Nature Conservation beyond Colonialism, Capitalism and Socialism: Parks, Reserves, Land and People
A close look at the history of conservation legislation in Mozambique showcases a nuanced and complex relationship between local knowledges and modernity in the country. During colonial period, capitalistic, imperialistic, and scientific knowledge-based approaches to nature conservation with their underlying nature-culture divides, were privileged over local modes of knowing and relating to nature which did not abide to that model. The creation of Conservation Areas was based on their instrumental value. These were created and protected due to their economic, scientific and touristic values hence in need to be separated from peoples. This dualistic way of framing conservation is deeply inscribed in the Western conservation practices since the creation of Yellowstone National Park, the first in the US and world which would then work as model for parks throughout the entire world.
It was the ‘commercial potential as a magnet for tourism’ as well as the ‘powerfully persuasive images of the region as place of uniquely American wonders’ that persuaded the Congress to pass the act which later became a law (Moran 2017) on March 1, 1872 that created Yellowstone National Park. The conservation movement in the US, which also inspired conservation movements throughout the world, was also born from the realization that there was a ‘need for measures to protect the game species from further destruction and eventual extinction’ (Brands 1997, pg. 188) which then resulted in the creation of ‘the Boone & Crockett Club in 1887 by the then US president Theodore Roosevelt with the aim of conserving large game animals and their habitat’ (Ibid). This limited focus on what is of economic utility to (some) humans, informed by a high-modern ideology, was (and continues to be) in the ‘DNA’ of most conservation policies and practices traveling around the World, and landing in Mozambique.
Hence, counting, mapping and modelling were privileged tools to account for nature that was of scientific, aesthetic and touristic value leaving from outside of state field of visibility other species and sets of relationships. The use of maps was a tool to effectively control nature and people by the Portuguese colonial state to curb incursions from other colonial powers with interest in Mozambique. Pickles (2003) argued that maps are products of specific material conditions in Europe – liberalism (private property), state making and the print industry – and these rather than mere representations are world-building entities. For this reason, ‘cartographies have the power to code subjects and produce identities’ (Pickles 2003, pg. 12). These mappings are what James Scott (1998) called a simplification process which aimed at ensuring legibility of the complex mosaic of local cultures and natures that the colonial state didn’t know much about. The colonial state made all efforts to remove any legal power from local peoples to legally own land and centralize land ownership.
The socialist period sought to devolve land to local people; however its overemphasis on science also created conditions for further disenfranchising local modes of knowing and relating to nature from legal nature conservation documents. In this period, while capitalism and private property were actively resisted, local knowledges were still not recognized as legitimate ways of relating to Conservation Areas. Local people were legally called to take part in managing conservation areas but their knowledges took a back sit. Here as well counting and mapping were portrayed as the only legitimate ways of knowing nature. Land continued state property and community property was not promoted since it was perceived as backwards and against the construction of a nation and a ‘New Man’ based on the ideals of science. This shows that capitalism alone cannot be attributed to be the sole cause of local knowledges disenfranchisement in conservation legislation and other important state political life processes neither socialism can be portrayed otherwise. Here is why the concept of high-modern proves to be ingenious for it pierces through capitalism or socialism debates by focusing on modernity as ideology or way of thinking and organizing socio-natural life and its effects. Therefore, this allowed to show how the high modern-socialism that Mozambique chose to adhere to was in direct route of clash with the local knowledges in complex ways (Filho 1997).
The neoliberal period was characterized by a strong public debate on Mozambican cultural diversity as opposed to the previous periods. However, in this period the civil war and natural disasters had devastated the country’s socio-natural fabric. Consequently, the country opened room for diversity in its conservation legislation as well as for private investment. Consequently, the debate on inclusion and recognition was happening concomitantly with the opening of the country to private forces and foreign investments in nature conservation. This opening to foreign capital in turn gave rise to many displacements and dispossessions (see Lagerkvist 2014, Porsani, Lehtilä and Börjeson 2017) that still characterize many Conservation Areas today in Mozambique.
The state opened room for PPPs and PCPPs as silver bullets to deal with nature conservation management which were increasingly beyond state capability. This opening to market-based approaches to nature conservation is framed in a way that local modes of relating to nature have to comply with the interests of the state and capital. It is crucial to highlight that the promises of development could easily win over local people to lease their lands to private investors (for concrete examples in Mozambique see Issacman and Isaacman 2013, Dear 2008, in Cameroon read Nguiffo 2001). While these PPCPs are framed as silver bullets by the state, the article follows a more prudent approach proposed by Ahebwa, Van der Duim and Sandbrook (2012) on their study of Private-Community Partnerships in Uganda which showed that power relations in these partnerships give rise to political conflicts that can ultimately undermine the win-win logic behind them. Furthermore, these partnerships could also lead to strong commoditization of nature and consequent transformation of local ways of relating to nature
The 2014 conservation law opens room for Community Conservation Areas through customary laws; however this opening happens concurrently with the rise of the private and foreign investment in Conservation Areas. Furthermore, the law is not clear how local knowledges ought to be integrated into already existing Conservation Areas and neither how Community Conservation Areas ought to be created. This emphasis on market-based conservation approaches is a continuity of the high-modern ideology highly criticized by James Scott, one that needs to be scrutinized in the context of climate change, global inequalities and expansion of neoliberalism. Mozambique ought to choose between ‘ecologising or modernizing’ (following Bruno Latour 1998). While modernity has been shown by the article and other scholars to have failed in dealing with the current problems Mozambique is facing on nature conservation, the ecologizing approach then requires more attention, and taking local knowledges more seriously in conservation legislation or constitutions, following countries like New Zealand, India, Kenya, Ecuador, is a step in that direction. This is not an either science or indigenous knowledges way of framing the debate but one that seeks a conversation between the two towards socio-natural prosperity. Furthermore, as the article showed in terms of legislation co-production or ‘transnationalization’ Diallo (2012, 2017) this endeavor should be both domestic and international.
References
Brands, H. 1997. The Last Romantic. New York: Basic Books
Diallo, R., and Rodary, E., 2017. The transnational hybridization of Mozambican nature. African Studies. 76(2) 188-204
Diallo, R. 2015. Conservation philanthropy and the shadow of state power in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique. Conservat Soc. (13)19-128.
Dear, C. 2008. Causes and consequences of displacements decision-making in Banhine National Park, Mozambique. PhD thesis. University of Montana available at http://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/174
Filho, A. 1997. The political economy of agrarian transition in Mozambique. Journal of Contemporary African Studies. 15(2) 191-218
Isaacman, A. Isaacman, B. 2013. Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and its legacies in Mozambique, 1965–2007. Athens OH: University of Ohio Press
Latour, B. 1998. To modernize or to ecologize? That’s the question in Castre, N and Willems-Braun (edits) Remaking reality: nature at the millennium. Routledge: London and New York, pp. 221-242
Pickles, J. 2003. A history of spaces: cartographic reason, mapping and the geo-coded world. London and Ney York: Routledge
Porsani, J., Lehtilä, J. and Börjeson, K. 2017. Land Concessions and rural livelihoods in Mozambique: the gap between anticipated and real benefits of a Chinese investment in Limpopo Valley. Routledge
Scott, J. 1998. Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed? New Haven and London: Yale University Press
