Elsevier

Geoforum

Volume 43, Issue 3, May 2012, Pages 367-376
Geoforum

Commodity conservation: The restructuring of community conservation in South Africa and the Philippines

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2010.06.010Get rights and content

Abstract

The world over, neoliberal modes of conservation are hybridising with, or even replacing, other forms of conservation. Under the banner of ‘win–win’ policies, planners actively work to commoditize natural resources and the social relations that determine the use and conservation of these resources. While these general processes seem to hold sway globally, it is crucial not to lose sight of the context specific ways in which neo-liberalism influences conservation practice and local outcomes. The paper examines how neo-liberalism’s global pervasiveness becomes manifest across different levels and scales in South Africa and the Philippines. The conclusion suggests that as a result of these neoliberal pressures, emphasis is shifting from local constructions of ‘nature’ by communities to what the environment should mean for communities in terms of commodified resources and growing capitalist markets.

Introduction

Conservation practices the globe over are changing, and changing fast. Yet, while change is the norm historically, its contemporary character is distinctly peculiar. On the one hand, ever more ‘hybrid’ institutional forms and local variants of conservation are emerging around the globe.1 On the other hand, a remarkable feature underlying these hybrid forms is that global conservation initiatives show striking resemblance in how they are operationalised ‘on the ground’. Arguably, this is firstly attributable to the global spread of community-based conservation and related ‘grass roots’ initiatives. With the discrediting of older forms of top-down fortress conservation (at least in discourse), comparable types of socially inclusive conservation have arisen in many regions, taking on various labels and approaches, especially in the context of ‘free’ markets. A second, perhaps even more important driver of the congruency between the design and implementation of approaches has been the simultaneous global rise and influence of neo-liberalism (McCarthy, 2005, Büscher and Dressler, 2007, Igoe and Brockington, 2007, Igoe et al., 2010). Neo-liberalism, simply stated, entails the (re)fashioning of socio-cultural and political dynamics in market terms across different scales.2 Proponents of neo-liberalism have increasingly been able to penetrate and steer community-based conservation discourses and outcomes toward market-oriented governance solutions (Roth and Dressler, this issue). Neoliberal conservation thus reflects the ‘bridging’ of neo-liberalism and community-based conservation to produce locally and contextually specific conservation practices that share similar underlying governance dynamics (McCarthy, 2005).

The ways in which neoliberal policies have become enmeshed and driven community-based conservation remains understudied, particularly from a multi-sited global perspective. In particular, little, if any, qualitative comparative analysis has considered how global neoliberal discourses influence local contexts in strikingly similar ways despite moving through different conservation practices. Obviously, this is no easy task, as Castree (2008, p. 135) has pointed out:

“Where one is dealing with sui generis forms of neoliberal environmental governance – at the national or local scale, say – the hoary question of how far one can compare from case to case in geographical research arises. Ostensibly similar, but causally or substantively unconnected, forms of national and local governance can be meaningfully compared only if there is real clarity and consistency in the specification of the ‘neoliberal element’ of the situations”.

As such, we need to move beyond the simple definition provided above as neo-liberalism is not merely a ‘state of being’. Rather, and in line with much of the current literature, it is preferable to speak of the process of neoliberalization, which according to Brenner and Theodore (2002, p. 353) “requires not only a grasp of their politico-ideological foundations but also, just as importantly, a systematic inquiry into their multifarious institutional forms, their developmental tendencies, their diverse socio-political effects, and their multiple contradictions”.

A key element of neoliberalization that comes out of this literature is its variegated character across time and space: “it produces geo-institutional differentiation across places, territories and scales; but it does this systematically, as a pervasive, endemic feature of its basic operational logic” (Brenner et al., 2010, p. 2). Hence, when we speak of neo-liberalism as the ‘(re)fashioning of social and political dynamics in market terms’ – the stimulation of commodification, marketization and commercialization of many social facets of life – then this refers to the ‘basic operational logic’ of an otherwise broader process of variegated neoliberalization (see also Perreault and Martin, 2005). Of course, as much as this ‘basic operational logic’ is not consistent across time and space, powerful actors at the global and local level often assure that similar neoliberal logics are put forward in theory and practice; in effect, they work hard to provide the ‘enabling environment’ to implement such capitalist logic in practice. In this sense, the process, logic and impact of neoliberal conservation fuses and incorporates itself with spheres of social life, such that it is rearticulated according to a ‘contextually specific’ free market logic.

In line with calls in the literature (Castree, 2008, King, 2009), our main aim in this paper is therefore to give this broader debate place-based relevance and nuance by examining neoliberal conservation discourses and practices in two developing countries: South Africa and the Philippines. The authors each have long-standing experience in these two countries through long-term field research. These experiences enable the comparison of practices across vastly different regional scales to achieve a deeper understanding of both the variegation and operational logic of neoliberalization. We draw on the two cases to argue that in the hybridization of community and neoliberal conservation, emphasis is shifting from local constructions of ‘nature’ or the environment by communities to what these should mean for communities in terms of commodity resources and capitalist markets. The cases will show that this is done differently in the two countries, South Africa being a case of ‘neoliberalisation from above’, while the Philippines represents ‘neoliberalisation from below. As these scales converge over time and space, both, in turn, ensure that extra-local conservation becomes a local matter of production and consumption: local communities ‘produce’ conserved nature to be ‘consumed’ and paid for by global constituencies (cf. West, 2007). Paradoxically, the further embedding of neoliberal community conservation, then, means less and more circumscribed agency for local people rather than the expanded socio-political spaces that community conservation should provide.

We first discuss the causes and consequences of the rise, spread and persistence of the neoliberal conservation project (as an ideology and strategy of governance). Next, we describe and discuss the two cases from South Africa and the Philippines. We conclude by reflecting on the importance of analyses that link the global and the local in ways that do justice to both the operational logic and variegated impacts of neoliberal conservation.

Section snippets

A brief genealogy of the global rise of neo-liberalism

The global rise of neo-liberalism can roughly be broken down between 1980s/early 1990s structural adjustment and Washington Consensus neo-liberalism and the mid-1990s/2000s ‘consolidated’ neo-liberalism. Overbeek (1999, pp. 248–249) postulates several important moments in ‘the process of global restructuring and the neoliberal ascendancy’. He argues that 1980s neo-liberalism should be seen as a ‘constructive’ project, imposing structural adjustment, privatization, and liberalization, while the

Experiences from South Africa and the Philippines

South Africa and the Philippines make for an interesting comparison because both countries retain landscapes of significant biological diversity and unique physical features that have become part of the global conservation consciousness. At another level, these countries have also been at the forefront of combining community development with biodiversity conservation whilst experiencing the thrust of global neoliberalization. The two case studies, albeit focused on particular localities, are

Neoliberal Philippines

Not unlike South Africa, the Philippines has recently experienced rapid changes in state governance from a highly centralized to a deregulated structure enmeshed with neoliberal dimensions (Balisacan and Hal, 2003, Haque, 2004). We consider how the rise of community-based conservation in the context of ‘market forces’ has affected the viability of swidden agriculture – a form of shifting agriculture – through various pressures to intensify and commodify resources. Nowhere in the Philippines has

Comparing the country experiences

The bridging of market interests and conservation and development in rural South Africa and the Philippines is typical of what McCarthy (2005) calls ‘hybrid neo-liberalism’: the consistency between neo-liberalism and devolved environmental governance where faith in the flexibility of markets is mutually supportive in meeting the supplies and demands of financial matters, conservation and local responses. For example, with the enclosure of commons as commoditized land, new property relations

Conclusion

Despite the vastly different contexts and intervention initiatives between South Africa and the Philippines, this paper has shown that in the rationale behind conservation initiatives, similar ideas and structures exist. The most important of these is the shifting from local constructions of ‘nature’ or the environment by communities to what these should mean for communities in terms of commodity resources. ‘Commodity conservation’ is therefore to be taken very literally: to maintain the

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