A review of the social impacts of neoliberal conservation: Formations, inequalities, contestations

Holmes, George; Cavanagh, Connor Joseph

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.07.014

Cited by 168 publications

(116 citation statements)

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“…While diverse in method and subject area, proponents of political ecology are united in their general dissatisfaction with business as usual approaches to conservation and a desire to see more socially equitable forms of environmental governance (Robbins, 2011). Scholars in this field are particularly concerned about conservation policy that excludes people (Adams and Hutton, 2007;Neumann, 2004) and have made contributions to understanding the differential impacts of conservation projects (Holmes and Cavanagh, 2016;Stevens, 2014) examined the rationales underlying particular conservation strategies (Corson et al, 2014), analyzed instances of displacement and violence in the name of conservation Lunstrum, 2014) and critically interrogated new forms of conservation governance and their relationship to global capitalism (Brockington et al, 2008;Büscher and Arsel, 2012). Political ecology research makes frequent use of case studies to illustrate regional or global trends, and employs a variety of mostly qualitative (e.g.…”

Section: Political Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation social science: Understanding and integrating human dimensions to improve conservation

Bennett¹,

Roth²,

Klain³

et al. 2018

Preprint

143

215

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It has long been claimed that a better understanding of human or social dimensions of environmental issues will improve conservation. The social sciences are one important means through which researchers and practitioners can attain that better understanding. Yet, a lack of awareness of the scope and uncertainty about the purpose of the conservation social sciences impedes the conservation community's effective engagement with the human dimensions. This paper examines the scope and purpose of eighteen subfields of classic, interdisciplinary and applied conservation social sciences and articulates ten distinct contributions that the social sciences can make to understanding and improving conservation. In brief, the conservation social sciences can be valuable to conservation for descriptive, diagnostic, disruptive, reflexive, generative, innovative, or instrumental reasons. This review and supporting materials provides a succinct yet comprehensive reference for conservation scientists and practitioners. We contend that the social sciences can help facilitate conservation policies, actions and outcomes that are more legitimate, salient, robust and effective.

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Section: Political Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation social science: Understanding and integrating human dimensions to improve conservation

Bennett¹,

Roth²,

Klain³

et al. 2018

Preprint

143

215

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Much of the qualitative, critical literature on the social impacts of conservation eff orts has found them to be negative and highly detrimental to local people, local institutions, and local ecology. Th ough positive fi ndings do exist in this scholarship (Holmes and Cavanagh 2016), it has oft en seen conservation eff orts as a ploy to increase state power through bureaucratic expansion in forest domains (e.g., Neumann 1998;Peluso 1993). Such conclusions contrast with fi ndings from literature that relies on quantitative methods or IEs, which appear more likely to fi nd that conservation and protection eff orts have positive impacts on poverty.…”

Section: Disjunctures Between Critical and Applied Approachesmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…A volume of qualitative and critical studies has accumulated such that reviews have now been conducted in several major areas of forest policy, including on the social impacts of PAs (Naughton-Treves et al 2005;Pullin et al 2013;West et al 2006), community forest management (Bowler et al 2011;Gilmour 2016;Hajjar et al 2016;Pagdee et al 2006), and industrial forest plantations (Gerber 2011;Kröger 2014). More recent work has reviewed the body of work assessing the eff ects of the broad set of policies grouped under the umbrella of neoliberal conservation (Holmes and Cavanagh 2016).…”

Section: Critical Approaches To Forest Impact Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Crystal Ball for Forests?: Analyzing the Social-Ecological Impacts of Forest Conservation and Management over the Long Term

Miller¹,

Rana²,

Wahlén³

2017

Environment and Society

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Citizens, governments, and donors are increasingly demanding better evidence on the eff ectiveness of development policies and programs. Eff orts to ensure such accountability in the forest sector confront the challenge that the results may take years, even decades, to materialize, while forest-related interventions usually last only a short period. Th is article reviews the broad interdisciplinary literature assessing forest conservation and management impacts on biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and poverty alleviation in developing countries. It emphasizes the importance of indicators and identifi es disconnects between a rapidly growing body of research based on quasi-experimental designs and studies taking a more critical, ethnographic approach. Th e article also highlights a relative lack of attention on longer-term impacts in both of these areas of scholarship. We conclude by exploring research frontiers in the assessment of the impacts of forest-related interventions with long incubation periods, notably the development of predictive proxy indicators (PPIs).Ⅲ

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“…Of course, these recent inquiries into the 'nature' of the green economy build upon well-established research foci in political ecology and related fields, such as the 'neoliberalization of nature' (Heynen et al 2007;McCarthy and Prudham 2004) and associated processes of environmental privatization, commodification, and marketization (Castree 2010), as well as the implications of this for otherwise conventional forms of forest and biodiversity conservation (e.g. Igoe and Brockington 2007;Holmes and Cavanagh 2016). Further, such 'new' discourses and practices also intersect with legacies of the (post)colonial enclosure of land and resources for conservation or commercial agriculture (e.g.…”

Section: Introduction: Of Hatchets and Seeds…mentioning

confidence: 99%

Political ecology, variegated green economies, and the foreclosure of alternative sustainabilities

Cavanagh

Benjaminsen

2017

Journal of Political Ecology

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Over the past two decades, political ecologists have provided extensive critiques of the privatization, commodification, and marketization of nature, including of the new forms of accumulation and appropriation that these might facilitate under the more recent guise of green growth and the green economy. These critiques have often demonstrated that such approaches can retain deleterious implications for certain vulnerable populations across the developing world and beyond. With few exceptions, however, political ecologists have paid decidedly less attention to expounding upon alternative initiatives for pursuing both sustainability and socio-environmental justice. Accordingly, the contributions to this Special Section engage the concept of the green economy explicitly as a terrain of struggle, one inevitably conditioned by the variegated forms that actually-existing 'green economy' strategies ultimately take in specific historical and geographical conjunctures. In doing so, they highlight the ways in which there is likewise not one but many potential sustainabilities for pursuing human and non-human well-being in the ostensibly nascent Anthropocene, each of which reflects alternative -and, potentially, more progressive -constellations of social, political, and economic relations. Yet they also foreground diverse efforts to pre-empt or to foreclose upon these alternatives, highlighting an implicit politics of precisely whose conception of sustainability is deemed to be possible or desirable in any given time and place. In exploring such struggles over alternative sustainabilities and the 'ecologies of hope' that they implicitly offer, then, this introduction first reviews the current frontiers of these debates, before illuminating how the contributions to this issue both intersect with and build upon them. Key words: Green economy; political ecology; political economy; alternative sustainabilities RésuméAu cours des deux dernières décennies, les écologistes politiques ont fourni des critiques approfondies sur la privatisation, la marchandisation et la commercialisation de la nature, y compris des nouvelles formes d'accumulation et d'appropriation que cela pourrait faciliter sous l'aspect plus récent de la croissance verte et de l'économie verte. Ces critiques ont souvent démontré que de telles approches peuvent avoir des conséquences délétères pour certaines populations vulnérables à travers le monde en développement et audelà. À quelques exceptions près, cependant, les écologistes politiques ont accordé une attention nettement moins importante à l'élaboration d'autres initiatives visant à promouvoir à la fois la durabilité et la justice socio-environnementale. En conséquence, les contributions à cette Section Spéciale engagent explicitement le concept de l'économie verte comme un terrain de lutte, inévitablement conditionné par les formes variées que prennent les stratégies d'économie verte existantes dans des conjonctures historiques et géographiques 1 Connor Joseph Cavanagh, Prof. Tor Arve Benjaminsen,...

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A review of the social impacts of neoliberal conservation: Formations, inequalities, contestations

Abstract: This is a repository copy of A review of the social impacts of neoliberal conservation: Formations, inequalities, contestations.

Cited by 168 publications

References 100 publications

Conservation social science: Understanding and integrating human dimensions to improve conservation

Conservation social science: Understanding and integrating human dimensions to improve conservation

A Crystal Ball for Forests?: Analyzing the Social-Ecological Impacts of Forest Conservation and Management over the Long Term

Political ecology, variegated green economies, and the foreclosure of alternative sustainabilities

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