Fortress Conservation: Biodiversity Crisis & The Second Scramble For Africa / Aby Sène

Dr. Aby Sène joins me to discuss fortress conservationism and the 30x30 plan, a proposal by Western conservation agencies and their corporate and state allies "to double the coverage of protected areas around the world by setting aside 30 percent of terrestrial cover for conservation by 2030."

On the surface, the 30x30 proposal (the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework) to protect biodiversity and wildlife seems like a promising step in halting deforestation, unfettered resource extraction, and poaching of endangered wildlife across Africa, but as Dr. Sène eloquently describes in her work, this plan is but a continuation of the colonialist dynamics that have existed between the Global North and the Global South for centuries. These conservation efforts, aptly termed "fortress conservation,” is in reality part of a “colossal land grab," displacing indigenous communities from their lands and depriving them of traditional sources of sustenance and place-based cultural practices.

There are many threads to follow in examining what is actually taking place here, but to provide some more context, Dr. Sène writes in Land grabs and conservation propaganda:

Many conservation NGOs are led by Western capitalists who indulge their own private interests and bankroll platforms like Capitals Coalition to push ideas about the best way to save the last remaining African wildlife. Western financiers like Goldman Sachs and The Blackstone Group are working in unison with international conservation NGOs seizing on the biodiversity crisis to package predatory agendas under the guise of conservation. Yet the violence and sheer pace and scale at which conservation in Africa absorbs Indigenous lands to be integrated into the global capitalist system for commodification has gone vastly uncriticized. Why is that, and what forces sustain such an enduring yet insidious image of moral high ground in conservation?

BIO:

Dr. Aby Sène-Harper is an assistant professor in parks and conservation area management at Clemson University. She is a trained interdisciplinary environmental social researcher whose work advances socially and ecologically just approaches to managing public lands, natural and cultural resources in the US and in Africa. Her research lies at the intersections of parks and protected area governance, livelihoods, nature-based tourism, and Race and nature. In the US her work interrogates how history and culture mediate African American relationships with nature, and cultural landscapes. In Africa, her work centers on the colonial structures of power in conservation, and integrative conservation approaches such as livelihood-centered projects, ecotourism and community-based conservation.

Episode Notes:

Read Western Nonprofits Are Trampling Over Africans’ Rights and Land (Foreign Policy), and Land grabs and conservation propaganda (Africa is a Country).

Follow Dr. Sène on Twitter @AbySene9

Other resources mentioned in this interview: The Red Deal, Survival International, The Big Conservation Lie by John Mbaria and Mordecai Ogada, The Violence of Conservation in Africa, and Security and Conservation by Rosaleen Duffy

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