Fossilized conservation, or the unsustainability of saving nature in South Africa

Büscher, Bram; Koot, Stasja; Thakholi, Lerato

doi:10.1177/25148486211062002

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…There are also larger questions about the longer-term effects of tourism and conservation governance. Büscher et al (104) argue that the conservation sector in South Africa is inherently unsustainable due to dependency on fossil fuels, including international tourists flying to and from South Africa. Furthermore, they suggest that the racialized and gendered labor relations in conservation make it inherently unsuitable.…”

Section: Economic Implications Of State Protectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governance and Conservation Effectiveness in Protected Areas and Indigenous and Locally Managed Areas

Zhang,

West,

Thakholi

et al. 2023

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour.

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Increased conservation action to protect more habitat and species is fueling a vigorous debate about the relative effectiveness of different sorts of protected areas. Here we review the literature that compares the effectiveness of protected areas managed by states and areas managed by Indigenous peoples and/or local communities. We argue that these can be hard comparisons to make. Robust comparative case studies are rare, and the epistemic communities producing them are fractured by language, discipline, and geography. Furthermore the distinction between these different forms of protection on the ground can be blurred. We also have to be careful about the value of this sort of comparison as the consequences of different forms of conservation for people and nonhuman nature are messy and diverse. Measures of effectiveness, moreover, focus on specific dimensions of conservation performance, which can omit other important dimensions. With these caveats, we report on findings observed by multiple study groups focusing on different regions and issues whose reports have been compiled into this article. There is a tendency in the data for community-based or co-managed governance arrangements to produce beneficial outcomes for people and nature. These arrangements are often accompanied by struggles between rural groups and powerful states. Findings are highly context specific and global generalizations have limited value.

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Section: Economic Implications Of State Protectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governance and Conservation Effectiveness in Protected Areas and Indigenous and Locally Managed Areas

Zhang,

West,

Thakholi

et al. 2023

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour.

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show abstract

“…Cheetahs’ ecological, biological, and behavioral adaptations to interspecies threats and competition has moved conservation efforts to private property and into the private sector. While there is a great deal of scholarship on private conservation (Thakholi 2021; Thakholi 2021; Marijnen 2018; Büscher et. al.…”

Section: Not ‘Business As Usual’ Conservation: the Anomaly Of Cheetah...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The business of saving cheetahs: Cheetah ecology and the diverse politics at work in human wildlife conflict (HWC) interventions in Namibia

Brandon

2022

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This paper is concerned with the intersection of cheetah ecology, human wildlife conflict (HWC), settler colonialism, and private land ownership in Namibia. Cheetahs’ ecological adaptation(s) in Namibia point to the need for a fuller picture of the permutations of conservation and conservation NGOs in Africa. In the case of Namibia, cheetahs’ ecological adaptations to interspecies threats have shaped their territory to be primarily on private commercial farms where they cause HWC. While cheetahs cause HWC on commercial farms and farming communities in Namibia writ large, HWC itself is not the conflict discussed in this research. Rather, HWC is the catalyst for what this paper will analyze to be a conflict between two private sector industries—commercial farming and cheetah conservation. After thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Namibia, this case study suggested diverse politics are at work within the NGOs conservation intervention policies at global, national, and local scales. This research identified a theoretical and conceptual fissure which led to an anomaly in the field of political ecology. This paper will argue HWC is an organizing structure in the business of saving cheetahs. The NGOs studied in Namibia are a service-based industry. They invest in both tangible and intangible conservation services rather than market-based participatory approaches, ecosystem services, and/or economic development. This is illustrative of a shift from market-based conservation to a service-based approach and calls for widening the political ecology lens to account for other cases of NGOs’ on-the-ground conservation business practices in Africa.

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“…The lifestyle in HWE and other estates, while masked under the veneer of sustainability is far more resource-intensive than the Mokoena and Bangu settlement. The infrastructure, frequent travel of residents, 20 high consumption lifestyles, dependency on coal-fired energy and many Sport utility vehicles (SUVs) arguably make wildlife estates the opposite of eco-friendly (Büscher et al, 2021).…”

Section: ‘Fixing’ Biodiversity (Loss) To ‘Fix’ Spatial Injusticesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conserving inequality: How private conservation and property developers ‘fix’ spatial injustice in South Africa

Thakholi

Büscher

2021

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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In 2016, South Africa launched its National Biodiversity Economy Strategy. This strategy aims to facilitate the development of a ‘wildlife economy’ as a solution to unemployment, loss of biodiversity and rural development. Central to the strategy is the role of private conservation actors, who keenly posit their commercial model as the best way to achieve these objectives. This stands in sharp contrast to recent critiques that suggest that private conservation reinforces structural inequality by denying access to land and perpetuating unjust labour conditions. Using ethnographic data from the South African Lowveld region that includes the Kruger National Park, the paper takes these points further by arguing that a rapidly growing alliance between private conservation and property developers actively conserve inequality by maintaining and even extending spatial injustice in the region. Two popular recent manifestations of this alliance in particular, share block systems that distribute ownership of access to real estate in private reserves and wildlife housing estates, have established new conservation-property linkages that entrench capitalist socioecological fixes. Not only do these initiatives lead to further engrained spatial injustice, we conclude that this conservation-property alliance at the centre of the ‘wildlife economy’ also willingly sacrifices environmental sustainability on the altar of white conservation imaginations and private profit.

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Fossilized conservation, or the unsustainability of saving nature in South Africa

Cited by 6 publications

References 54 publications

Governance and Conservation Effectiveness in Protected Areas and Indigenous and Locally Managed Areas

Governance and Conservation Effectiveness in Protected Areas and Indigenous and Locally Managed Areas

The business of saving cheetahs: Cheetah ecology and the diverse politics at work in human wildlife conflict (HWC) interventions in Namibia

Conserving inequality: How private conservation and property developers ‘fix’ spatial injustice in South Africa

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