Cameras to the people:Reclaiming local histories and restoring environmental justice in community based forest management through participatory video

We discuss how “participatory video” (PV) can help with indigenous peoples’ needs for cultural reassertion as well as with creating opportunities for restoring environmental justice in their territories when community-based natural resource management and autonomous development themselves have become issues of local contention.The story we share is the one of the Monkox people of Lomerio, Bolivia, who recently started using video cameras to reconstruct the struggle for land rights in their territory and to document tensions around community forestry management as part of a participatory research project with the Universidad NUR from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and the School of International Development (DEV) from the University of East Anglia (UEA). As we will see, participatory videos can have great power as part of an activist and practise based approach for environmental justice research

Parque Nacional Canaima, Patrimonio Mundial. Espiritu del Mal?

The Canaima National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site, internationally recognized as one of the natural wonders of the world, is the ancestral land of the Pemón indigenous people. Despite the intimate connection of this indigenous people with nature and their strong historical and cultural bond with this area, their relationship with the Canaima National Park and World Patronage has not been a happy one. This article examines why and suggests ways in which UNESCO could help ensure that the worldviews and rights of traditional inhabitants receive greater consideration in the future implementation of the World Heritage Convention

Juegos de Poder en la Conquista del Sur.:Dominacion, resistencia y transformacion en las luchas contra el extractivismo. Parque Nacional Canaima, Venezuela

The purpose of this manuscript is to closely examine the power dynamics in resistance struggles to extractivism in Latin America, through a case study in Canaima National Park, Venezuela. Through a retrospective analysis of a socio-environmental conflict over the construction of a high voltage power line to explore electricity from Venezuela to Brazil, which took place between 1997 and 2000, the authors describe and analyze the power dynamics among the indigenous people Pemon and the State for the duration of the conflict, and the subsequent fifteen years. The purpose is to shed light on power games in the dynamics of transformation of socio-environmental conflicts. This implies analyzing the interrelation between the strategies used by the Pemons to impact the hegemonic power, but also those used by the State to reinforce its power and advance an extractivist agenda in the south of the country. This case study will demonstrate that what is transformed and what is not during socio-environmental conflicts depends on the way in which these power relations are exercised and how they develop over time, together with the definition of roles and strategic objectives in a relationship that is generally asymmetric between indigenous peoples (in this case Pemon) and the State

The type of land we want:Exploring the Limits of Community Forestry in Tanzania and Bolivia

We explore local people’s perspectives of community forest (CF) on their land in Tanzania and Bolivia. Community forest management is known to improve ecological conditions of forests, but is more variable in its social outcomes. Understanding communities’ experience of community forestry and the potential benefits and burdens its formation may place on a community will likely help in predicting its sustainability as a forest and land management model. Six villages, two in Tanzania and four in Bolivia, were selected based on the presence of community forestry in varying stages. We found that communities were generally supportive of existing community forests but cautious of their expansion. Deeper explorations of this response using ethnographic research methods reveal that an increase in community forest area is associated with increasing opportunity costs and constraints on agricultural land use, but not an increase in benefits. Furthermore, community forests give rise to a series of intra- and inter-community conflicts, often pertaining to the financial benefits stemming from the forests (distribution issues), perceived unfairness and weakness in decision–making processes (procedure/participation), and also tensions over cultural identity issues (recognition). Our findings suggest that communities’ willingness to accept community forests requires a broader consideration of the multifunctional landscape in which it is embedded, as well as an engagement with the justice tensions such an intervention inevitably creates

Fair ways to share benefits from community forests? How commodification is associated with reduced preference for equality and poverty alleviation

This research is concerned with the trend towards commodification of forestry, in the context of community forest governance for sustainable development in the tropics. In these contexts, commodification takes different forms, including sales of certified timbers and sales of carbon credits. In addition to the general aim to enhance income, these market-based forestry interventions typically aim to align with sustainable development agendas, including a) safeguarding ecological integrity and b) promoting poverty alleviation. Our concern here is that the process of forest commodification might lead to a shift in local norms of benefit-sharing, in ways that can hinder these key components of sustainable development goals. We report the results of a survey (N=519) conducted across sites in Bolivia, China and Tanzania that shows that switching from non-monetary to monetary benefits is associated with changes in preferences for distributional fairness in ways that may be detrimental to the poor. In particular, we show that forest commodification is associated with a lower likelihood of of selecting pro-poor or egalitarian approaches to benefit sharing and higher likelihood of selecting to distribute benefits in a way that rewards individual contributions or compensates losses

Abordando la Justicia Ambiental desde la Transformación de Conflictos: experiencias en América Latina con Pueblos Indígenas

A pesar de que la justicia ambiental y la transformación de conflictos tienen muchos objetivos comunes, poco hablan la una con la otra. En este artículo tratamos de acercar a ambas ramas del conocimiento un través de una discusión del potencial que ofrece la teoría y práctica de la transformación de conflictos para el campo de la justicia ambiental. Para ello se basa en el marco de Transformación de Conflictos Socio-ambientales desarrollado por el Grupo Confluencias, un grupo de profesionales de América Latina que ha venido trabajando desde el 2005 como plataforma de deliberación, investigación conjunta y de desarrollo de capacidades en este tema. Un aspecto central de este marco es la atención prestada a la comprensión del papel que las dinámicas del poder y la cultura juegan en los conflictos ambientales y su transformación. Discutimos este marco e ilustramos su utilidad práctica a la luz de experiencias en marcha con pueblos indígenas en América Latina, donde el Grupo Confluencias ha venido desarrollando experiencias de transformación de conflictos socio-ambientales desde diferentes tipos de intervenciones que buscan impactar en el poder hegemónico, para ayudar a reducir las asimetrías e injusticias sociales que dan origen a los conflictos socio ambientales.Mostramos, en particular, la necesidad y la eficacia de impactar, simultáneamente o no, en tres diferentes esferas: las personas y redes, las instituciones y el poder cultural. Se demuestra que, a través del fortalecimiento del poder estratégico de actores vulnerables, es posible generar cambios sociales que redunden en mayor justiciaambiental y social en territorios indígenas

El nacimiento de los “Sin fuego”:caso Parque Nacional Lagunas de Montebello, Chiapas, México

Introduction: The objective of this research is to understand the changes in fire use practices of fire use in two indigenous communities located in Lagunas de Montebello National Park, Chiapas, Mexico, where current public policies implementation on fire use suppression have had severe social and ecological repercussions. The wildfire in 1998 has been considered as a breaking point to the changes and tensions that are happening in the region. Method: We applied 66 semi-structured and in-depth interviews to two rural communities, located inside (Tziscao) and outside (Antela). The topics were about local fire uses and the governmental fire policies incidence over rural communities’ to understand who are they, where are they and how was the birth of the fireless. Results and discussion: The narratives included different interpretation about practices of fire uses, mainly in agriculture activities, where fire uses were more severely criminalised. The fire suppression policy implementation, after 1998’s big wildfire in the Park, marked a before and after in the territory. Generally, these public policies are opposed to the traditional logic in the use of fire, and they have been generating a disappearance of fire use practices in these rural territories, where communities have historically used the fire for several purposes. Some practices that included the use of fire, such as slash and burn agriculture have entirely disappeared in Tziscao, a community where the fire was a central element of culture, livelihood and a way of building the territory. At present, the inhabitants are afraid to use fire in their practices, due to repercussions for causing fires and the risk of declining tourism. In Antela rural community, which is located outside to the Park and with no economic dependence on tourism, maintains traditional fire practices on farming activities. Conclusion: If the tendency to suppress fire is maintained, not only will a process of cultural transformation intensify, but also of environmental degradation about to the construction of the territory. More significantly, a dramatic modification of the landscape could trigger more catastrophic wildfires. Thus, the long-term challenge is not to make inviable or exclude fire, is to include it in the maintenance and shaping of the landscape based on the experience and knowledge that peasant communities have, the investigation of available fire ecology, and sensibilise and integrate the government authorities for the formulation of fire management plans that integrate local practices