Between ‘Conservation’ and ‘Development’: The Construction of ‘Protected Nature’ and the Environmental Disenfranchisement of Indigenous Communities

Abstract

Conservation and development discourses are the two main frameworks in which global debates on how to relate to nature occur. These discourses are considered as opposed; while conservation discourses argue for the maintenance of nature in its pristine state, development discourses seek to justify re-engineering spaces to give place to cities, monocultures and roads. However, both discourses have one practical consequence in common: the environmental disfranchisement of Indigenous communities. This article uses the case of the Ecuadorian Yasuní Park to show how the implementation of both conservation and development discourses ultimately disempower Indigenous communities. We use media reports and governmental statements to document the Yasuní case. A critical analysis of the dynamics behind this and other cases allows us to expose the misleading messages, the ironic consequences and the false motives involved in some conservation projects.

Conservation is Development in the Forests of Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, India

“…This conclusion echoes Scott's argument that a '[f]ormal order, to be more explicit, is always and to some considerable degree parasitic on informal processes, which the formal scheme does not recognize, without which it could not exist, and which it alone cannot create or maintain' (Scott, 1998, p. 310). Such a development regime, while amply aided by local practices and knowledge, does not find legible expression for the latter and ultimately disempowers the local communities (Goyes & South, 2019). In the case of Nagarahole, it is not 'informal practices' in the form of experiential knowledge and skills of the Adivasis, but the use of science and technology that is seen as the marker of 'best practices' in conservation.…”

“…This perspective has produced the radical conservation idea of seeking people-free conservation enclaves, which has been termed ‘fortress conservation’ (Brockington, 2002). As Goyes and South (2019) argue, ‘conservation discourses argue for the maintenance of nature in its pristine state’, while ‘development discourses seek to justify re-engineering spaces to give place to cities, monocultures and roads’ (Goyes & South, 2019, p. 89). Such an explanation places conservation and development at two extreme ends of a spectrum of human fashioning of the natural world and order—protection versus extraction.…”

Green Criminological Dialogues: Voices from Asia.

“…The article acknowledges that Indigenous peoples are perpetrators of environmental harm but also highlights that some of their detrimental practices are driven by structural changes motivated by the 'broader society'-forced migration, takeovers of lands, market pressures, and loss of Indigenous cultures and institutions (for a similar argument regarding the exploitation of non-human animals, see Goyes and Sollund 2016). Fajrini also provides a further example of another environmentally and socially problematic phenomenon (see also Goyes and South 2019): the tendency for corporations to not only violate the rights of Indigenous communities to advance their interests but also exploit these same rights to pursue profit-making. In reading Farjrini's article and allocating responsibility for the harms derived from slash-and-burn, it is useful to bear in mind the notion of tertiary green harms (Potter 2014: 11): those 'committed by environmental victims or as a result of environmental victimisation'.…”

Authoritarian Environmentalism and Epistemological Violence: A Southern Green Criminology Analysis of the 2014 Lanzhou Water Crisis and the Belt and Road Initiative Expansion into the Global Water Sector

“…As the private sector's involvement in water supply management has grown globally, it has been viewed as a manifestation of the neoliberalization of natural resources that can increase water service efficiency and improve water quality in the Global South (Zhang et al 2016). However, past studies on privatization have highlighted profound difficulties in governance and regulation, leading to growing inequalities and dispossession and resulting in environmental and social harm against underprivileged communities in the Global South (Bakker 2014;Brisman et al 2018;Eman and White 2020;Goyes 2019;Goyes and South 2019).…”