde se encuentra en la actualidad y cómo es probable que evolucione en el futuro a medida que continúan desplegándose las contradicciones que subyacen al capitalismo neoliberal.
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This chapter reviews the rise of and challenges faced by protected areas (PAs) aimed at biodiversity conservation throughout Latin America over the past half century in particular. It charts a similar process throughout the region whereby... more
This chapter reviews the rise of and challenges faced by protected areas (PAs) aimed at biodiversity conservation throughout Latin America over the past half century in particular. It charts a similar process throughout the region whereby a global campaign championed by international environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and financial institutions (IFIs) helped to inspire and fund the establishment of nationwide systems of PAs. While these PAs were initially administered predominantly in classic “fortress” fashion, in recent decades this approach has been complemented by introduction of a community-based conservation (CBC) strategy that seeks to enlist local residents as stakeholders and decision makers, introducing a series of market-based instruments (MBIs) including ecotourism and payment for environmental services (PES) to generate revenue to support this. More recently, this
approach has been intensifi ed by the rise of “post-neoliberal” politics in a number of societies that pursues a better integration of environmental and developmental concerns. Yet this has been challenged by the expansion of raw material extraction driven in large part by expanding
trade relations with East Asia and elsewhere. As a result, protected areas have become key sites of renewed contestation between forces of conservation and extraction. The chapter discusses these developments and their implications for the future of biodiversity conservation in the
region.
approach has been intensifi ed by the rise of “post-neoliberal” politics in a number of societies that pursues a better integration of environmental and developmental concerns. Yet this has been challenged by the expansion of raw material extraction driven in large part by expanding
trade relations with East Asia and elsewhere. As a result, protected areas have become key sites of renewed contestation between forces of conservation and extraction. The chapter discusses these developments and their implications for the future of biodiversity conservation in the
region.
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Ecotourism is often considered of the fastest growing segments of a global tourism market that now rivals oil production as the world’s largest industry (UNWTO 2016). Yet what is actually being promoted under this label remains a matter... more
Ecotourism is often considered of the fastest growing segments of a global tourism market that now rivals oil production as the world’s largest industry (UNWTO 2016). Yet what is actually being promoted under this label remains a matter of some confusion. The most widely accepted definition of ecotourism, offered by The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), defines it as “Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people” (cited in Honey 2008:6). Yet it must be recognized that this is not merely a factual statement, but rather a political argument intended to assert that these are the only activities that the concept should designate. In wider popular discourse, of course, the term is used to describe all manner of activities that generally endeavor to sell an encounter with “nature” very broadly defined. This promiscuous use of the term has led to criticism that it has become an empty label – or worse, a cover for “greenwashing,” allowing operators to conceal their detrimental practices beneath a veneer of social and environmental responsibility (Mowforth and Munt 2008). Efforts by TIES and others to define the term more narrowly, therefore, seek to focus attention on the ways in which the activities designated may or may not actually fulfill the social and environmental promises that they commonly make. Hence, advocates seek to distinguish “nature-based” tourism from ecotourism specifically, where the former “is defined solely by the recreational activities of the tourist” while “ecotourism is defined as well by a set of principles that include its benefits to both conservation and people in the host country” (Honey 2008: 7).
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The negative social and environmental impacts of the global tourism industry have been widely documented, yet there is still potential for tourism to function as a force of social justice. In this article I suggest that a political... more
The negative social and environmental impacts of the global tourism industry have been widely documented, yet there is still potential for tourism to function as a force of social justice. In this article I suggest that a political ecology perspective merging Marxist and poststructuralist lines of analysis can help to highlight both the key drivers of tourism’s negative impacts and ways that these can be challenged in the interest of tapping into tourism’s progressive potential. From a Marxist perspective, the tourism industry can be understood as a key mechanism by means of which the capitalist system expands and reproduces itself, while from a poststructuralist perspective it can be understood as a central element of neoliberal governance. Challenging tourism’s corrosive effects, therefore, requires confronting both of these dynamics in pursuit of a post-capitalist, post-neoliberal politics.
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Increasingly NGOs organize trips for their 'major donors' to visit development projects with the aim to enhance funding streams and fortify donor relations. Building on growing discussions of 'philanthrocapitalism' as a novel form of... more
Increasingly NGOs organize trips for their 'major donors' to visit development projects with the aim to enhance funding streams and fortify donor relations. Building on growing discussions of 'philanthrocapitalism' as a novel form of international development financing, we analyze such 'donor trips' as a unique tourism niche termed 'philanthrotourism'. Based on empirical research concerning two such trips to Sub-Saharan Africa, we argue that philanthrotourism allows donors to experience jouissance-a particular type of ambivalent enjoyment that includes fascination with dark and horrific elements-as a core motivation to engage in staged development spectacles via their touristic experiences and thereby affirm their commitment to philanthropy. Our analysis highlights the importance of investigating psychological underpinnings of ethical tourism more generally.
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This article investigates assertions that new philanthropic web 2.0 initiatives can empower Internet users to further social and environmental change. It focuses on two ostensibly “free” web 2.0 initiatives aimed at nature conservation:... more
This article investigates assertions that new philanthropic web 2.0 initiatives can empower Internet users to further social and environmental change. It focuses on two ostensibly “free” web 2.0 initiatives aimed at nature conservation: “Greenvolved” and “Safari Challenge Zoo Adventure.” With Greenvolved, clicking on one’s favorite projects is supposed to support conservation initiatives whereas in Safari Challenge users interact through gaming on the virtual African savannahs to conserve online nature, thereby supporting various offline humanitarian projects. Drawing on discussions of “philanthrocapitalism” and “nature 2.0,” our analysis demonstrates that such “popular
philanthrocapitalist” initiatives do not support empowering collective action but instead depoliticize and commodify environmental activism. Such initiatives thereby allow neoliberal capitalism to further extend its reach under the pretense of empowering those whom it marginalizes.
philanthrocapitalist” initiatives do not support empowering collective action but instead depoliticize and commodify environmental activism. Such initiatives thereby allow neoliberal capitalism to further extend its reach under the pretense of empowering those whom it marginalizes.