Indigenous Peoples lands cover over a fifth of the world’s land surface and support high levels of biodiversity. However, for centuries Indigenous Peoples have suffered from deprivation, often dispossession, and even cultural genocide, a process continuing today in some regions. Biodiversity hotspots, global areas of high endemicity that are heavily threatened by habitat loss and other human activities are also affected by conflict. Although covering only 2.4 % of the world’s surface, over 80 % of armed conflicts occurred in biodiversity hotspots between 1950 and 2000. Given that many hotspots overlap with Indigenous Peoples’ lands, we asked whether the co-occurrence of Indigenous Peoples’ lands and high ecological integrity, measured by using Intact Forest Landscapes as units which still contain significant biological diversity, and the Human Footprint as a proxy for anthropogenic impacts, increased the persistence of biodiversity in hotspots where there has been armed conflict. Our results show that, within biodiversity hotspots, armed conflict was more likely to occur on Indigenous Peoples’ lands than non-Indigenous lands, yet environmental damage and anthropogenic impacts were both lower. We suggest that Indigenous Peoples have been able to moderate ecosystem degradation processes before, during, and after armed conflict because of their strong ties to their lands and their determination to defend their rights and territories. We argue that recognition and support for the efforts of Indigenous Peoples to protect their lands is not only socially just but also essential for meeting the now pressing global post-2020 conservation targets.
Tag: conflict
Between Care and Conflict: Relations of Resource Extraction in the Peruvian Amazon
The article examines the ‘contradiction’ between indigenous Amazonian people’s opposition to hydrocarbon extraction and their participation in different scales of logging. It considers the literature on conflicts over resource extraction from the experiences of Joel Bardales, an Ashéninka man who leads both logging ventures and protests against hydrocarbon extraction. While scholarly debates emphasise collective responses, the article emphasises individual experiences as they motivate different strategies vis-à-vis resource extraction. Joel’s statements, stemming from a context of a relational moral economy, reveal a position that does not reject resource extraction, but its refusal to engage in reciprocal relationships of care.
Climate change mitigation in forests: Conflict, peacebuilding, and lessons for climate security – Position Paper
Climate change mitigation in forests: Conflict, peacebuilding, and lessons for climate security III There is growing awareness of the link between climate change and security. Most of the climate security debate has focused on the ways that climate change exacerbates geopolitical and state security matters through ‘threat multipliers’, especially in terms of intra-state, inter-group and sub-national conflicts. At the same time, 64 per cent of climate finance was allocated to mitigation and 25 per cent to adaptation between 2013 and 2019 (OECD 2020; OECD 2021). Despite this, the dynamics between climate change mitigation and security remains a less-explored topic. As climate security attracts increasing attention in research and policy, our entry point into reviewing the links between climate change mitigation and security is rooted in studies of conflict and peace in environmental governance. Because forests are a global focus of climate change mitigation, we focus our review on initiatives that directly affect, or are implemented in, forest areas in low- and middle-income countries. Forests have complex governance contexts and are prone to conflict due to histories of colonization and ongoing resource extraction that lead to disputes over who has authority to make decisions, how different actors are compensated, and whose priorities and claims dictate actions in forest areas. CCMIs related to forests are often inserted into these long-standing conflicts. Many of these tensions over rights and resources are located in fragile states and some in armed conflict and post-conflict contexts. Conflict and weak institutional governance are often associated with deforestation but have also been shown to protect forest resources when insurgent forces are compelled to do so.
Guiding community discussions on human-water-related challenges by serious gaming in the upper Ewaso Ng’iro river basin, Kenya
Water-related conflicts in river catchments occur due to both internal and external pressures that affect catchment water availability. Lack of shared understanding by catchment stakeholders increase the complexity of human-water issues at the river catchment scale. Among a range of participatory approaches, the development and use of serious games gained prominence as a tool to stimulate discussion and reflection among stakeholders about sustainable resource use and collective action. This study designed and implemented the ENGAGE game (Exploring New Gaming Approach to Guide and Enlighten), that mimics the dynamics observed during the dry season in the upper Ewaso Ng’iro catchment, North West of Mount Kenya. The purpose of this study was to explore the potential role of serious gaming in subsequent steps of strengthening stakeholder engagement (agenda setting, shared understanding, commitment to collective action, and means of implementation) toward addressing complex human-water-related challenges at the catchment scale. We assessed the type of decisions made during gameplay, the communication dynamics, active participation, and the implication of decisions made on water availability. The results of three game sessions show that the ENGAGE game raised awareness and provided a recognizable hydro-logic background to conflicts while guiding community discussions toward implementable decisions. The results revealed increasing active participation, knowledge gain, and use of plural pronouns, and decreasing individual interests and conflicts among game participants. This study presents important implications for creating a collective basis for water management and can inform human-water policies and modification of the process behind water allocation rules in a river catchment.
War by other means at the extractive frontier: the violence of reconstruction in ‘post-war’ Peru
This article examines the meeting of local and national reconstruction priorities in the wake of Peru’s internal war (officially, 1980-2000). I focus on the impact of the state’s extractivism-led agenda on indigenous Asháninka people’s projects of remaking themselves into Asháninka sanori (‘real Asháninka people’). Taking an Asháninka sanori-centred analysis of their experience of war and post-war violence, I propose an approach to understanding the impact of mainstream reconstruction efforts on survivors that centres on the latter’s articulations of personhood. This approach, possible through ethnographic engagement, sets anthropology at the forefront of the necessary rethinking of mainstream reconstruction interventions to foster approaches that are supportive of survivors’ priorities. The article explores a continuum of violence through war and extractivism that is undoing the networks of relations through which a group of survivors constitute themselves as people and communities and set their aspirations for the future.
Land leasing in a post-land reform context: insights from Zimbabwe
Despite the Zimbabwean State’s narrative and discourse that in fast track land reform areas ‘land leasing is illegal’, there is a surge in land leasing. This article focuses on how land leasing unfolds in the post-fast track land reform Zimbabwe, paying particular attention to state’s role in land leasing, the forms of land leasing and the forms of conflicts that emerge. The study draws from a qualitative research conducted on 90 purposively selected households resettled on three farms and 15 key informants in Marondera district. Primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews, and analyzed through thematic coding and descriptive statistics. SPSS version 23 and Microsoft Excel were used to perform the statistical analysis. Findings show that land leasing is still ongoing informally and that various actors participate in it. The land reform beneficiaries leased out land due to livelihood precarity, as a means of safeguarding land by absentee land owners, labor shortages and tenure insecurity. The results revealed that 94% of the land is leased out to large-scale tenants and 6% to small-scale tenants. The study also noted that 100% of the land leasing occurred in the study area informally. Furthermore, 90% of these agreements are verbal and only 10% are written. The informal land leasing practice is also fraught with conflicts, such as struggles over plot boundaries, non-rent payments and crop theft. The State’s ambiguity in this matter has not helped, it merely drives land leasing ‘underground’ but does not halt it. Therefore, a ‘new normal’ land leasing system that strives outside the confines of the law has emerged. In terms of policy implications, the study calls for the State and stakeholders to re-examine land leasing, and consider a modest tax on it, and establish village based simplification and regularization of land leasing procedures.
Introduction: Contesting Control: Indigenous Strategies towards Territorial Governance in Lowland South America
After centuries of conflict and political struggles over land and resources across Lowland South America, recent decades have shown an expansion of the rights of Indigenous Peoples to determine their own futures and manage their territories.
Relational values of forests: Value-conflicts between local communities and external programmes in Sulawesi
Studies found that rapid decline of biodiversity and ecosystems globally have adversely affected an estimated 1.6 billion rural people whose livelihoods both directly and indirectly depend on forests. To halt the loss of forests and other natural ecosystems that simultaneously support rural livelihoods, various external programmes have been developed and applied, including market-based and rights-based approaches. However, rapid biodiversity and ecosystem decline continues, and better incentives or more secure rights have not always led to local community participation and improved livelihoods. This suggests the need to better explain local communities’ motivations in nature stewardship. We conducted a study of local communities in two villages in Sulawesi who voluntarily maintain forests but showed resistance to participation in formal Social Forestry programmes. The study aimed to identify motivations and underlying reasons of community preferences, guided by two research questions: (i) how did local people value forest landscapes? and (ii) how did those values interact with externally driven Social Forestry programmes? We applied the Relational Values concept to understand a community’s relations with the forest (or its elements) and land and identified points of value divergence. Data collection involved in-depth semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions framed by the principles of Appreciative Inquiry, participant observation and land use/land cover change analysis. Our findings show that people value their forests in relation to their identity, ancestral heritage, sense of place and spiritual values. We also identified the points of value divergence and their underlying reasons of resistance towards externally driven forestry programmes. This study thus contributes to the broader conceptualisation of values in conservation and community participation by providing empirical evidence on the importance of the Relational Values framework in understanding the motivation and behaviour of nature stewardship and in the evaluation of value conflicts.