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The art of living in threatened worlds

Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years, climate change, if we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.

-- Sir David Attenborough 2018

Indigenous cultures threatened with extinction. The importance of land and territories to indigenous cultural identity cannot be stressed enough. However, indigenous peoples have continued to experience loss of access to lands, territories and natural resources. The result has been that indigenous cultures today are threatened with extinction in many parts of the world.

-- United Nations 2010

We live in threatened worlds. In conservation and scientific arenas, words like ‘biodiversity’ and ‘threat’ usually go hand in hand[1]. In 2018, we heard alarming warnings to “protect the last of the wild: global conservation policy must stop the disappearance of Earth’s few intact ecosystems”[2] and scientists and writers are currently referring to the “sixth mass extinction,”[3] which is caused by humans. One aspect becomes apparent in these interventions: doom lurks around the corner and, unless humans can drastically and urgently change the course of their actions, life as we know it will collapse.

These predicaments have led to urgent action movements around the globe, such as Extinction Rebellion and School Strike for Climate, whilst scientists work to devise ways to curb this progression. Edward Wilson devised a concept called ‘Half-Earth’, stating “[…] only by committing half of the planet’s surface to nature can we hope to save the immensity of life-forms that compose it.”[4] Scientists have also identified places on earth that are still pristine and require being saved from human destruction.

The scientists’ and NGOs’ worries are warranted. A recent analysis of the links between tax havens, deforestation and illegal fishing in the Amazon showed how illegal and legal networks of forest and fishery that are hardly accounted for and taxed have severe implications on the economy and the environment.[5] In Mozambique, scholars and activists have made accounts on a timber mafia comprised of Chinese traders, local business people, and members of the Government of Mozambique and their forest services.[6] In Zambézia province, British-Canadian scholar Catherine Mackenzie conducted a famous study that became known as the Chinese Take Away denouncing these timber mafia. North American journalist and social scientist Joseph Hanlon has been vocal about the complicity of donors in corruption schemes with the Mozambican elites.[7] The damage is also caused by the ‘legal’ and taxed forest exploration activities, specifically in Mozambique. Zambézia Province is experiencing deforestation at alarming rates. According to Forest Trends since 1997, China and Hong Kong have received an average of 80% of Mozambique’s annual timber exports.[8]

However, I argue these cumulative responses exclude one key aspect: the multiplicity of worlds interacting with one another asymmetrically, with world inhabited by a rational and profit-oriented individual who is also separated from nature. Scholars like Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser[9], John Law[10] and Annemarie Mol[11] have suggested that different practices make different worlds.

During my PhD research, I lived for over a year with villagers from Nangaze in Lugela District of Zambézia Province, in Central Mozambique. These villagers resided near Mount Mabo that was supposedly ‘discovered’ by scientists from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, London, in 2005, using Google Earth. Kew scientists found many exotic plants including a rarely observed orchid and wild animals including pygmy chameleons, Swynnerton's robin and butterflies such as the small striped swordtail and emperor swallowtail. The team brought back over 500 plant specimens[12]. After the discovery, scientists and NGOs started liaising with the Mozambican government to turn the mountain into a protected area, fearing the pernicious effects of ‘rapid development’ on biodiversity as well as alarming rates of deforestation taking place in the area. For the scientists and NGOs, Mount Mabo was a ‘biodiversity hotspot’.

Fig.1. Angelo on a hunting journey to Mount Mabo

During my time living with the villagers, I learned that the mountain was, for them, a living moral subject, endowed with agency and power to shape human life. In the area, there was River Múgue, Mount Muriba and Mount Mabo. These land formations were - according to the villagers - siblings, with Mount Mabo the older brother, the River Múgue the middle sister and Mount Muriba the younger brother. Mount Mabo and Mount Muriba sometimes go to their sister’s house to drink water and chat. River Múgue is the mother of all rivers and they all guarantee fertility of the area, which ensures the wellbeing of all living creatures there. The villagers negotiate their predicaments with the Mount Mabo, the River Múgue and Mount Muriba through a traditional ceremony in which the agents are summoned by their secret names, which only the local leader knows. This is the world that humans and nature constantly engage in social interactions. The villagers and visitors, if they want to visit the mountain and forest, make a ceremony where they ask permission from the mountain, forest and the spirits. This is the world that has managed to keep the mountain pristine - a Lost Eden! This world is also threatened by extinction due to growing extractivism and conservationism.

The process for stopping biodiversity loss has been the establishment of Conservation Areas. Currently, protection in southern Africa is premised on the idea of enforcing separations between people and nature: building fences to stop ‘human’ activity, which intersects in complex ways with the legacies of colonialism, class and gender violence. Parks and reserves are created in the current landscape to stop biodiversity loss and make profit through tourism. If this is the case, what happens to other worlds, like Mount Mabo, in which relations between humans and nonhumans have managed to maintain the biodiversity of the area? What is their future? Isn’t the current path of protecting biodiversity another form of coloniality?

A new form of relating to life - human and nonhuman - requires more than technological fixes and forced separations that only benefit a few. I would argue that it is long overdue to consider wellbeing as a concept that includes ‘nonhuman life’ - which many commonly refer to as ‘biodiversity’ - to start flourishing within the framework where life belongs only to life because no one can truly own life. It is about building capabilities for life to achieve its true potential not in the name of accumulation. If we continue with the current path of biodiversity conservation, then biodiversity will soon be like art that is of value to some - kept locked away in fancy and highly guarded museums where only the rich have access. The work of NGOs and scientists show that they care about their version of nature, in the same fashion that the villagers also care about their version of nature and the wellbeing of the community of life at large. Hence, a more convivial relationship between these natures could bring about wellbeing and continuation of life not just in Nangaze, but elsewhere.

We need to move beyond a biopolitical register towards conviviality. For the Nangaze people, it is simple: human life is nothing about another form of life; human motives and agency is nothing but another agency in an ecology of motives and agencies. For them, nonhumans are also alive: they live or die with us, they live or die through us. This bring humans into the biodiversity discussion, not as something we can build fences around.

As the villagers’ saying goes ‘oeda abili orambanana’ which means to ‘walk with someone is trust’. This is the ‘spirit’ that current work on conservation needs to embrace - the vulnerability and understanding that the only thing that is certain is uncertainty and incompleteness - hence the need for creating space in this discourse for feelings like humility, trust and care. When these flourish in an environment that has once treated them as ‘weeds’ to the farmers of logic and profit, in an ecology of suspicion, then we might have a chance to achieve the wellbeing. More than time is needed for environmental policies to evolve around wellbeing, as opposed to solely economic and political gains. It is time for transformative change to disengage the autopilot mode of conservation policies which works by separating nature from society, within a mode of relationship premised on enmity, green accumulation, arms - (green) violence. This might sound ‘unrealistic’ to the proponents of biodiversity protection through separations; however, a century ago the fact that humans could be a force capable of affecting the course of terra into the Anthropocene was also unrealistic.

Written for the Biodiversity Revised Symposium in Vienna

September 2019

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[1] In 2007, Hester and Harrison edited a book with the title Biodiversity under a threat, in which they detailed the ways in which humans are impacting on biodiversity as well as suggest policy options to stop those threats. The IURCN started compiling a list of species threatened of extinctions which is famously known as the Red List (https://www.iucnredlist.org/)

[2] Watson, J., Allan, J. et al. 2018. Protect the last of the wild: global conservation policy must stop the disappearance of Earth’s few intact ecosystems, warn James E.M. Watson, James R. Allan and colleagues. Nature, 27-30

[3] See, for example, Leakey, R. and Lewin, R. 1995. The sixth extinction: patterns of life and the future of humankind. Anchor Books: New York and Kolbert, E. 2016. The sixth extinction: an unnatural history. Henry Holt and Company: New York

[4] Wilson, E. 2016. Half-Earth: our planet’s fight for life. Independent publishers: New York and London. Ebook file (prologue)

[5] Galaz, V., Crona, B., Dauriach, et al 2018. Tax havens and global environmental degradation. Nature Ecology and Evolution (Perspective). Accessed August 5, 2019, available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0497-3

[6] Norfolk, S. 2007. Corruption skims profits from China-Mozambique timber trade. Huramata. 52. Accessed August 06, 2019, available at https://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/12544IIED.pdf, Lemos, A. 2014. Forests in Mozambique face extinction. Bulletin 205. Accessed August 06, 2019, available at https://wrm.org.uy/articles-from-the-wrm-bulletin/forests-in-mozambique-face-extinction/, Mackenzie, C. 2006. Forest governance in Zambézia, Mozambique: Chinese take-way! Final Report for FONGZA. Accessed August 06, 2019, available at http://www.biofund.org.mz/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/1548329363-ChineseTakeaway%20Forestry%20Zambezia%20Apr%202006.pdf, EIA. 2013. First class connections: log smuggling, illegal logging and corruption in Mozambique. Accessed August 06, 2019, available at https://eia-international.org/wp-content/uploads/EIA-First-Class-Connections1.pdf

[7] Hanlon, J. 2004. How northern donors promote corruption: tales from Mozambique. Corner House Briefing. 33. Accessed August 06, 2019, available at http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/how-northern-donors-promote-corruption, Hanlon, J. 1991. Mozambique: who calls the shots? James Currey and Indiana University Press: London, Bloomington and Indianapolis

[8] Sun, S. 2014. Forest Products Between China and Africa: an analysis of Import and export statistics. Forest Trends Reports series, accessed June 12, 2019, available at https://www.forest-trends.org/wp-content/uploads/imported/china-and-africa-report-letter_6-17-14pdf-pdf.pdf

[9] De la Cadena, M. and Blaser. M. (edt). 2018. A world of many worlds. Duke University Press: Durham and London

[10] Law, J. 2011. What’s wrong with a one-world world? Heterogenicities dot net. Accessed April 15, 2019, available at http://heterogeneities.net/publications/Law2011WhatsWrongWithAOneWorldWorld.pdf

[11] Mol, A. 2002. The body multiple: ontology in medical practice. Duke University Press: Durham and London

[12] Kew Royal Botanic Garden, 2008, Google Earth helps Kew put ‘lost forest’ of Mount Mabu on the conservation map. http://www.Kew.org/science/news/mount-mabu-mozambique.html accessed March 20, 2016

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