A World Laboratory: Framing the Albert National Park

Bont, Raf de

doi:10.1093/envhis/emx020

Cited by 23 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…This historical overview underlines the long history of the transnational character of Virunga's management. ‘Crisis’ situations may indeed attract international attention and reinforce transnational support for protected areas located in war‐torn regions, yet to a certain extent Virunga's management has always been determined by transnational actors (De Bont, ). Moreover, the historical continuity of the involvement of ‘white men’, ‘Europe’ and strong personalities such as Mobutu also explains the manner in which the adjacent population regards the current management of Virunga.…”

Section: Virunga's History Of Transnationalized Conservationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Authority and Conservation in Areas of Armed Conflict: Virunga National Park as a ‘State within a State’ in Eastern Congo

Marijnen¹

2018

Development and Change

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Much research on nature conservation in war‐torn regions focuses on the destructive impact of violent conflict on protected areas, and argues that transnational actors should step up their support for those areas to mitigate the risks that conflict poses to conservation efforts there. Overlooked are the effects transnational efforts have on wider conflict dynamics and structures of public authority in these regions. This article describes how transnational actors increasingly gained influence over the management of Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and how these actors contributed to the militarization of conservation in Virunga. Most scholarly literature suggests that ‘green militarization’ contributes to the extension of state authority over territory and population, yet this is not the case in Virunga. Instead, the militarization of Virunga translates into practices of extra‐state territorialization, with the result that many in the local population perceive the park's management as a project of personalized governance and/or a ‘state within a state’. This article thus argues that it is important to depart from an a priori notion of the ‘state’ when considering the nexus of conservation practices and territorialization, and to analyse this intersection through the lens of public authority instead.

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Section: Virunga's History Of Transnationalized Conservationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Authority and Conservation in Areas of Armed Conflict: Virunga National Park as a ‘State within a State’ in Eastern Congo

Marijnen¹

2018

Development and Change

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“…The imprint of non‐state logics on Congolese state actors’ practices can also be detected among the ICCN, which is strongly guided by its foreign sponsors. Over the past decade, the latter have gained growing influence over the park, mirroring the heavy transnational involvement in the colonial era (De Bont ). Transnational influence became particularly pronounced when the European Commission, the park's largest donor, put pressure on the Congolese government to conclude a public private partnership (PPP) that incrementally transferred the responsibility for the park's management to a British NGO, the Virunga Foundation (Marijnen ).…”

Section: Multi‐layered Regulatory Landscapes Surrounding Charcoalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pluralising Political Forests: Unpacking “the State” by Tracing Virunga's Charcoal Chain

Marijnen

Verweijen

2018

Antipode

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Peering through the lens of illegal charcoal production in the forested areas of Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, this paper makes a case for disaggregating the notion of "the state" to better capture "the political" in contemporary political forests. It argues that to identify the fluctuating importance of different dimensions of "stateness", it is crucial to acknowledge the polymorphous socio-spatial relations that produce political forests. Thus, we draw on the notions of territory, place, scale and network (TPSN) to examine how "stateness" in Virunga has transformed under the particularisation, transnationalisation, and regionalisation of authority. This approach allows us to show how these processes do not only stem from neoliberalisation, but are also driven by, inter alia, regional warfare and non-state militarisation. The resulting complexity of the regulatory landscape turns Virunga into a space marked by a plurality of partly overlapping and partly conflicting political forests.Within the field of political ecology, the notions of sovereignty, territory and "the state" are conceptualised in increasingly sophisticated manners, transcending previous monolithic understandings. Among other factors, this trend is a result of growing theoretical and empirical engagement with the neoliberalisation and transnationalisation of nature conservation. For instance, both Corson (2011) and 998 Antipode

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“…Calling the Galápagos a natural laboratory was an argument for 'preservation for science' (Rumore, 2012). It justified the creation of both a scientific research station and national park where prized evolutionary experiments would remain safe from human despoliation (see Alagona, 2012;De Bont, 2017;Kupper, 2014Kupper, , 2016.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Analysis of these campaigns sheds light on the changing political infrastructure of global field science in the mid-twentieth century and thus extends attention to how scientists have gained access to the field, a central theme of literature on the history of field science (Kuklick and Kohler, 1996). In addition to understanding how scientists' access is shaped by social networks Lachenal, 2016;Vetter, 2017), transportation infrastructure -particularly the extension of railroads across the US West Vetter, 2012Vetter, , 2017 -and local negotiations over access to land (Rumore, 2012;Vetter, 2008), recent work has stressed the broader power dynamics of colonial and neocolonial governance structures through which scientists gained the ability to protect nature and do research across national borders in the early twentieth century (Barrow, 2009;De Bont, 2017;Raby, 2017). Unlike two prominent examples in the literature, the Albert (now Virunga) National Park in the Congo and Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal Zone, the Galápagos was not under formal colonial control when the park and research station were established in 1959.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Drawing on this literature's emphasis on the politics of enclosure of protected areas (Jacoby, 2014(Jacoby, [2001; Neumann, 2004), I show how the natural laboratory is a particular 'way of seeing, understanding, and producing nature (environment) and culture (society) and … a way of attempting to manage and control the relationship between the two' (West et al, 2006: 251). Historians of field science have emphasized that the creation of natural laboratories involved regulating differential access to nature (De Bont, 2017;Raby, 2017).The political ecology literature pushes analysis of social access to research sites to attend to concomitant material productions of nature (Smith, 2008).…”

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confidence: 99%

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The politics of a natural laboratory: Claiming territory and governing life in the Galápagos Islands

Hennessy

2018

Soc Stud Sci

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The Galápagos Islands are often called a natural laboratory of evolution. This metaphor provides a powerful way of understanding space that, through scientific research, conservation and tourism, has shaped the archipelago over the past century. Combining environmental histories of field science with political ecologies of conservation biopower, this article foregrounds the territorial production of the archipelago as a living laboratory. In the mid-twentieth century, foreign naturalists used the metaphor to make land claims as they campaigned to create the Galápagos National Park and Charles Darwin Research Station. Unlike earlier 'parks for science', these institutions were not established under colonial rule, but through postwar institutions of transnational environmental governance that nonetheless continued colonial approaches to nature protection. In the following decades, the metaphor became a rationale for territorial management through biopolitical strategies designed to ensure isolation by controlling human access and introduced species. This article's approach extends the scope of what is at stake in histories of field science: not only the production of knowledge and authority of knowledge claims, but also the foundation of global environmental governance and authority over life and death in particular places. Yet while the natural laboratory was a powerful geographical imagination, analysis shows that it was also an unsustainable goal.

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A World Laboratory: Framing the Albert National Park

Cited by 23 publications

References 18 publications

Public Authority and Conservation in Areas of Armed Conflict: Virunga National Park as a ‘State within a State’ in Eastern Congo

Public Authority and Conservation in Areas of Armed Conflict: Virunga National Park as a ‘State within a State’ in Eastern Congo

Pluralising Political Forests: Unpacking “the State” by Tracing Virunga's Charcoal Chain

The politics of a natural laboratory: Claiming territory and governing life in the Galápagos Islands

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