Across the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia, millions of newly planted trees struggle to survive amid adverse ecological conditions. They were planted by a wide variety of actors in an attempt to protect, restore, or modify the local environment, despite evidence of their negative consequences upon local ecosystems. This paper investigates how these afforestation projects both challenge and affirm recent theoretical work on conservation, while also providing key insights into the decision-making framework of land management across the world’s third largest desert region. This analysis, supported by evidence from corporate practice, government policy, and participant observation, builds primarily on the work of Jamie Lorimer and other authors who identify the charisma of certain species as a primary driver of contemporary conservation. But the case of afforestation in the Gobi is inadequately explained by a desire to protect individual species; rather, I show how the charisma at the level of the landscape influences conservation practice. I extend this analysis to suggest that the management of deserts worldwide may be mediated by their perception as absent or empty spaces, thus explaining projects like afforestation which seem to re-place rather than conserve. Using the framework of absence and presence to better understand land use and environmental governance could have implications extending well beyond the Gobi Desert.

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While the extractive industries, and their related infrastructure complexes, are highlighted as key to economic development, they often come at a cost. Most infrastructure projects involve a network of "stakeholder" parties; even though developers are allocating more resources to stakeholder engagement, conflict surrounding infrastructure development continues to rise. Whilst the causes of this paradox are numerous, ranging from the increasing demand for natural resources to the limited regulatory capacity of governments in the global south to oversee developers, they also highlight the lack of engagement with effective conflict resolution mechanisms. This paper undertakes a comparative review of 21 existing frameworks or "toolkits" presented by international organizations for avoiding and resolving mining-related conflicts in emerging markets. This analysis has four aims: i) to identify the dominant trends in frameworks that address conflict arising from the extractive industry and related infrastructural systems; ii) to identify the weaknesses and limitations of existing frameworks; iii) to assess opportunities for innovation that might increase the adoption of more effective conflict resolution strategies; iv) to forecast how existing frameworks may need to adapt and respond to emerging global shifts in development investments. Addressing these aims will contribute to understandings of conflict resolution discourses presented in existing frameworks including the procedures and strategies identified, and how agency and participation is conceived. 1. Introduction: In October 2012, a Mongolian NGO filed a formal complaint with the Office of the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO) of the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The CAO mediates disputes that originate from IFC-funded development projects. In this case, the project in question was the Oyu Tolgoi gold and copper mine, one of the largest discovered deposits of its kind (Porter, 2016). The complaint, submitted on behalf of local nomadic pastoralists, asserted that Oyu Tolgoi negatively affected the community's socioeconomic prospects and was responsible for water and pasture impacts that threatened livelihoods. This initiated a CAO-led arbitration and dispute resolution process between three parties: Rio Tinto (the mine's parent company), the local government, and the local community. What followed was a carefully choreographed process of joint fact-finding, training and capacity building, developing and articulating negotiation positions, and mediation. Seven years later, an agreement has been reached and the strained relationship between Oyu Tolgoi and the local community has improved. Across the industry, the Oyu Tolgoi conflict is widely regarded as exceptional, both for its success in assembling various stakeholders and the bilateral acceptability of the brokered outcomes (Edwards, 2017). Most mining-related conflict in emerging economies does not unfold so neatly, often because dispute resolution, where it occurs, is conducted in a largely ad hoc...

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