Conservation as a social contract in a violent frontier: The case of (Anti-) poaching in Garamba National Park,eastern DR Congo

Protected areas located in areas of violent conflict are often conceived as spaces where the state has lost its control and parks are ‘dissolved’, to the point where poaching and violent extraction of resources run free. Our analysis of conservation in Garamba National Park, in eastern DRC, shows that forms of regulation of (anti-)poaching activities continue to exist within such spaces through the persistence of social contracts that bind different actors in and around the park around conservation. We show that these contracts have long histories and change substantially over time, and yet continue to function as reference points for populations and authorities with regards to (anti-) poaching activities, and the organization of social life in and around the park more broadly. Faced with insecurity, poverty and uncertainty, the population living close to Garamba National Park continues to refer to these social contracts, or seeks to devise new ones in search for predictability, livelihoods, security and the provision of basic social services. By focusing on the ‘contractual layer’ of conservation in a violent frontier, we aim to contribute to the understanding of the re-configuration of public authority in these spaces, and demonstrate the conceptual and empirical relevance of analysing social contracts for geographers. We do so by drawing a conceptual and empirical bridge between the literature that has conceived conservation as enclosures, and the literature that has focused more on the contractual dimension of conservation.     

Authoritarianism and the securitization of development in Africa

Debate on the ‘securitization’ of aid and international development since 9/11 has been anchored in two key claims: that the phenomenon has been driven and imposed by western governments and that this is wholly unwelcome and deleterious for those in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. This article challenges both of these assumptions by demonstrating how a range of African regimes have not only benefited from this dispensation but have also actively encouraged and shaped it, even incorporating it into their own militarized state‐building projects. Drawing on the cases of Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda—four semi‐authoritarian polities which have been sustained by the securitization trend—we argue that these developments have not been an accidental by‐product of the global ‘war on terror’. Instead, we contend, they have been the result of a deliberate set of choices and policy decisions by these African governments as part of a broader ‘illiberal state‐building’ agenda. In delineating this argument we outline four major strategies employed by these regimes in this regard: ‘playing the proxy’; simultaneous ‘socialization’ of development policy and ‘privatization’ of security affairs; making donors complicit in de facto regional security arrangements; and constructing regime ‘enemies’ as broader, international threats.     

Public Authority and Conservation in Areas of Armed Conflict: Virunga National Park as a ‘State within a State’ in Eastern Congo

Much research on nature conservation in war‐torn regions focuses on the destructive impact of violent conflict on protected areas, and argues that transnational actors should step up their support for those areas to mitigate the risks that conflict poses to conservation efforts there. Overlooked are the effects transnational efforts have on wider conflict dynamics and structures of public authority in these regions. This article describes how transnational actors increasingly gained influence over the management of Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and how these actors contributed to the militarization of conservation in Virunga. Most scholarly literature suggests that ‘green militarization’ contributes to the extension of state authority over territory and population, yet this is not the case in Virunga. Instead, the militarization of Virunga translates into practices of extra‐state territorialization, with the result that many in the local population perceive the park's management as a project of personalized governance and/or a ‘state within a state’. This article thus argues that it is important to depart from an a priori notion of the ‘state’ when considering the nexus of conservation practices and territorialization, and to analyse this intersection through the lens of public authority instead.     

War as Feminized Labour in the Global Political Economy of Neoimperialism

ABSTRACT

This article examines the structures of international relations that facilitate political violence in postcolonial states. It explores the intersections of patriarchy and imperialism in the contemporary political economy to understand how armed conflict and political violence in postcolonial states form an integral element of the global economy of accumulation in deeply gendered ways. By focusing on the structural level of analysis, this article argues that the siting of armed conflict in postcolonial contexts serves to maintain neo-colonial relations of exploitation between the West and non-West, and is made both possible and effective through the gendering of political identities and types of work performed in the global economy. I argue here that armed conflict is a form of feminized labour in the global economy. Despite the fact that performing violence is a physically masculine form of labour, the outsourcing of armed conflict as labour in the political economy is ‘feminized’ in that it represents the flexibilization of labour and informalization of market participation. So while at the same time that this work is fulfilling hegemonic ideals of militarized masculinity within the domestic context, at the international level it actually demonstrates the ‘weakness’ or ‘otherness’ of the ‘failed’/feminized state in which this violence occurs, and legitimizes and hence re-entrenches the hegemonic relations between the core and periphery on the basis of problematizing the ‘weak’ state’s masculinity. It is through the discursive construction of the non-Western world as the site of contemporary political violence that mainstream international relations reproduces an orientalist approach to both understanding and addressing the ‘war puzzle’.     

Forest becomes frontline: Conservation and counter-insurgency in a space of violent conflict in Assam,Northeast India

Using the case of the Ecological Task Force (ETF) of the Indian Army as an entry point, this contribution nudges the existing conceptual and theoretical views on green militarization and violent environments in the context of reserve and protected forest areas. This is achieved by going beyond coercive physical violence and accounting for forms of symbolic and structural violence meted out to populations. I position this work within and also complement the broader literature on critical and militarized practices and apply it to the reserve forests in the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) in Assam, northeast India. Here, politics that surround conservation is immersed within a context of violent ethno-religious conflict. The BTAD has been a theatre of recurrent insurgencies between the autochthonous Bodo tribe and the Adivasi, Muslim groups over land and demographics. A key characteristic of the conflict is its occurrence in the reserve forests on Assam-Bhutan borderlands, which can be traced back to the colonial process of forest making that brought immigrants into Assam, threatening cultural and territorial loss for Bodos. During the Bodo movement for a separate state, starting in 1980s and continuing, the militants operated from within the forest, leading to the departure of the forest department. As a result, rebels and locals appropriated the forest through rampant resource extraction. In response, the ETF was constituted in 2007. Fieldwork suggests that ETF through its military tactic and discipline engages in ‘soft’ militarization while also trusting on the regular Army for protection during conservation operations. Further, drawing on regional environmental history, I analyze how ethno-religious conflict influences modes of conservation and is exemplified by continuing inter-institutional competition between the forest department and the ETF. In the ensuing conservation-counterinsurgency nexus, retribution towards insurgents prevail over forest protection. Moreover, despite ETF's efforts to buffer from local politics, incidents of a political nature seep into its operations, e.g. ambushed by militants during conservation activities.     

Ambivalent greenings,collateral conservation: Negotiating ecology in a United Nations buffer zone

This article focuses on the politics of environmental conservation in the UN Buffer Zone (BZ) that divides the island of Cyprus. On the one hand, it underscores the unintended conservation benefits which resulted after the violent depopulation of the BZ. On the other hand, it shows how the protracted conflict and its transformation into a post-violent one, has ‘softened up’ the BZ, and gave rise to new demands for human access and land development. The BZ as a spatial legacy of the Cyprus conflict thus illustrates the paradoxes of conservation practices in unintended ecological zones, which we term collateral conservation. It also underscores the modi vivendi negotiated among a broadened range of actors in pursuit of rival anthropocentric or ecological goals.     

Archaeology, Development and Conflict: A Case Study from the African Continent

Apart from wars, other contexts of social conflict have recently become a setting in which archaeologists are faced with acute, sometimes armed, violence. On the African continent, a region often overlooked in discussions of “archaeology in conflict”, rapid economic development has led to several such scenes. The paper discusses a particularly poignant example from the Middle Nile valley in Sudan, where large dam projects have been met with various levels of opposition by affected populations. Local communities opposing the construction of further planned dams on the Nile are increasingly stressing ‘cultural survival’ and fear of ‘developmental genocide’ as two of their major motivations for fighting these projects. Assuming a close link between the developer and archaeological salvage missions, affected people have started to use the expulsion of salvage teams from their territory as a strategy of resistance—posing an ethical dilemma for the archaeologists who struggle to find a position in the increasingly violent controversies accompanying these contested development projects.     

The Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone: Mediating Containment and Engagement in Humanitarian Emergencies

This article explores how framings of the 2014–16 outbreak of Ebola as a crisis, its causes, nature and consequences gave rise to two seemingly contradictory types of interventions within affected communities in Sierra Leone: a militarized state of emergency on the one hand, and efforts to foster local engagement and ownership on the other. Teasing out explicitly the underlying logic of these two modes of response, we are able to discern the convergence between containment and engagement approaches that are at the heart of contemporary humanitarianism. Rather than being opposed or contradictory, the article shows how they were mutually constitutive, through negotiations between different ways of knowing and responding to the Ebola crisis. The resulting divisive practices, juxtaposing ‘Ebola heroes’ and ‘dangerous bodies’, re‐ordered the landscapes that individuals had to navigate in order to manage uncertainty. Tracing these logics through to the ‘subjects’ of intervention, the article tells the story of one traditional healer's ‘epistemic navigations’ in his efforts to survive both the epidemic and its response. Bringing these dynamics and their consequences to the fore in the Sierra Leonean case invites broader reflections on a humanitarian assemblage increasingly reliant on the mutual constitution of containment and engagement, security and resilience, in its approach to managing ‘at risk’ populations.     

The Rise and Fall of ‘Internally Displaced People’ in the Central Peruvian Andes

This article analyses the possible effects of the introduction of the category of ‘internally displaced people’— IDP — in the context of violent conflict in central Peru. It gives an account of the ways in which the IDP category has been introduced and appropriated by local NGOs, people affected by violent conflict and displacement, and by the governmental organization, PAR, set up to facilitate return and repopulation after the declared end of the armed conflict. The category has facilitated and given leverage to a national organization of IDPs. However, the agencies and programmes that work in support of IDPs tend to regard existing mobile livelihood practices as an impediment for advocacy and longer‐term development strategies. This article suggests that, instead of considering displacement (and return) as an absolute break with the past, a focus on networks and mobile livelihoods may be a better way to help people affected by violent conflict to move beyond emergency relief.     

The roots to peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo: conservation as a platform for green development

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is endowed with an abundance of natural resources, and the presence of high‐value resources such as coltan and diamonds is well known. The country is also endowed with a wealth of biodiversity, although the value of this is often overlooked. This article describes the detrimental impact of armed conflict on this biodiversity and the dangers posed by the return of peace, which is likely to result in increased biodiversity exploitation. The resulting loss of key carbon sinks crucial to the global fight against climate change will affect not only the DRC, but also the international community. Biodiversity is therefore identified as a threat to security but also a valuable asset for development, and this article discusses methods to realize the value of biodiversity in the DRC through the benefits of ecosystem services and income generated from monetizing biodiversity. It concludes by arguing that the false dichotomy of conservation and development as separate entities and objectives needs to change so that conservation becomes a central pillar of security and development work in the DRC and other regions of current or recent armed conflict around the world.     

British judicial engagement and the juridification of the armed forces

Although the law has always been a major reference point in the conduct of war, little scholarly attention has focused on the transformative effect of recent legal challenges, judicial rulings and inquiries on the armed forces themselves, notably the 2011 Gage Inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa and the Philip Inquiry into the Mull of Kintyre helicopter disaster. Despite this, the impact has been significant in the ways it has transformed the governance regime of British armed forces and the professional autonomy of the military. This article conceptualizes the impact of law on the armed forces as ‘juridification’. In applying this concept, this article analyses the implications of this for the culture, conduct and organization of the British armed forces. It argues that juridification closes a civil–military relations gap between society on the one hand and the armed forces on the other. As important, juridification also brings with it permanent instability because of the inevitable conflicts that arise from the replacement of an old order based on authority, to a new military system based on rights. Thus the effects of juridification are not just a liminal moment—a transitory dislocation from established structures and the reversal of existing hierarchies—followed by the creation of a permanent new order. Rather, juridification has initiated an era of instability that is characterized by the absence of any permanent settlement of authority and rights in the governance of the armed forces. This has significant implications for the armed forces and their professional autonomy and the social, political and legal context in which armed forces have to operate.     

Confronting Conservation at Mount Elgon,Uganda

National parks remain at the centre of conservation efforts in Africa, although the long established strategy of conservation through law enforcement is now supplemented by participatory strategies such as community conservation. These new strategies have not changed the preservationist thrust of conservation policy and action. The relationships between parks and people are best understood as struggles in which ‘park neighbours’ use covert and overt ‘weapons of the weak’ to challenge the hegemony of conservation. This study of a national park in Uganda describes and analyses these forms of resistance.     

The problem with ‘radicalization’: the remit of ‘Prevent’ and the need to refocus on terrorism in the UK

This article questions the utility of the term ‘radicalization’ as a focus for counter‐terrorism response in the UK. It argues that the lack of clarity as to who the radicalized are has helped to facilitate a ‘Prevent’ strand of counterterrorism strategy that has confusingly oscillated between tackling violent extremism, in particular, to promoting community cohesion and ‘shared values’ more broadly. The article suggests that the focus of counterterrorism strategy should be on countering terrorism and not on the broader remit implied by wider conceptions of radical‐ization. This is not to diminish the importance of contextual or ‘root cause’ factors behind terrorism, but, if it is terrorism that is to be understood and countered, then such factors should be viewed within the terrorism‐counterterrorism discourse and not a radicalization‐counter‐radicalization one. The article goes on to consider the characterization of those presenting a terrorist threat to the UK as being ‘vulnerable’ to violent extremism. While it argues that the notion of vulnerable individuals and communities also lends itself to a wider ‘Prevent’ remit, it cautions that the impetus towards viewing terrorism as the product of vulnerability should not deflect us from what has generally been agreed in terrorism studies—that terrorism involves the perpetration of rational and calculated acts of violence.     

Environmental insecurity and fortress mentality

This article explores the political, economic and ecological context within which environmental insecurity emerges and feeds back into a fortress mentality. Shortages of food, water and energy sources are the trigger for nefarious activities involving organized criminal networks, transnational corporations and governments at varying political levels. The consequences of such activities contribute to even more ruthless exploitation of rapidly vanishing natural resources, as well as the further diminishment of air, soil and water quality. These developments, in turn, exacerbate the competitive scramble by individuals, groups and nations for what is left. The accompanying insecurities and vulnerabilities ensure elite and popular support for self‐interested ‘security’. Accordingly, the ‘fortress’ is being constructed and reconstructed at individual, local, national and regional levels—as both an attitude of mind and a material reality. Fundamentally, the basis for this fortress mentality is linked to decades of neo‐liberal policy and practice that have embedded an individualizing and competitive self‐interest that, collectively, is overriding prudent and precautionary policy construction around climate change and environmental degradation. The net result is that security is being built on a platform of state, corporate and organized group wrongdoing and injustice, in many instances with the implied and/or overt consent of relevant publics. Yet, as long as the fortification continues apace, it will contribute to and further exacerbate varying levels of insecurity for all.     

A new military history of the Italian Risorgimento and Anti-Risorgimento: the case of ‘transnational soldiers’

The article discusses new studies of foreign soldiers in the Italian armed groups of the (Anti-)Risorgimento against the background of recent scholarship on ‘transnational soldiers’, which acknowledges the complexities of foreigners' initial motives for enlistment and of the transnational processes inside the single armies. The article suggests that from the mundane structures of military life to the perceptions of the rank-and-file, many aspects of the soldiering experience in the multinational armed groups on all sides of the Risorgimento actually advanced rather than obviated national boundaries. This paper further demonstrates that the military cultures of the nationalists and the anti-unity forces were much more porous and mutually constitutive than is often recognised. The histories of the ‘transnational soldiers’ in the armed groups of the Risorgimento and Anti-Risorgimento are crucial for a possibly new, comparative history of the armed groups of the (Anti-)Risorigmento. This paper explores approaches of the culturally revived ‘new military history’ and suggests that it provides much still unrealised potential for Risorgimento historiography.     

Hate-crimes as racial violence: a critique of the exceptional

Violence on the one hand is taken as something natural and normal. On the other hand, certain violent actions, such as hate-crimes, are portrayed as forms of exceptional violence, while systemic inequalities are rendered ordinary. In this paper, I de-naturalize the concept of violence through a critical evaluation of hate-crimes. I argue that the concept of hate-crimes has been, or is at risk, of being co-opted by a more sustained effort to ignore and downplay racial inequalities in society. Drawing on the philosophical distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘letting die’, I contend that an exclusive focus on individual-based hate-crimes deflects attention from the systemic, structural inequalities of society; and that a narrow conceptualization of violence (as direct, intentional action) conforms to a more expansive neoliberal promotion of a ‘race-blind’ or ‘colour-blind’ criminal justice system.     

Violent maritime spaces: Conservation and security in Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park,India

The militarisation of conservation involves the integration of conservation, security and counterinsurgency through violent and armed strategies, or ‘war, by conservation’. We describe a militarised conservation practice in which a marine protected area was established by the state and supported by international actors in a region of ongoing ethnic and military conflict as a case of conservation, by war. Conservation and security actors actively criminalise artisanal fishing communities in Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park in India. The harvest of sea cucumbers, marine species of commercial value historically traded between the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, was banned and has become the target of militarised action. When the Sri Lankan civil war broke out in 1983, sea cucumber trade turned into a security concern as the same sea routes were also being used for trafficking arms, ammunition, and other contraband. Tamil Nadu was geographically and logistically involved in the civil war due to ethnic ties. The Sri Lankan civil war and its social and political consequences on the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu due to ethnic ties is a fitting case of the nexus of conservation and security in a marine context. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with artisanal fishers and conservation and security actors, we show that violent political conflict provided the justification for securitisation of conservation. As the state focuses its conservation efforts on the marine protected area, commercial fisheries detrimental to fisheries and biodiversity conservation continue. Marine protected areas allow the state to achieve its security outcomes even as it fails to meet its conservation goals due to non-local drivers of declines in species populations. Trans-boundary marine environments are particularly difficult to govern due to the dynamic nature of the seascape. The materiality of the sea and the conservation-security nexus results in the creation of a violent maritime space.     

Dilemmas of Counter‐Mapping Community Resources in Tanzania

Recent work has celebrated the political potential of ‘counter‐mapping’, that is, mapping against dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals. This article briefly reviews the counter‐mapping literature, and compares four counter‐mapping projects from Maasai areas in Tanzania to explore some potential pitfalls in such efforts. The cases, which involve community‐based initiatives led by a church‐based NGO, ecotourism companies, the Tanzanian National Parks Authority, and grassroots pastoralist rights advocacy groups, illustrate the broad range of activities grouped under the heading of counter‐mapping. They also present a series of political dilemmas that are typical of many counter‐mapping efforts: conflicts inherent in conservation efforts involving territorialization, privatization, integration and indigenization; problems associated with the theory and practice of ‘community‐level’ political engagement; the need to combine mapping efforts with broader legal and political strategies; and critical questions involving the agency of ‘external’ actors such as conservation and development donors, the state and private business interests.     

The many faces of a rebel group: the Allied Democratic Forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo

This article discusses the case of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It shows how a variety of actors that have opposed the ADF group have framed the rebels to achieve a range of political and economic objectives, or in response to organizational and individual limitations. The DRC and Ugandan governments have each framed ADF in pursuit of regional, international and national goals separate from their stated desires to eliminate the armed group. The UN stabilization mission in Congo's (MONUSCO) understanding of the ADF was influenced by organizational limitations and the shortcomings of individual analysts, producing flawed assessments and ineffective policy decisions. Indeed, the many ‘faces’ of ADF tell us more about the ADF's adversaries than they do about the rebels themselves. The article shows how the policies towards the ADF may not be directly related to defeating a rebel threat, but rather enable the framers (e.g. DRC and Ugandan governments) to pursue various political and economic objectives, or lead the framers to pursue misguided operational plans (e.g. MONUSCO). In doing so, the article highlights more broadly the importance of the production of knowledge on conflicts and rebel groups: the way in which a rebel group is instrumentalized, or in which organizational structure impact on the understanding of the rebel group, are crucial not only in understanding the context, but also in understanding the interventions on the ground.     

Waging a war to save biodiversity: the rise of militarized conservation

This article examines the rise in militarized approaches towards conservation, as part of a new ‘war for biodiversity’. This is a defining moment in the international politics of conservation and needs further examination. The claims that rhinos and elephants are under threat from highly organized criminal gangs of poachers shapes and determines conservation practice on the ground. Indeed, a central focus of the 2014 London Declaration on the Illegal Wildlife Trade is the strengthening of law enforcement, and recent policy statements by the US government and the Clinton Global Initiative also draw the link between poaching, global security and the need for greater levels of enforcement. Such statements and initiatives contribute substantially to the growing sense of a war for biodiversity. This article offers a critique of that argument, essentially by asking how we define poachers, and if militarized approaches mean conservationists are becoming more willing to engage in coercive, repressive policies that are ultimately counterproductive. Further, this article examines how the new war for biodiversity is justified and promoted by referring to wider debates about intervention in a post‐Cold War era; notably that the international community has a responsibility towards wildlife, especially endangered species, and that military forms of intervention may be required to save them.