3:00 PM - 3:15 PM
[HGG03-06] Political ecology of mangrove forest conservation in East African coastal areas
Keywords:mangrove, urbanisation, Post-frontier, Participatory concervation, East Africa
This study is a part of investigation that focuses on Tanzania and Kenya and examine the current state of mangrove ecosystem conservation and users/residents’ livelihood in a new era where urbanisation and natural resource development in a potentially “post-frontier” situation advance, and development and conservation are largely left to self-regulation of companies and residents’ participatory conservation. How have the three trends of urbanization, post-frontier resource development, and participatory conservation affected the interests, power, and gender relations among the actors concerning the mangrove ecosystems? As a result, how have the three influenced the livelihood of the residents who use and/or live close to the resources and services of this ecosystem, their participation in conservation, and the sustainability of their livelihoods and conservation? This study, while updating the existing knowledge on the mangrove ecosystem in the Indian Ocean coastal region in East Africa (e.g., Bosier et al. 2015, Mangora et al. 2021), considers the residents’ livelihood strategies and the potential of alternative livelihoods to tree extraction, and examines the incentives for users’ participation in conservation. Analysing the relations among the stakeholders involved in conservation, it examines the political, economic, and socio-economic factors that affect mangrove ecosystems and clarifies the challenges for poverty reduction and environmental conservation. This particular presentation shows findings of some preliminary field activities.
On the issue of post-frontier, as summarised by Wittekind (2016), Larsen (2016) argues that in the present resource extraction at the frontiers, “the issue is not so much that notions of rights, conservation and sustainability are simply absent, but rather that they are now embedded within the technologies, practices and institutions of contemporary resource extraction” and the “post-frontier” emerges which are “no longer simply chaotic, deregulated wildernesses, but instead are also ordered and regulated”, “wherein calls for collective rights and environmental safeguards exist alongside continued accumulation and environmental destruction.” We need to examine the present market- and corporate-oriented resource extraction/conservation processes that accompany corporate social responsibility and self-regulation, and mangrove management is no exception.
Bosire J. O., Mangora M. M., Bandeira S., Rajkaran A., Ratsimbazafy R., Appadoo C., Kairo J. G. (eds.). 2015. Mangroves of the Western Indian Ocean: Status and Management. WIOMSA, Zanzibar Town.
Larsen, P. 2016. Post-frontier resource governance: indigenous rights, extraction and conservation in the Peruvian Amazon, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mangora, M.M., Kamnde, K.J., Medard, M., Ndagala, J. and Japhet, E. 2021. Socio-Economic Role of Mangroves and their Conservation Framework in Tanzania. WWF Tanzania, Dar es Salaam.
Wittekind, C. 2016. Peter Larsen, Post-frontier resource governance: indigenous rights, extraction and conservation in the Peruvian Amazon. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online, 8(3).
On the issue of post-frontier, as summarised by Wittekind (2016), Larsen (2016) argues that in the present resource extraction at the frontiers, “the issue is not so much that notions of rights, conservation and sustainability are simply absent, but rather that they are now embedded within the technologies, practices and institutions of contemporary resource extraction” and the “post-frontier” emerges which are “no longer simply chaotic, deregulated wildernesses, but instead are also ordered and regulated”, “wherein calls for collective rights and environmental safeguards exist alongside continued accumulation and environmental destruction.” We need to examine the present market- and corporate-oriented resource extraction/conservation processes that accompany corporate social responsibility and self-regulation, and mangrove management is no exception.
Bosire J. O., Mangora M. M., Bandeira S., Rajkaran A., Ratsimbazafy R., Appadoo C., Kairo J. G. (eds.). 2015. Mangroves of the Western Indian Ocean: Status and Management. WIOMSA, Zanzibar Town.
Larsen, P. 2016. Post-frontier resource governance: indigenous rights, extraction and conservation in the Peruvian Amazon, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mangora, M.M., Kamnde, K.J., Medard, M., Ndagala, J. and Japhet, E. 2021. Socio-Economic Role of Mangroves and their Conservation Framework in Tanzania. WWF Tanzania, Dar es Salaam.
Wittekind, C. 2016. Peter Larsen, Post-frontier resource governance: indigenous rights, extraction and conservation in the Peruvian Amazon. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online, 8(3).