This chapter presents ways of enhancing justice in international landscape restoration. Departing from the three-dimensional environmental justice framework, we draw from decolonial and indigenous justice perspectives, placing particular attention on epistemic justice, relational ontology, self-determination, and self-governance. Current international landscape restoration is embedded in (neo)colonial and neoliberal protection efforts, which risk injustice, violence, and oppression; including denying, ignoring and/or erasing local epistemologies, politics, and histories; and weakening local people’s rights and access to territories and livelihoods. Major barriers to effective, just, and equitable landscape restoration include: (i) prioritizing global over local knowledge systems, logics, and politics; (ii) targeting small-scale over large-scale drivers of land degradation; (iii) offshoring burdens onto local peoples; and (iv) relying on state authority and institutional structures, thereby bypassing customary and indigenous authorities. We propose a set of questions and conditions for policymakers and scholars to reflect upon when designing and analyzing landscape restoration efforts.
Tag: colonialisms
A Historical Perspective on Land Tenure Security
In this chapter, we explore the forces that have shaped the current challenge of securing land tenure for those with little voice, power, and means. Focusing on the Global South, we identify trends in the ebb and flow of land tenure security and insecurity, distinguishing between those tied to agricultural-based societies and forest-dependent populations where relevant. We spotlight the broad arc of history tied to land access: the widespread acquisition of land by the powerful dating several centuries back, the partial restoration of local land access beginning in the mid-twentieth century (e.g., post-colonial governments, agricultural land reform and redistribution movements, and forest management devolution), the land-grabbing phenomenon and violence of recent years, and the current uncertainty over future directions for tenure security.
The Rise and Fall of Protected Areas in Central Africa: A Historical Perspective
In view of their commitments to the Convention on Biological Diversity, many countries are deciding how to increase their Protected Areas (PAs) by 2030. However, not all proposals are entirely new, with some having colonial roots. Colonial PAs have histories related to land dispossession and loss of natural resource rights. These PAs were created in “frontier spaces”, which upended customary property systems, social dynamics, and disregarded customary rights. Territorialisation is the strategic use of bounded space to control resources. We use territorialisation to understand the links between colonial and modern PAs. In some cases, modern PA proposals propose to resurrect colonial reserves. Through the lens of territorialisation over time, we trace the creation of the Mont Fouari colonial hunting reserve complex (Gabon/Republic of Congo), the Reserve Floristique de Yangambi (Democratic Republic of Congo-DRC), Lomami National Park (DRC), and the Plateaux Batéké National Park (Gabon). Community consultation was non-existent when many PAs were created, but newer ones now consider it. Despite these new efforts, we show how colonial territorialisation through the creation of reserves lives on in new proposals for many modern PAs. We reflect on the consequences of these proposals, and whether creating or expanding PAs with colonial histories is good for people and biodiversity.