Rhino poaching and the “slow violence” of conservation-related resettlement in Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park

Witter, Rebecca; Satterfield, Terre

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.06.003

Cited by 49 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…One of the criticisms that has been raised about militarised conservation is that it does not address the underlying reasons for why people engage in poaching and trafficking; instead it focuses on tackling the symptoms (poaching and trafficking) of a much deeper and complex structural contexts that is at the root of these practices ( Duffy et al, 2015 ; Hübschle, 2017 ; Witter and Satterfield, 2018 ). Reflecting on the body of more critical scholarship on militarised conservation can help conservationists to step back and consider the wider dynamics of what produces poaching in the first place.…”

Section: Focusing On the Symptoms Not The Root Causes Of Poachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, militarised conservation tactics in specific contexts in South Africa often resemble apartheid-era counterinsurgency practices, where efforts to win the support of local people also coincide with tactics of intimidation and use of violence. These tactics also currently extend into Mozambique, and include: the development of informant networks, co-option and development of cultures of mistrust within communities ( Annecke and Masubele, 2016 ; Lunstrum, 2015 ; Massé et al, 2017a , Massé et al, 2017b ); raiding and invading people's homes in operations to uncover evidence of wildlife crimes ( Ramutsindela, 2016 ; Massé et al, 2017a ; Büscher, 2018 ); and active displacement of communities for conservation ( Massé and Lunstrum, 2016 ; Witter and Satterfield, 2018 ). More forceful approaches to conservation can also be accompanied by new incentive schemes, such as the provision of game meat to schools and water reticulation programmes.…”

Section: Focusing On the Symptoms Not The Root Causes Of Poachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The body of literature we build on is firmly anchored in qualitative social sciences, and often draws on extensive fieldwork in places such as Nigeria ( Asiyanbi, 2016 ), India ( Barbora, 2017 ), Laos ( Dwyer et al, 2015 ), Guatemala ( Devine, 2014 ; Ybarra, 2016 ), Colombia ( Bocarejo and Ojeda, 2016 ), Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) ( Marijnen and Verweijen, 2016 ), South Africa ( Büscher and Ramutsindela, 2016 ; Hübschle, 2017 ; Lunstrum, 2014 ), Mozambique ( Massé and Lunstrum, 2016 ; Massé et al, 2017b ; Witter and Satterfield, 2018 ), Tanzania ( Mabele, 2016 ) and Central African Republic (CAR) ( Lombard, 2016 ). Many of these studies are in-depth explorations of a single case, but there are few overviews ( Duffy et al, 2015 ; Duffy et al, 2016 ; Büscher and Fletcher, 2018 ) or comparative studies ( Lunstrum and Ybarra, 2018 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Why we must question the militarisation of conservation

Duffy

Massé

Smidt

et al. 2019

Biological Conservation

271

167

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Concerns about poaching and trafficking have led conservationists to seek urgent responses to tackle the impact on wildlife. One possible solution is the militarisation of conservation, which holds potentially far-reaching consequences. It is important to engage critically with the militarisation of conservation, including identifying and reflecting on the problems it produces for wildlife, for people living with wildlife and for those tasked with implementing militarised strategies. This Perspectives piece is a first step towards synthesising the main themes in emerging critiques of militarised conservation. We identify five major themes: first, the importance of understanding how poaching is defined; second, understanding the ways that local communities experience militarised conservation; third, the experiences of rangers; fourth, how the militarisation of conservation can contribute to violence where conservation operates in the context of armed conflict; and finally how it fits in with and reflects wider political economic dynamics. Ultimately, we suggest that failure to engage more critically with militarisation risks making things worse for the people involved and lead to poor conservation outcomes in the long run.

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Section: Focusing On the Symptoms Not The Root Causes Of Poachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Focusing On the Symptoms Not The Root Causes Of Poachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Why we must question the militarisation of conservation

Duffy

Massé

Smidt

et al. 2019

Biological Conservation

271

167

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Emptying, here, can take on a very literal meaning. As others have examined, one of the reasons for the removal of communities from spaces of conservation is precisely that it makes such spaces easier to police (Mass e and Lunstrum 2016; Witter and Satterfield 2018). Given the current pressures of commercial poaching, this practice is intensifying and being explicitly used to facilitate conservation policing and law enforcement by emptying protected areas of certain people and activities.…”

Section: Conclusion: Conservation Law Enforcement Policing Protectedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation Law Enforcement: Policing Protected Areas

Massé

2019

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

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This article examines how recent increases in commercial poaching of wildlife intensify the dictates that underpin conservation law and its enforcement; namely, the securing of space, punishing of transgressors, and protecting of nonhuman life. Drawing on ethnographic research with antipoaching personnel in Mozambique, I examine how rangers translate these legal and normative manifestations of conservation law enforcement on the ground and in their daily practices to police protected areas and the wildlife within them. This article makes two contributions. First, drawing on insights from the political geography and ecology of conservation with the political geography of policing, I demonstrate how territorial, sovereign, and biopolitical practices and logics coalesce to secure the spaces and the lives of the nonhuman from ostensible human threats. Second, it is rangers who are deployed as petty environmental sovereigns to achieve these objectives through often violent practices. Although many rangers might feel uncomfortable with the use of violence, their agency to commit or resist using violence is authorized, enabled, and constrained by the normative and legal structures of conservation law enforcement within which they operate. The social differentiation among rangers also means that some have more agency to navigate these structures than others. These insights help understand the actually existing operationalization of delegated and performative power over bodies, space, and the use of direct violence. I suggest that critiques of conservation violence, and the use of violence by those acting as petty sovereigns more broadly, should be primarily oriented at the broader structures within which they operate.

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“…This interplay of informal activities with efforts to promote sustainability through formalization, transparency, and traceability, in turn, has significant, if ambiguous, implications for livelihoods. Efforts to govern artisanal mining are a notable example (Vogel et al, 2018), as are conservation measures (Witter and Satterfield, 2019), both of which are prone to excluding local populations. Technological applications can exacerbate these dynamics, particularly where they double down on the weaknesses of market‐led forms of supply chain governance discussed above.…”

Section: Governing Informal and Illicit Economiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interrogating Technology‐led Experiments in Sustainability Governance

et al. 2020

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Solutions to global sustainability challenges are increasingly technology-intensive. Yet, technologies are neither developed nor applied to governance problems in a socio-political vacuum. Despite aspirations to provide novel solutions to current sustainability governance challenges, many technology-centred projects, pilots and plans remain implicated in longer-standing global governance trends shaping the possibilities for success in often under-recognized ways. This article identifies three overlapping contexts within which technology-led efforts to address sustainability challenges are evolving, highlighting the growing roles of: (1) private actors; (2) experimentalism; and (3) informality. The confluence of these interconnected trends illuminates an important yet often under-recognized paradox: that the use of technology in multi-stakeholder initiatives tends to reduce rather than expand the set of actors, enhancing instead of reducing challenges to participation and transparency, and reinforcing rather than transforming existing forms of power relations. Without recognizing and attempting to address these limits, technology-led multi-stakeholder initiatives will remain less effective in addressing the complexity and uncertainty surrounding global sustainability governance. We provide pathways for interrogating the ways that novel technologies are being harnessed to address long-standing global sustainability issues in manners that foreground key ethical, social and political considerations and the contexts in which they are evolving.

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Rhino poaching and the “slow violence” of conservation-related resettlement in Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park

Cited by 49 publications

References 32 publications

Why we must question the militarisation of conservation

Why we must question the militarisation of conservation

Conservation Law Enforcement: Policing Protected Areas

Interrogating Technology‐led Experiments in Sustainability Governance

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