Conviviality in Disrupted Socionatural Landscapes

Abstract

Convivial conservation presents itself as a vision of radical cohabitation across the Whole Earth, requiring people at the fringes of protected areas or people everywhere to manage day-to-day coexistence and conflicts with non-human species. This article assesses human-wildlife conflict interventions—an electric fence, compensation for wildlife damages, and traditional ecological knowledge—in a disrupted socionatural landscape, Akagera National Park in Rwanda, from the perspective of a framework of ecological peace. Ecological peace is defined through Galtung's (1969) theory of negative peace (freedom from direct violence) and positive peace (freedom from physical, cultural, and structural violence) as applied to relations between human and non-human species. While barriers and compensation schemes may make sense from the perspective of the conservation community's interests in reducing the negative impacts of wildlife on people, or vice versa, and especially towards improving people's perceptions of wildlife and environmental conservation, these human-wildlife conflict interventions may offer only negative ecological peace. Convivial conservation requires human-wildlife conflict interventions to go beyond negative and liberal peace approaches towards positive ecological peace to transform human and non-human relations for radical cohabitation across the Whole Earth.

Socio-ecological precarity at the juncture of multiple crises

“…In making anticolonial decisions concerning nature, it is crucial to recognise and honour the distinct rights of Indigenous communities, granting them greater control over these processes. In that sense, convivial conservation necessitates human–wildlife conflict interventions that transcend negative and liberal peace strategies and instead embrace a positive ecological peace approach (Hsiao and Lan, 2022). The goal would be to foster transformative human and nonhuman relationships beyond the ‘Nature Needs Half’ movement’s aims to protect 50% of the planet by 2030, while promoting radical cohabitation across the whole of the Earth (Fletcher et al, 2023).…”