5 research outputs found
Justice and conservation: The need to incorporate recognition
In light of the Aichi target to manage protected areas equitably by 2020, we ask how the conservation sector should define justice. We focus in particular on ‘recognition’, because it is the least well understood aspect of environmental justice, and yet highly relevant to conservation because of its concern with respect for local knowledge and cultures. In order to explore the meaning of recognition in the conservation context, we take four main steps. First, we identify four components of recognition to serve as our analytical framework: subjects of justice, the harms that constitute injustice, the mechanisms that produce injustices, and the responses to alleviate these. Secondly, we apply this framework to explore four traditions of thinking about recognition: Hegelian inter-subjectivity, critical theory, southern decolonial theory, and the capabilities approach. Thirdly, we provide three case studies of conservation conflicts highlighting how different theoretical perspectives are illustrated in the claims and practices of real world conservation struggles. Fourthly, we finish the paper by drawing out some key differences between traditions of thinking, but also important areas of convergence. The convergences provide a basis for concluding that conservation should look beyond a distributive model of justice to incorporate concerns for social recognition, including careful attention to ways to pursue equality of status for local conservation stakeholders. This will require reflection on working practices and looking at forms of intercultural engagement that, for example, respect alternative ways of relating to nature and biodiversity
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The masculine logic of DDR and SSR in the Rwanda Defence Force
Since the 1994 genocide and civil war, the Rwandan government has implemented an externally funded Demobilisation, Demilitarisation and Reintegration (DDR)/Security Sector Reform (SSR) program culminating in the consolidation of armed groups into a new, professionalised Rwanda Defence Force (RDF). Feminists argue that DDR-SSR initiatives that exclude combatant women and girls or ignore gendered security needs fail to transform the political conditions that led to conflict. Less attention has been paid to how gendered relations of power play out through gender sensitive DDR and SSR initiatives that seek to integrate women and transform hyper-masculine militarised masculinities. This article investigates how Rwanda’s DDR-SSR program is governed by an oppressive masculine logic. Drawing on critical studies on men and masculinities and feminist work on peacebuilding, myths and the politics of belonging, it is argued that Rwanda’s locally-owned DDR-SSR program places the military and militarisation at the centre of the nation-building program. Through various ‘boundary construction’ practices, the Rwandan government attempts to stabilise the post-1994 gender order and entrench the hegemony of a new militarised masculinity in Rwandan society. The case study draws on field research conducted in 2014 and 2015 and a discourse analysis of RDF historical accounts, policy documents and training materials