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

Abstract

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.

Why we must question the militarisation of conservation

“…In this Perspectives piece we argue that militarisation of conservation is in itself fundamentally problematic precisely because it can serve to embed conflict dynamics further, rather than resolve them ( Marijnen, 2018 ). A pertinent question which requires further debate is whether militarised conservation ultimately contributes to rising levels of violence in contexts of armed conflict.…”

Conservation Law Enforcement: Policing Protected Areas

“…Mozambique's Penal Code was also updated to reflect this change. Reflecting Marijnen's (2018) insights on the transnationalization of the state in response to conservation crises, the CA Law is part of a broad reform of the country's conservation sector in response to national and international pressure and the real need to address poaching in Mozambique (see, e.g., World Wildlife Fund 2013). One outcome is the National Ivory and Rhino Horn Action Plan (NIRAP) developed under the supervision of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) that includes the development of the CA Law and the PRNMA (Ministry for the Coordination of Environmental Action 2015), among other measures to curb illegal hunting and strengthen protected areas.…”

“…Conservation territoriality is primarily manifested in the protected area model where authorities use practices of mapping, demarcating, legislating, and even the use of force and violence to produce discrete spaces where certain types of natures and activities are allowed and separated from those that are excluded (Brockington 2002;Spierenburg and Wels 2006; Mass e 2016). Scholarship on conservation has simultaneously furthered understandings of territory, its manifestations, and processes through which it occurs (Corson 2011;Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones 2012;Marijnen 2018). Vandergeest and Peluso (1995), for example, cited protected areas as examples of "internal territorialization" whereby territoriality is turned internally to states with a view to "excluding or including people within particular geographic boundaries and about controlling what people do and their access to natural resources within those boundaries" (387).…”

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

“…Jackson ). This militarisation, in turn, provided justifications for the privatisation of Virunga's management in the 2000s, which led to the transnationalisation of the regulatory regimes surrounding charcoal (Marijnen ). In this manner, through indirect and incremental effects, and in interaction with other processes, structural adjustment ultimately contributed to promoting the privatisation of the park.…”

“…To examine the evolution of regulatory arrangements, we also draw on earlier field research on the militarisation of natural resources governance conducted in the eastern Congo between 2010 and 2016 (e.g. Marijnen , ; Verweijen , ).…”