The biopolitics of private conservation: jeopardizing labor and rhino to optimize capital?

Abstract

The conservation of biodiversity has increasingly been analyzed as biopolitical. That is, conservation initiatives such as breeding programs and protected areas seek to optimize some nonhuman life forms while exposing others to harm or degradation. Biopolitical conservation studies have looked at the implications of how human and non-human lives have been valued differently. Wildlife has received more attention than the lives of conservation laborers in studies of private conservation. The article builds on Foucault's conceptualization of biopolitics to dissect the responses of the eco-tourism and wildlife breeding industries to rhino poaching in the Lowveld, South Africa. There are two central arguments. First, their responses hinge on creating new, and re-instating old, avenues of capital accumulation that ironically prioritize the optimization of the wildlife economy over the lives of rhino. Second, I show that private conservation disproportionately exposes black laborers to harm while attempting to protect rhino from poachers, a function of how conservation labor has been governed since the onset of poaching in 2008. I conclude that private conservationists in South Africa make value judgments to construct a hierarchy of life with whiteness at its apex, rhinos following closely behind, with laborers, and finally poachers at the bottom.

Introduction: Fallen from grace? the legacy and state of Southern African conservation

“…They argue that high end commercial eco-tourism and the state normalise structural violence "where some [farm workers] have access to water quantities barely sufficient for survival while others [white landowners] have plenty to use for high-end commercial and touristic objectives" (Marcatelli and Büscher, 2019, 770). In this line, Thakholi (2021) shows how the wildlife economy in and around Hoedspruit, South Africa, creates a hierarchy of life in which rhino are protected at all costs while Black conservation labourers and their families are exposed to structural harm. She further argues that by creating new commodities, mainly for tourist consumption, the wildlife economy even prioritizes capital accumulation over the lives of rhino (Thakholi, 2021).…”

Political ecologies of extinction: from endpoint to inflection-point. Introduction to the Special Section

“…Indeed, there is such a rich field of research to be set up around the question of extinction that this Special Section only scratches the surface. Important areas for further research that the articles in this Special Section point at, amongst others, are the connections between extraction and conservation in relation to extinction (Le Billon, 2021;Nel, 2021;Meszaros Martin and Pedraza, 2021), the relation between new digital technologies and studying, knowing and understanding extinction processes (Kiggel, 2021), the relations between extinction, de-extinction and a broader cryo-politics of life (Wrigley, 2021), the relation between psycho-analytic dynamics and extinction (Koot, 2021), how biopower affects extinction and responses to it (Thakholi, 2021) and how extinction fears can in fact be profitable and conducive to, rather than an indictment of, contemporary capitalism (Büscher, 2021).…”

“…Lerato Thakholi (2021), in her article on the biopolitics of private conservation in South Africa, focuses on the responses to rhino poaching, many of which are driven by the desire to halt the extinction of the species. Employing a biopolitical lens, she brings into focus how power works in valuing different types of lives differently, in the quest to avoid extinction.…”

Crisis conservation and green extraction: biodiversity offsets as spaces of double exception

“…Biodiversity offsets are generally operationalized through the creation or extension of private protected areas, often with ownership held by conservation organizations (Büscher 2021;Thakholi 2021). In Canada, Shell purchased about 18,200 hectares through several conservation organizations, including the Alberta Conservation Association, Ducks Unlimited Canada, and The Nature Conservancy Canada (Shell Canada 2019).…”

“…Examining the same case nearly a decade later, Huff and Orengo (2020) conclude that "[the offset] has triggered serious social, environmental and legal conflicts since its inception, including allegations of a 'double land grab' to accommodate mining activities and compensatory biodiversity offsetting", and they add that the 'pacification' of local communities works "…through the re-ordering of socio-nature, underwrites the forms of 'security', 'stability' and even 'sustainability' that facilitate multiple and overlapping strategies of value extraction in the territorial and extra-territorial spaces occupied by the QMM mine partnership." This is made in part possible through a process of offsets reframing nature as isolated and exchangeable biodiversity units, obfuscating the social dimensions of biodiversity and deep local entanglements between the human and non-human, commodifying and financially valuating biodiversity, and recasting biodiversity as a positive by-product of economic growth and land development rather than as a negative impact (see Apostolopoulou and Adams 2017;Thakholi 2021). Biodiversity offsets are also often seen by large-scale extractive companies as providing an edge against competing firms, as well as a way to further delegitimize, if not criminalize, certain livelihoods.…”