On Elephants - White and Otherwise: Critiquing dominant discourses about natural resources

Larry A. Swatuk

The New World Disorder

In this essay, I offer not only a critique of dominant discourses regarding natural resources governance and management, but of my own life as a ‘pracademic’. I have spent more than 3.5 decades working on questions of the environment: can environmental cooperation lead to wider peace? Can CBNRM bring benefits to local people as well as to biodiversity and national economic wealth? Can transboundary park management yield multiple benefits? Can forest co-management result in poverty alleviation and environmental rehabilitation? Can peace parks foster peace?

Underpinning each of these questions were a set of assumptions: that agency could influence structure; that small local steps could lead to system wide changes; that ideas wield power. My own theoretical starting point is a blend of Neo-Marxist (i.e. Gramsci, Cox), constructivist political economy/ecology (Watt and Peets among others). 

My personal sympathies lay with the oppressed. My personal position as a Canadian-born, educated white male has long given me access to a wide variety of entry points, many of which are not available to people of colour, of a particular class or caste, or gender: as an advisor to different governments and government departments, as a representative of a rural CBNRM forum, as an educator of youth across the Global North and South, as a Board member of NGOs and tertiary organizations, as a trainer of trainers in conflict resolution, and as a researcher/practitioner increasingly disembodied from his ‘field of study’. 

Life in Schizodemia

Part of my problem has to do with self-policing. As an academic, I am faced with earnest, hope-filled youth on a daily basis. Moreover, I am in a School of Environment, Enterprise and Development in a Faculty of Environment. Every one of my students believes that human-induced climate change is about to put an end to this little ‘Enlightenment project’ first undertaken by a sub-set of Europeans some two plus centuries ago. They don’t put it this way, but they are seriously depressed — and the pandemic, which has brought into relief every pathology of the current system — exacerbates that sense of impending doom. Moreover, I am a professor of international development, which means that these young environmentalists also want to end poverty and increase the world’s gross national happiness. So, I feel compelled to emphasize a story based on agency: that no matter how many problems there are, this will always keep you employed. That the poor have no time for our pessimism. These are my ‘go-to’ statements meant to galvanize the flagging morale of our youth. 

Theoretically, I have introduced them to critical theory, and tell them that change is not a managed, linear process toward progress, but a result of constant struggle, and of fighting for what you believe in, and that there is just as good a chance that we will reverse course as we will proceed as hoped. But these statements which are meant to be provocative are drowned out by the ‘can do’ nature of my university. Where innovation and creative destruction, where an app and a start-up will save the world. And maybe they will, who am I to say? But scaling up will be no easy feat. Moreover, our School is embedded within the SDG ‘system’ through the SDSN - the sustainable development solutions network. We therefore stand at the epi-centre of liberal do-goodism where, if we can just get enough money together all will be fine. As Jeff Sachs told us at the launch of SDSN Canada, ‘make friends with a billionaire’. 

So, not only am I surrounded by liberal dogma, I peddle it myself either indirectly through my silence and self-policing or directly through my over-emphasis on agency as opposed to structure.

What’s so bad about liberalism you might ask? Speaking at an organization and to an audience where many are calling for the decolonization of the academy, of pedagogy, and of the curriculum, the answer might be obvious, but it is always good to remind ourselves from time to time. About 25 years ago, I taught a course on political theory at the University of Botswana. As I said to them then, it was a course about DWEMs - dead white European men - and their ideas and the challenge for me was how to show the universalism of some of these insights to young Batswana residing in a country that was at the time designated the embodiment of the liberal ideal in Africa. There is much to be said about liberalism but for brevity’s sake and in support of my argument here, let me make three points. 

One, late 20th C liberalism served as the handmaiden of Western political and economic power. Perhaps the ideas of John Stuart Mill or Adam Smith stand on their own and resonate with many people in the continent. But the delivery of late 20th C liberalism in Africa was a disciplinary enterprise. This sounds contradictory: how can notions of liberty be associated with oppression? Quite simply, when you are told that we have reached the end of history, as Fukuyama put it, then you crowd out any new or contrary ideas. Perfected over the 1980s and 90s, these cross-conditionalities of governance, far from assisting a continent reeling from the debt crisis, reaffirmed the continent’s position as raw material provider for the factories of the world. One cannot understand the problems and possibilities for natural resource management without understanding Africa’s position at the margins of the global political economy. 

Two, liberalism has long been critiqued as a Western way of knowing one’s self in the world. In this world view, the individual is the centre point of being and knowing. This contrasts with non-Western world views which emphasise the community. Ubuntu is a good example of this: a person is a person through other people. Contrast this with Margaret Thatcher’s famous phrase: ‘there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first.’ This is a very Hobbesian view of social relations it seems to me: that a Leviathan - a government - is necessary in order to keep us from the unavoidable harm we cause others and ourselves through the pursuit of our personal interests. Forty years of Thatcherism has badly undermined any sense of us as being persons through other persons, of community, of society, of a greater social good. It is no accident that Apple named it the ‘I’ phone. This selfish way of behaving has undermined almost any collective social project, and where socialist sensibilities exist, these are being routinely undermined by the logic of liberalism: the state must be minimized, people must be free to pursue their own interests. It is I, me, mine. 

Third, in line with the first two points above, liberal democracy has hollowed out the meaning of political engagement, and of the relationship of the state to civil society. Liberal democracy is tantamount to voting once every four years after which those in power ignore the citizens and do as they wish. This government has four years to loot the state - looking after yourself and your family, as Thatcher would have put it - before the citizenry is once again ‘free’ at election time (as Rousseau put it) to throw them out and put in place yet another set of kleptocratic ‘rulers’. At the same time, liberal economics commodifies everything. If you want something preserved, such as a public park, you must find a way to make it pay for itself. Otherwise, the land will be turned over to condo-development. Resistance to these models of political and economic liberalism will be disciplined and punished. The bond rating agencies will ruin a country’s credit rating, should it aim to put people before profit. The IFIs will cut off any loans should governments resist privatizing state-run enterprise. 

It is not only Africa that has suffered at the hands of classical and Neo-liberal dogma. One must remember that structural adjustment was first visited upon the UK and the U.S.A. before it was forced on the Global South. To reiterate: liberalism is a disciplinary force that emphasizes the individual above the collective, and capitalist enterprise above all else. The role of the state, therefore, is to facilitate capitalist enterprise. The global impacts of this philosophy are clear and increasingly challenged by scholars and some state-makers. COVID-19 has brought the pathologies of early 21st C liberalism into broad relief: those most negatively impacted are the poor, the immune compromised, women, and people of colour. They are all of those pushed to the political and economic margins of the neoliberal global political economy. 

This is the largely unstated and unacknowledged framework into which ‘natural resource managers’ step. It is the elephant in the room. It is the same world, occupied by the same array of people. Why, then, do we expect our environmental management attempts to succeed? Let me turn to a discussion of the largely liberal set of concepts and frameworks for natural resources management on offer, and to highlight some of the so-called ‘white elephants’ that they have constructed.

Concepts and Frameworks (in no particular order)

The language of resource management and governance revolves around the core idea of benefit-sharing and multiple ‘wins’, arguing that a successful management strategy will ensure resource sustainability, social equity, and economic efficiency. More crudely: people, planet, profit. In other words, the environment will not be harmed but in fact biodiversity will be enhanced; use of the resource will not be a zero-sum game, but benefit all stakeholders despite their manifestly different interests, positions and world views; and be cost effective, so not causing a financial drain on anyone’s bank account, perhaps even turning a profit. I’ve listed some of the central concepts, frameworks, goals and methods below. 

Concepts/Frameworks: 
MDGs/SDGs
IWRM
CBNRM
WEF Nexus
TFCAs
Peace Parks
REDD/REDD+

Goals:
Benefit sharing
Peacebuilding
Poverty alleviation
Biodiversity preservation
Sustainability
Sustainable Development
Environmental Justice
Resilience

Methods:
Adaptive management
Co-management
Ecosystem services
Stakeholder engagement
Ecotourism
PPPs/PPCPs
Entrepreneurship
Social enterprise
Multiple-use systems

At the heart of every one of these frameworks, goals and methods is the idea that the circle may be squared, that incommensurate interests, belief systems, capacities can be brought into alignment for multiple 'wins'. That everyone can be made better off through the application of money, technology, human ingenuity and good will. 

Peace Parks

Let's just take the example of 'peace parks', which are transfrontier managment areas - transfrontier in the sense that they are managed by two or more sovereign states in a sort of 'sovereignty bargain', to quote Keck and Sikkink. Who could be against a 'peace park', against 'peace'? The World Commission on Protected Areas (Sandwith et al., 2001: 3) presents a long list of possible benefits:
 

• Promoting, celebrating, and/or commemorating peace and cooperation among people;
• Building trust, understanding, reconciliation, and cooperation between and among countries, communities, agencies, and stakeholders;
• Preventing and/or resolving tension across community or national boundaries, including over access to natural resources;
• Promoting the resolution of armed conflict and/or reconciliation following armed conflict;
• Supporting long-term co-operative conservation of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and natural and cultural values across boundaries;
• Promoting ecosystem management through integrated bioregional land-use planning and management;
• Sharing biodiversity and cultural resource management skills and experience, including cooperative research;
• Promoting more efficient and effective cooperative management programs;
• Promoting access to, and equitable and sustainable use of natural resources, consistent with national sovereignty; and
• Enhancing the benefits of conservation and promoting benefit-sharing across boundaries.

 
As suggested by this long list, ‘the orientation in conservation and development is always future positive’ (Buscher, 2013: 107), revealing an almost unshakeable belief in the benefits to be had from peace park establishment irrespective of the complexity of the undertaking. Make no mistake, however, at the heart of the movement for TBCA establishment is conservation. For Ali (2010: 25), ‘Transboundary conservation is an essential part of meeting the goals of ecological regionalism. Since natural systems transcend political borders, management approaches must also aspire to transcend physical and cognitive barriers.’ Natural landscapes are overwhelmingly fragmented by human land use decisions and practices. Thus, TBCAs are regarded as one means of recovering the natural rhythms of flora and fauna while reaping anscillary benefits such as trust-building and encouraging habits of cooperation among and between often antagonistic sovereign states (Conca and Dabelko, 2002).

In no particular order, the dominant drivers behind TBCAs seem to be:
 

• Biodiversity preservation 
• A symbol of positive existing inter-state relations 
• A symbol of potentially positive future inter-state relations 
• Enhanced formal state(s) control of border regions 
• Enhanced global governance of a ‘bioregion’ 
• Direct response to an on-going conflict or security threat 
• National economic wealth creation through tourism development 

 
What should be clear about this list is the near total absence of the interests of those who inhabit the physical spaces where the park is intended to be established. Peace parks are, in the first instance, the result of deals made by powerful state and non-state actors in the interest of ideologically driven concepts: conservationism; nationalism; developmentalism; regionalism. It is not that these ideals are inherently problematic; rather, their grand articulation – i.e. global public goods; bioregional preservation; national economic development; regional integration – like elephants, crowd out the needs and interests of those on the ground, at the place of the proposed intervention. In this way, peace parks mark a continuation of the struggle that conservationists have faced for decades: what to do about local people (Adams and McShane, 1996)? As Duffy (2001: 6), paraphrasing Neumann (1988), puts it: ‘[C]urrent demands from local communities for the power to control, use and access environmental resources are not the same as plans for local participation in externally driven conservation schemes and commitments to local benefit sharing’. 

 

What I am saying here is that conservation is no different from any other land use decision, and as such it is rife with a political economy of power: who gets to do what where.

Because it is about an incontestible global good - e.g. 'peace' or 'biodiversity preservation' - and future positive in relation to 'poverty alleviation' and 'job creation' as well, the dominant discourses of conservation choose deliberately to cast themselves somehow as above politics, and so are artificially severed off from it. So what to do?

My Own Analysis

I was reading a review of Kurt Andersen’s new book, Evil Geniuses: the Unmaking of America. The review was written by Anand Giridharadas, who is the author of among other things, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. He describes Andersen’s book as ‘a radicalized moderate’s moderate case for radical change’, and immediately I thought: that sounds a lot like me: desirous of radical change, but afraid of what I would lose in the endeavour. 

As a radical moderate, I put great stock in Bob Cox’s advice to avoid ‘cynical politics’ - i.e. get it while you can - and pursue instead ‘clinical politics’. In some ways this echoes John Holloway’s argument in Crack Capitalism: watch for openings and then occupy those spaces. Holloway thinks that if all of those interested in radical change occupy enough of the cracks emergent in the capitalist world system, then a new world is possible. It is up to us to prefigure that world, i.e. to imagine what it will look like, and then pursue strategic measures to realize it. In the same way, Cox argues that opportunities emerge in world order and we must be clinical in our actions, ready and willing to act in a meaningful way. 

I also mollify myself by saying that not everyone can ‘heighten the contradictions from the inside’, to paraphrase Marx. It matters (perhaps in some small way) that I have the opportunity to be in the room where some of these concepts are worked out, some of the methods are debated, and some of the goals are shaped. I need to take the opportunity to press the case for radical revisioning as opposed to simply limited reforms. At the same time, I must guard against the possibility that as Irving L. Janis talked about in his seminal study, Victims of Groupthink, that I may be the domesticated dissenter - the tolerable radical. 

I also put great store in Cox’s heuristic device of the constellation of social forces: how is power laid out in a social formation? What sorts of power are being wielded? Cox speaks of ideational, material, and institutional forms of power. Without doubt, ideas matter. Just think of all the resources that have been given over to the pursuit of the driverless car. The constellation of social forces will shift as forms of power change. Does the coronavirus offer us an opportunity to fundamentally alter this constellation? At the start of the pandemic, I was hopeful that it would. But as the pandemic has played out, rather than draw us together in common cause, it has made clear how deeply neoliberalism has altered the global social fabric. 

What then should we do with all of our environmentalism? Our dreams of sustainable development through poverty alleviating ecotourism? My wife, who has a PhD in urban planning, argues that if we are going to do this kind of work, we have to be constantly self-reflective, especially as privileged Western white people. Self critique matters, without doubt. But one doubts if those with the resources - those at the centre of the constellation of social forces - reflect at all. Liberalism offers a concise and seemingly sensible world view for those who are already doing just fine. Social media happily reinforces not only their rightness and goodness, but the evils of alternative explanations. There is little room for manoeuvre. My own approach is to search for cracks and to pursue clinical politics at whatever scale possible. As for the Anthropocene, I am back to Gramsci: the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.