Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The earliest national parks and protected areas - in both North and South - were
established by elites, often colonial or white settler governments, with little concern
for local peoples or their traditional resource use practices (Neumann, 2004). Local
populations were in many cases strictly prohibited from residing in and using the
resources of protected areas and were seen as the greatest threat to conservation
objectives. Resource use activities were invariably coded according to the goals of
conservation and recreation: wood gathering was redefi ned as theft, grazing as
trespassing. Similarly, hunting was deemed 'poaching' when done for subsistence,
but considered scientifi c management or economic benefi t (or manly sport) when
done by park managers or tourists (Adams, 2001). Inevitably, this view led to
numerous clashes with local populations, many of which were greatly impacted by
conservation interventions, and the concomitant reduction or outright loss of cus-
tomary resource and territorial rights (Wilhusen et al., 2003).
Pathbreaking work by Peluso (1992; 1993) examined the coercive practices of
an authoritarian Indonesian state, which saw in conservation programmes an oppor-
tunity to spatially segregate and politically control populations it considered unruly
or undesirable. Relying on a mix of archival work, policy analysis and ethnographic
approaches, Peluso's work revealed the dark side of seemingly benign conservation
policies: that in some cases national parks were more effective at protecting vested
political interests than they were at protecting endangered species and natural habi-
tats. Similarly, Neumann (1998) has employed archival analysis to demonstrate that
Tanzania's national parks system is rooted historically in the establishment of colo-
nial-era game reserves and served the goals of the state's claims to sovereignty over
territory. As he asserts elsewhere, Tanzanian conservation is part of the modern
state's civilising mission: 'Containment and control of nature in conservation terri-
tories was inseparable from the colonising state's efforts to control its African sub-
jects and ultimately create a new kind of person: civilised, productive, and observable'
(Neumann, 2004, pp. 203-4). As with Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks
in the USA, the establishment of these protected areas was closely associated with
spatialised racial hierarchies that excluded native peoples from the 'pleasuring
grounds' of the dominant white settler population (Kosek, 2004). Like Zimmerer
(2004), Kosek (2004) employs discourse analysis to disentangle the highly contested
narratives of environmental conservation. The social and ecological implications of
this 'fortress conservation' strategy came to be questioned by international agencies,
which increasingly saw it as counter-productive to the goals of both conservation
and development.
This shift came about in part as a result of the 1972 UN Conference on the
Human Environment in Stockholm, which, in addition to establishing the United
Nations Environment Programme, issued a declaration on human rights in relation
to the environment. This was followed in 1975 by an IUCN resolution declaring
that parks and protected areas should not be established without consulting local
and indigenous populations (Fortwangler, 2003). The 1980 IUCN World Conserva-
tion Strategy (IUCN, 1980), a key document in sustainable development thinking,
asserted that development could (and must) be reoriented to promote conservation
and that conservation could in turn meet the needs of poor people (Adams, 2001).
In 1982, the World Congress on Parks and Protected Areas encouraged greater local
participation in the management of protected areas and other natural resources
(McNeely and Miller, 1984). These efforts led to a diversity of approaches intended
to incorporate local populations into protected areas management. Such approaches,
