Fixing the ecosystem: Conservation, crisis and capital in Rwanda's Gishwati Forest

Abstract

Conservation-development projects are increasingly enacted across large expanses of land where human livelihoods hang in the balance. Recent initiatives-often called 'landscape approaches' or 'ecosystem-based' conservation-aim to achieve economic development and conservation goals through managing hybrid spaces. I argue that the landscape/ecosystem approach is a socioecological fix: an effort to resolve social-environmental crises through sinking capital (financial, natural, and social) into an imagined ecosystem. Rwanda's Gishwati Forest has been the locus of diverse crises and fixes over the past 40 years, including an industrial forestry and dairy project, a refugee settlement, a privately managed chimpanzee sanctuary, a carbon sequestration platform, and, most recently, an ''integrated silvo-pastoral conservation landscape.'' This paper considers how these governance schemes have intersected with broader processes of agrarian change to generate crises that subsequent conservation/ development projects then attempt to resolve. I demonstrate how visions for ecosystems privilege certain forms of governance around which imagined socioecological histories are mobilized to frame problems and legitimize certain solutions, technologies, and actors. The Gishwati ecosystem and its fixes are repeatedly defined through an imaginary of crisis and degradation that engenders large-scale landscape modification while foreclosing reflection about root causes of crises or how these might be addressed. Thus, even while conservation/ development paradigms have shifted over the past 40 years (from separating people and nature to integrating them in conservation landscapes), this crisis-fix metabolism has consistently generated livelihood insecurity for the tens of thousands of people living in and around Gishwati. Imagining and enacting more just and inclusive social-environmental landscapes will require making space for diverse voices to define ecosystem form and function as well as addressing deeply rooted power imbalances that are at the heart of recurrent crises.

Evaluation of soil erosion and sediment yield spatio-temporal pattern during 1990–2019

“…This is because during and after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, there was a shortage of lands to resettle returnees and internally displaced people. Consequently, forests were encroached for anthropogenic activities agriculture and resulted in considerable loss of forestland (Clay 2019;Uwemeye et al 2020). NISR (2018) also reported a considerable change in LULC occurred in Rwanda between 1990 and 2000 due war and instability, and as a consequence, anthropogenic activities started taking place in natural forests.…”

Political ecology of milk: Contested futures of a lively food

“…Led by a narrative of growing bodies to grow nations (specifically an expanding urban middle class) following World War II, agricultural research and policy created the preconditions for dairy farms in the North to specialize and intensify ( Smith-Howard, 2014 ). Often through colonial and neo-colonial pathways, similar institutions emphasized technology-led productivity increases in Africa, Latin America, and Asia ( Clay, 2019 ; Wiley, 2014 ). Since the 1950s, milk output in the North has increased exponentially per farm, per cow, and per input of feed and labor.…”

“…In Africa, such programs have been shown to overlook gender dynamics and the multiple objectives of different actors in dairy value chains ( Salmon et al, 2018 ; Taverner & Crane, 2018 ). Adherence to a regime of “more milk” (e.g., establishing pasture, importing European cattle breeds, and charging a fee for access) can enable urban elites to benefit while dispossessing subsistence users from pasture access ( Clay, 2019 ).…”

Conserving Inequality : Subjugating black labour and hoarding property in South Africa’s private nature reserves

“…This work further demonstrates that socioecological fixes are often initiated to counter or alleviate environmental degradation, biodiversity loss or fossil fuel consumption (amongst others), but in reality exacerbate pre-existing inequalities, power asymmetries and unsustainable practices (Clay, 2019). In this way, a third connotation to 'fix' important in the chapter emerges, namely that of 'fixing a problem' or, more specifically, a 'quick-fix' that seems to respond to a problem but does not actually engage its root causes.…”