Marine Protected Areas: Territorializing Objects and Subjectivities

Chmara-Huff, Fletcher

doi:10.4000/echogeo.14040

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…In ocean contexts, these devices offer discursive representations and produce symbolic meanings that order ocean spaces and possibilities for their governance (Fairbanks et al, 2018; Steinberg, 2001). For instance, scholars have demonstrated that powerful marine conservation NGOs and other activists have used territorial narratives related to strongly held values (e.g., species and biodiversity conservation, participatory governance, and livelihood support) to promote consensus around MPAs, LSMPAs, and MPA networks as favored conservation tools in oceans governance (Corson et al, 2014; Chmara-Huff, 2014).…”

Section: Using Spatial Imaginaries In Territorial Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This finding in itself is not new; a decade of research has repeatedly demonstrated that LSMPAs are associated with strong, varied interests and connections (Artis et al, 2020; Richmond and Kotowicz, 2015; Sand, 2012). Yet, the Blue Halo case in Bermuda demonstrates that even proposed marine protected areas “call forth territories” (Chmara-Huff, 2014: p. 12), or territorial practices seeking to define and order a bounded space. Though the push to designate an LSMPA ultimately failed, actors used territorial narratives as “an important form of agency” to direct attention toward the possibilities offered by offshore spaces and produce the EEZ as a space of onshore interest (Hajer, 1995: p. 56).…”

Section: Territorial Narratives Reveal a Peopled Eezmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Human geographers have demonstrated increasing territorialization of oceans, including, notably, in offshore ocean spaces (Chmara-Huff, 2014;Gray, 2018;Mountz, 2013;Peters, 2020). Historically, oceans have been conceptualized and (re)produced as "non-territories," or static spaces, empty of social relations with a "negative relationality to the land" (Anderson and Peters, 2014;Peters, 2010;Steinberg, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Politicizing the “unknown”: Territorial narratives, shared spatial imaginaries, and Bermuda’s oceans

Acton

2023

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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Marine conservation advocates have promoted the designation of large-scale marine protected areas (LSMPAs) in the EEZs of small island states and territories. These offshore spaces, early proponents argued, are too remote for people to use and are thus “politically less risky” than nearshore areas to promote conservation. This paper counters this assertion through an empirical examination of how the mistaken assumption that offshore spaces are unpeopled contributed to a failed LSMPA designation attempt in Bermuda. Drawing on policy documents, speech transcripts, media, and 104 semi-structured interviews, it presents an analysis of the territorial narratives used to discursively (re)produce Bermuda’s EEZ during LSMPA negotiations. Three major findings emerge. First, rather than a blank slate on which conservation values could be easily inscribed, these narratives showed Bermuda’s EEZ to be a space entangled with diverse values, identities, and goals. Second, the narratives that actors used revealed broadly overlapping values related to Bermuda’s EEZ, even among people promoting opposing governance outcomes, demonstrating that opportunities for broad agreement on the EEZ’s purpose and governance did, and may still, exist. Third, by using an imaginary of Bermuda’s EEZ as “unknown” to legitimize its decision to delay negotiations, the Bermuda government effectively reinstated the “blank slate,” aligning itself with popular values while avoiding a definitive stance on the contentious national debate. This decision and the broader negotiations demonstrate how the use of territorial narratives and spatial imaginaries can alter offshore spaces, even when no regulatory changes occur, with implications for future ocean governance options.

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Section: Using Spatial Imaginaries In Territorial Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Territorial Narratives Reveal a Peopled Eezmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Politicizing the “unknown”: Territorial narratives, shared spatial imaginaries, and Bermuda’s oceans

Acton

2023

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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“…Conservation territories are spatial interventions premised on legal and/or other institutional systems that rework human‐environment relations and resource access and control in particular ways. An MPA is thus both a form of territory (Chmara‐Huff ) and an object of governance (Jentoft et al . ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Charted waters? Tracking the production of conservation territories on the high seas

Gray¹

2018

Int Social Sci J

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Marine protected areas (MPAs), a common marine conservation tool, function as both objects of governance and as a form of territory. This article tracks the long‐term effort to produce conservation territories on the high seas, in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Drawing on data collected at five international environmental meetings, the paper demonstrates how an imaginative geography of the high seas is being simultaneously constituted by scientific and technological advances, particularly geospatial visualisations, as well as coordinated efforts to advocate for and develop a new international conservation instrument (an implementing agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea). Conventional understandings of territory constrain this effort by equating territory with the state. At the same time, the case of high seas conservation contributes to critiques of this conceptualisation of territory, by showcasing the role of multiple actors in seeing and controlling ocean space. Overall, the production of territory on the high seas both reflects and informs a shift in the “frontier mentality” of the oceans, as conservation and science frontier as well as economic frontier. Diverse responses to representations of, and policies for, the high seas point to both possibilities and limits of territorial thinking in the oceans.

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“…Nonetheless, conservation enclosures often displace and dispossess marginal groups (Benjaminsen & Bryceson, ; Bennett, Govan, & Satterfield, ; Brondo & Bown, ; West, Igoe, & Brockington, ). Territorialisation processes at sea are particularly complex because the oceans have been legally and politically framed as unoccupied and empty of social institutions, reducing them to open access spaces (Chmara‐Huff, ; Mansfield, ; Mulrennan & Scott, ; Russ & Zeller, ; Steinberg, ). The analysis of marine territorialisation processes has mainly focused on the role played by states, markets, conservation initiatives and communities in controlling access and use of marine resources (Cardwell & Thornton, ; Mansfield, ; St Martin, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fluid geographies: Marine territorialisation and the scaling up of local aquatic epistemologies on the Pacific coast of Colombia

Satizábal

Batterbury

2017

Trans Inst British Geog

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The Pacific region of Colombia, like many sparsely populated places in developing countries, has been imagined as empty in social terms, and yet full in terms of natural resources and biodiversity. These imaginaries have enabled the creation of frontiers of land and sea control, where the state as well as private and illegal actors have historically dispossessed Afro‐descendant and indigenous peoples. This paper contributes to the understanding of territorialisation in the oceans, where political and legal framings of the sea as an open‐access public good have neglected the existence of marine social processes. It shows how Afro‐descendant communities and non‐state actors are required to use the language of resources, rather than socio‐cultural attachment, to negotiate state marine territorialisation processes. Drawing on a case study on the Pacific coast of Colombia, we demonstrate that Afro‐descendant communities hold local aquatic epistemologies, in which knowledge and the production of space are entangled in fluid and volumetric spatio‐temporal dynamics. However, despite the social importance of aquatic environments, they were excluded from Afro‐descendants' collective territorial rights in the 1990s. Driven by their local aquatic epistemologies, coastal communities are reclaiming authority over the seascape through the creation of a marine protected area. We argue that they have transformed relations of authority at sea to ensure local access and control, using state institutional instruments to subvert and challenge the legal framing of the sea as an open access public good. As such, this marine protected area represents a place of resistance that ironically subjects coastal communities to disciplinary technologies of conservation.

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Marine Protected Areas: Territorializing Objects and Subjectivities

Cited by 6 publications

References 35 publications

Politicizing the “unknown”: Territorial narratives, shared spatial imaginaries, and Bermuda’s oceans

Politicizing the “unknown”: Territorial narratives, shared spatial imaginaries, and Bermuda’s oceans

Charted waters? Tracking the production of conservation territories on the high seas

Fluid geographies: Marine territorialisation and the scaling up of local aquatic epistemologies on the Pacific coast of Colombia

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