| Description |
The idea of conservation of nature is since colonial times an important element of European expansion, especially in Africa but also in other areas of the global south (see Neumann 1998) as well as Northern America (see Farrell 2015). While in settler colonialism hunting and eliminating different species of animals were widespread (see for Kenya the work of Enns and Brosaglio 2024), local communities were often accused of its decimation. Consequently, the idea of pure nature protection by enclosures and fortress conservation, commons grabbing, and criminalization of local groups was part of colonial and neo-colonial policies (Brockington et al 2008, Haller and Galvin 2008). However, not just colonial and post-colonial independent government actors argued that in order to protect biodiversity – often meaning large mammal wildlife - their ‘natural’ habitats needed to be conserved. In addition, feudal actors from all over Europe have been main agents in this process since the beginning of the colonial process (see Igoe 2004, Mbaria and Ogada 2016). While conservation in the different continents started at different times, it gained central worldwide importance since the 20th century, not only as a way to show national sovereignty, but also to harness income from tourism such as for example in East Africa or to gain support from international donors from the USA and Europe as well as from ‘northern’ NGOs (ibids, Brockington et al 2008). With the failure of fortress conservation, new co-management and community conservation schemes have been tried out but with little success: Local people felt excluded from participation (see Galvin and Haller 2008 eds, Haller 2013) and also continued to face violence (see Haller ed 2010, 2013, Ramutsindela et al 2022). While tourism in protected areas have become large-scale business justifying green commons grabbing, a new pressure arises: More and more celebrities (Brockington 2009) and among them billionaires (Igoe 2004, Farell 2020) see conservation as a field of action and philanthropy and use their capital to control the way conservation should be organized. Their naturalist ontology on how nature has to be separated from culture and thus from local people, will in the future influence more and more conservation policies worldwide also in the context of the ‘30 by 30’ programmes (UN goal to conserve 30% of the Earth by 2030).
We shall discuss general literature on this topic in a first part and will also reflect on concrete examples of billionaires being active in East Africa, South-East Asia, North and South America and also Europe (especially Romania). We will discuss what strategies are behind the desire to control the image of nature and protection, the ontological and power specific aspects of structural (capital) and discursive power from a political ecology and anthropology background. |
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