Suchergebnisse

AbstractCommunity Based Conservation (CBC) has become the catch–all solution to the social and ecological problems plaguing traditional top–down, protectionist conservation approaches. CBC has been particularly popular throughout Africa as a way to gain local support for wildlife conservation measures that have previously excluded local people and their development needs. This article shows that, despite the rhetoric of devolution and participation associated with new CBC models, conservation planning in Tanzania remains a top–down endeavour, with communities and their specialized socio–ecological knowledge delegated to the margins. In addition to the difficulties associated with the transfer of power from state to community hands, CBC also poses complex challenges to the culture or institution of conservation. Using the example of the Tarangire–Manyara ecosystem, the author shows how local knowledge and the complexities of ecological processes challenge the conventional zone–based conservation models, and argues that the insights of local Maasai knowledge claims could better reflect the ecological and social goals of the new CBC rhetoric.

Presented at the Fall 2011 Center for Collaborative Conservation (https://collaborativeconservation.org/) Seminar and Discussion Series, "Collaborative Conservation in Practice: Indigenous Peoples and Conservation", September 20, 2011, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. This series focused on Indigenous Peoples and Conservation. ; Mara J. Goldman is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and a research associate in the environment and society program at the Institute for Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Mara's research has focused on the interface of human-environment relations and critical geographies of conservation and development, with a regional focus in East Africa. She works primarily in Tanzania, and to some extent in Kenya, with members of the Maasai ethnic group. Her work addresses the politics of knowledge and participation as related to wildlife conservation interventions and rangeland management, changing pastoral livelihood and communication practices, and empowerment and governance issues within Maasai communities. She is co-editor (with Matthew Turner and Paul Nadasdy), of Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies (2010: University of Chicago Press). ; Includes recorded speech and PowerPoint presentation. ; Rangelands used by Maasai pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in northern Tanzania and southern Kenya also provide essential wet season forage for various wildlife species. In an effort to assure the continued availability of such pastures for wildlife, various forms of community-based conservation have been implemented throughout Maasai village lands. Costs, benefits, and community participation processes vary with the model used and the communities involved. I compare and contrast the different approaches to highlight how conservation interventions can be either empowering or alienating to the communities at hand. I suggest that participation based on respect for local knowledge and skills is key to empowering communities through conservation. I also argue that participation as well as the degree to which a project is succeeding at benefiting pastoralists is related to whether or not it is succeeding at protecting wildlife.

Participatory methods for conservation and development have been critiqued on practical, political, and theoretical grounds. In this article, we address these critiques but move beyond critique to propose ways to improve participatory techniques with local communities. We discuss a customary model of communication used by Maasai communities in Tanzania and Kenya (the enkiguena, meeting) as a starting point to begin thinking about ways to improve participation on the ground with Maasai and potentially others. We discuss the value of the enkiguena ideals as a theoretical model to build dialogues across, within, and between multiple knowledge expressions and power relations.Key words: Maasai, enkiguena, participatory techniques.

Participatory methods for conservation and development have been critiqued on practical, political, and theoretical grounds. In this article, we address these critiques but move beyond critique to propose ways to improve participatory techniques with local communities. We discuss a customary model of communication used by Maasai communities in Tanzania and Kenya (the enkiguena, meeting) as a starting point to begin thinking about ways to improve participation on the ground with Maasai and potentially others. We discuss the value of the enkiguena ideals as a theoretical model to build dialogues across, within, and between multiple knowledge expressions and power relations.Key words: Maasai, enkiguena, participatory techniques.

Political ecology and science studies have found fertile meeting ground in environmental studies. While the two distinct areas of inquiry approach the environment from different perspectives--one focusing on the politics of resource access and the other on the construction and perception of knowledge--their work is actually more closely aligned now than ever before. . Knowing Nature brings together political ecologists and science studies scholars to showcase the key points of encounter between the two fields and how this intellectual mingling creates a lively and more robust ecologi.

Rapidly evolving drone technologies are taking the conservation sector by storm. Although the technical and applied conservation literature tends to frame drones as autonomous, neutral technologies, we argue that neither drones nor their implications can be adequately understood unless they are grounded, conceptually and methodologically, in the context of broader societal structures that shape how drones and the data they produce are used. This article introduces the value of a political ecology framework to an interdisciplinary audience of biophysical and social scientists interested in the multiple possibilities and complications associated with conservation drones. Political ecology provides the tools for studying and critically engaging with drone use in conversation in ways that are politically engaged and attuned to power relations – historic and present, local and global – in a more-than-human world. In making this argument, we point to four conceptual tools in political ecology that offer a framework for unveiling the power relations and structures that surround drones in different contexts: political economy, territoriality, knowledge and expertise, and more-than-human relations. Using empirics from our work across Latin America (Colombia and Guatemala), Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Mozambique), and North America (the US and Canada), we illustrate the salience of this framework and demonstrate why evaluating what drones do in and for conservation requires first understanding the complex set of power relations that shape their use.

ABSTRACTDespite a decade of rhetoric on community conservation, current trends in Tanzania reflect a disturbing process of reconsolidation of state control over wildlife resources and increased rent‐seeking behaviour, combined with dispossession of communities. Whereas the 1998 Wildlife Policy promoted community participation and local benefits, the subsequent policy of 2007 and the Wildlife Conservation Act of 2009 returned control over wildlife and over income from sport hunting and safari tourism to central government. These trends, which sometimes include the use of state violence and often take place in the name of 'community‐based' conservation, are not, however, occurring without resistance from communities. This article draws on in‐depth studies of wildlife management practices at three locations in northern Tanzania to illustrate these trends. The authors argue that this outcome is more than just the result of the neoliberalization of conservation. It reflects old patterns of state patrimony and rent seeking, combined with colonial narratives of conservation, all enhanced through neoliberal reforms of the past two decades. At the same time, much of the rhetoric of neoliberal reforms is being pushed back by the state in order to capture rent and interact with villagers in new and oppressive ways.

We focus on the appropriation, conflicting uses and meanings of water in a semi-arid environment marked by resource spatiotemporal variability. The Amboseli ecosystem, inhabited by semi-nomadic Maasai pastoralists and many wildlife species of the East African savanna, has likewise long been a stage for enacting a multitude of top-down governmental and non-governmental conservation policies. Agriculture has also taken hold in the rangelands as a result of development initiatives, thereby contributing, along with complex interactions between numerous other social, political, economic, and ecological factors, to the sedentarization of Ilkisongo pastoralists whose livelihoods have thus recently diversified. In a context where rains are erratic and groundwater reserves are poorly known, water is often a limiting resource for forage, agriculture, and wildlife, so thus often contentious in numerous dimensions regarding access, social relations and in human–wildlife interactions. Through a collection of narratives collected in the field we examine the challenges raised by water scarcity and analyse the situation through a postcolonial, marxist, and postdevelopmental approach. The ethnographic survey involved long immersion periods among Maasai stakeholders, interviews with farmers, conservation NGOs and other institutional leaders, and participatory events were generated around role-playing games focused on water, land use and land tenure. By articulating political, economic, cultural and gender dimensions this multi-pronged methodology showcases socio-hydrology as a situated science. Our participatory approach gauges how current tension around water management can be addressed by integrating the local population, environmental managers and outsiders, with consequences for decision making at individual and collective level and for the ecosystem.