Posted in Conservation, crisis, Political ecology, population, Rhinos, Violence on 1 March 2016| Leave a Comment »
Rob Fletcher and I were asked to write a response to E.O. Wilson’s new book ‘Half Earth’. It was a shocking read, to say the least. Find our commentary online on the Aeon website:
https://aeon.co/opinions/why-e-o-wilson-is-wrong-about-how-to-save-the-earth
Posted in Brazil, Conservation, Indonesia, Southern Africa, Violence on 4 September 2015| Leave a Comment »
I have three exciting, fully funded PhD scholarships available to work on crisis conservation situations in Brazil, Indonesia or South Africa. The three vacancies are part of my recently acquired VIDI project on ‘Crisis Conservation: Saving Nature in Times and Spaces of Exception’ (see here for a previous blogpost on the project).
The three positions are advertised separately:
Brazil: https://www.academictransfer.com/employer/WUR/vacancy/29750/lang/en/
Indonesia: https://www.academictransfer.com/employer/WUR/vacancy/29749/lang/en/
South Africa: https://www.academictransfer.com/employer/WUR/vacancy/29748/lang/en/
I very much welcome applications through the Wageningen University application system (the link to which you can find through the above Academic Transfer links) and if you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Posted in Conservation, Development, Political ecology on 16 June 2015| Leave a Comment »
Vacancy
We are looking for
The Sociology of Development and Change Group (SDC) at Wageningen University seeks a candidate for an Assistant Professor or Associate Professor in development studies / political ecology. Candidates with a background in relevant social sciences (anthropology, geography, sociology, political science, etc.) will be considered, especially candidates with expertise in the broad areas of environment and development, political ecology, natural resources management and conservation. Experience with interdisciplinary research, methodology and critical (development) theory will be an advantage. Your responsibilities include performing research within our domain, developing and teaching courses at undergraduate and graduate levels, and participating in management activities. You are also expected to generate external financial support for an innovative research agenda.
We ask
As an Assistant or Associate Professor in development studies / political ecology you have: – a PhD in anthropology, sociology, geography, or a related field; – proven ability to publish in high-quality academic journals and with top academic publishers; – ability to work in interdisciplinary and international research teams; – excellent communication and writing skills; – good didactic qualities and enthusiasm for teaching and working with students; – commitment to learn Dutch (for non-Dutch speaking candidates) within 2 years of appointment.
We offer
We offer talented scientists a challenging career trajectory called Tenure Track. From the position of Assistant or Associate Professor you can grow into a Professor holding a Personal Chair. Training and coaching are provided and interdisciplinary (international) cooperation is stimulated. As we will only be selecting outstanding candidates to take part in Tenure Track, this will be a good stepping stone to a further academic career within Wageningen UR or elsewhere. You will be given the opportunity to develop your own research line. We offer a temporary contract for 38 hours per week, with the possibility of extension, which can lead to a permanent employment contract. Gross Salary: for Assistant Professors from € 3.342 to € 5.171 per month and for Associate Professors from € 4.607 to € 6.160 per month based on full time employment and depending on expertise and experience. In addition we offer an attractive benefits package with additional holiday (8%) and end- of-year bonuses (8.3 %), the ABP Pension scheme and training and career development. Our individual choices model gives you some freedom to assemble your own set of terms and conditions.
Additional information about the vacancy can be obtained from: Prof.dr. Bram Büscher (bram.buscher AT wur.nl or +31 317 48 2015 or +31 317 48 4507) Deadline for application: 5 July 2015. Please note that interviews are planned in the week of 14-18 July 2015
Wageningen University and Research Centre
Delivering a substantial contribution to the quality of life. That’s our focus – each and every day. Within our domain, healthy food and living environment, we search for answers to issues affecting society – such as sustainable food production, climate change and alternative energy. Of course, we don’t do this alone. Every day, 6,500 people work on ‘the quality of life’, turning ideas into reality, on a global scale. Could you be one of these people? We give you the space you need.
The Sociology of Development and Change Group (SDC)
SDC focuses on the structures and practices of development and change with a particular scientific interest in inequality, marginalization and political agency. The group’s vision is to be a world-leading, politically engaged and interdisciplinary research and educational centre in development studies, political ecology, anthropology of law and crisis and disaster studies. Our mission is to gain and communicate a deeper understanding of inequality and marginalisation generated by global and local structures of power and political-economy and so contribute to social and environmental justice. At the same time we study how actors generate forms of agency and practices that enable them to deal with these dynamics and create new opportunities. For further information about working at Wageningen UR, take a look at http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Jobs.htm
Posted in Brazil, Conservation, Indonesia, Rhinos, Southern Africa, Violence, tagged conservation, resource extraction, wildlife crime on 15 May 2015| 7 Comments »
Some great news yesterday: my VIDI grant proposal for a project entitled ‘Crisis Conservation: Saving Nature in Times and Spaces of Exception’ was accepted by the Dutch Council for Scientific Research (NWO)! This means I will be able to appoint several PhDs and a postdoc and work together with them on new research in Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia for the coming five years.
The following summary gives an indication of what the project is all about:
This project will study the impacts of the current surge in large-scale resource extraction and wildlife crime, and the conservation responses they elicit. Recent political ecology iterature points at three reasons why this surge differs from earlier ones and why extraction and wildlife crime should be studied together. First, rising levels of affluence in Asian and other ‘emerging economies’ have triggered a sharp increase in the demand for fossil, mineral, timber and wildlife resources. Second, new extractive, military and information and communication technologies have rendered resource extraction and wildlife crime more effective, (potentially) lethal and destructive, and its impacts more visible to global publics. Third, they are increasingly overlapping in reality, thereby (further) blurring legal and illegal practices. The result has been a fertile ground for ‘crisis conservation’: high-pressure situations where urgent action is required to safeguard nature from destruction. The research will investigate and theorize crisis conservation situations as ‘spaces of exception’ where rules, norms and ideas about legality are violated by those perpetrating and those countering the threats. These spaces of exception often include violence and therefore dramatically change environmental governance, but exactly how and with what impacts on people and nature is ill understood.
Employing innovative multi-level ethnographic methods that connect the power and politics of actors through space and time, the project focuses on three countries where iconic species and ecosystems are acutely threatened by globally induced extraction and wildlife crime dynamics: Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa. By investigating and comparing how actors respond to crisis conservation situations in these countries, the project will develop important policy-relevant knowledge on how better to deal with and respond to similar situations of exception while moving towards a novel theoretical synthesis that links political ecology literatures on violence, conflict and environmental governance with influential theories on exception.
Posted in Conservation, Green economy, Neoliberalism on 14 November 2014| Leave a Comment »
Interview – Natuurparken krijgen steeds meer te maken met de krachten van de markt. Maar volgens Bram Büscher kan je die economische wetten niet aan de natuur opleggen. OneWorld Research sprak met hem over het nieuwe boek ‘Nature Inc. Environmental Conservation in the Neoliberal Age‘.
Posted in Conservation, Cyberpolitics, tagged conservation, politics, south Africa on 24 June 2014| 3 Comments »
Kirsten Horne from Earth Touch TV made this great video documentary on the promise and peril of social media’s role in nature conservation. Kirsten interviewed me while I was doing my fieldwork in South Africa last April. I think the video is very powerful, but do let me know what you think by posting comments below or on Facebook!
Posted in Conservation, Rhinos, Southern Africa on 9 June 2014| 2 Comments »
Last Saturday, an article came out in the Dutch NRC newspaper critically looking at the Postcode Lottery 14,4 million Euro dreamfund project to ‘save the rhino’ by poisoning their horns to deter poachers (see this link). The article, in brief, shows that the dreamfund project is based on deceptive statements and an unproven method but that these concerns were not mentioned until after the money and associated celebratory media publicity were received. As this article was partly based on my research into the issue I was invited to debate the issue on Dutch national TV news-program ‘Nieuwsuur’ (newshour), see this link. In the program, I debated Mr. John Loudon, director of the Peace Parks Foundation in the Netherlands.
A key element of Mr. Loudon’s debating strategy was to insist that I had not done ‘my homework’ and to stress that everything with the project is just fine and ‘right on schedule’. While he did not ask me about the work that I did to come to my conclusions, I decided to write this blog in order to alleviate Mr. Loudon’s worries and to provide more information for everyone interested to weigh the evidence for themselves. I am completely confident, and hence want to reassure Mr. Loudon, that indeed I have done my homework properly and through this blog want to invite anyone who wants to see the 23-page research report that came out of my work to get in touch with me to – confidentially – receive a copy (buscher AT iss DOT nl). The reason I am not simply putting it online is because I would like to protect some of my informants and it has not been formally peer-reviewed, but I have no problem showing it to people if they promise to keep it confidential.
I also want to give some background to the document and the research that followed. I heard the news of the dreamfund grant while doing research in the Kruger Park in South Africa on the 5th of February, the same night of the big award spectacle in Theater Carré in Amsterdam. Upon studying the award ceremony and the various promises made there, on the postcode lottery website and the next day by Mr. Loudon in the TV program ‘Koffietijd’, I knew immediately from my ongoing field research that some of the stated claims and promises were highly tenuous. But I decided, as a good academic should do, to take my time to work out the issue in full, and hear as many different sides of the story as possible. I spent the next three months researching the issue, which turned out to be entirely compatible with my NWO-sponsored Veni research on ‘Nature 2.0’ through which I was already studying the rhino-poaching crisis. This is how I produced the above-mentioned document (in April 2014), amended only slightly (in June 2014) to include several key issues that transpired afterwards. After concluding drafts of the document in March and April, I sent it to 4 or 5 academic colleagues, several SANParks colleagues and 4 journalists for thorough checking. I told them to take nothing for granted and to weigh the evidence for themselves. They all confirmed that my findings and research were sound. Bram Vermeulen from NRC decided to write about the topic and did his own research, and that is how the NRC article came about, in which all of the statements are based on his own interviews and research.
What I did not include in the document is how the PPF and postcode lottery have now changed their tactics from exclusively talking about horn infusion – as they did around the dreamfund gala early February – to their current, more cautious strategy of ‘looking into’ different ‘devaluation options’, including chemicals, rendering horns ‘radioactive’ or putting GPS chips in horns. I invite interested readers to judge for themselves how the discourse changed radically from positing chemical horn infusion as the key solution to the rhino crisis, which they would use to treat ‘the great majority of rhinos in 9 African countries’, or even ‘the entire world’ (see postcode lottery website, and Mr. Loudon in the program ‘Koffietijd’) to the current discourse that emphasizes the need to do careful research on different devaluation methods and whereby only 2500 rhinos will be treated in one province in South Africa later this year (see Mr. Loudon in Nieuwsuur). 2500 rhinos are of course only a fraction of what they had promised (the great majority of all rhinos on the planet), so it will be interesting to see A) whether this succeeds in the first place and B) whether this is indeed only the beginning and they will treat at least another 10.000 more rhinos in the next year or two to achieve their earlier stated promise. And since rhino horns continue to grow throughout their lifespan, it will be interesting to see whether they will keep following up the issue, and start the whole procedure with every rhino all over again after every 3 years (a full growth cycle).
In any case, these new developments do not in the slightest invalidate my research or Bram Vermeulen’s article. I also do not believe that these new tactics (GPS tracking or radioactive horns) will work in practice, as poachers have become highly inventive to circumvent or deal with obstacles, while I wonder whether rendering horns radioactive can be good for the animals or the environment. But be that as it may, the fact that the PPF and postcode lottery drastically changed their tactics and discourse only strengthens the central conclusion that the postcode lottery money was awarded based on dubious and deceptive promises and can be spent much better. Below, I have copied the last pages of my research report where I outline a different use of the money. But I would like to end the blog by inviting readers to judge for themselves and critically look at the evidence and come to their own conclusions. If indeed, as Mr. Loudon and the postcode lottery maintain, everything is completely on track and the project will be ‘extraordinarily successful’, then they should welcome critical research with open arms, as they would have nothing to fear or hide. But something tells me that – if they immediately start attacking opponents for not doing their ‘homework’ rather than asking them about what they have done to come to this conclusion – this might not be the case…
—————————————————
Final paragraphs from my report about what else could be done with the money:
“So what then about the rhinos and the poaching crisis? Clearly the money from the postcode lottery could be used in better ways than to have the Peace Parks Foundation (PPF) try to push a contested, impractical and in any case temporary ‘solution’. The very first thing to acknowledge and emphasize is that magic bullets for a complex issue such as the rhino-poaching crisis do not exist. The way in which the PPF posits rhino horn infusion as the solution to the crisis reminds one of the saying that ‘if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is’, which in fact goes for most of PPFs activities and promises.[1] The rhino-poaching crisis should be recognized as an extremely complex political-economic, social, cultural and ecological issue, with many dimensions and embedded contradictions. In fact, it could be argued that the poaching crisis resembles a ‘perfect storm’ whereby different elements, in particular the changing dynamics of wealth and poverty across the globe and the interactions between them, come together to make this a truly complex and contracted problem (Duffy et al, in preparation).
If the rhino-poaching crisis is a complex political-economic, social, cultural and ecological problem that resembles a ‘perfect storm’, then this should be the basis of potential ways of dealing with it. This is the opposite of the current militarized and violent approach to tackling the crisis, which arguably will only worsen the situation (Lunstrum, 2014). As one informant, the director and founder of a private anti-poaching company – who, tellingly, makes his money with militarized approaches to combatting wildlife crime – argues: “Unfortunately everyone wants to thrown guns and killing against this issue, but every time we kill someone we turn a whole community against conservation, so we dig an ever bigger hole! Poachers are seen as robin hoods: stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, so they hate SANParks, etc”.[2]
Hence, the ultimate solution to the crisis lies in creating a social and political-economic situation in which poaching becomes something that is not beneficial, attractive or interesting but extreme, unattractive and undesirable. It means seriously dealing with the historical legacies of parks and protected areas (see Brockington et al, 2008), redressing historical and contemporary inequalities and seriously looking at bilateral and multilateral relations based on cooperation rather than cut-throat capitalist competition. These obviously, are no easy things to accomplish, but unlike the supposed magic bullet solution of the PPF they at least truthfully respond to and deal with the complex, integrated and contradictory problems of our times, one manifestation of which is the rhino-poaching crisis.
A far better use of the postcode lottery money could then, for example, be used to do research on the enabling conditions to allow these objectives to come about, while stimulating those grassroots initiatives that tackle inequality, redress historical injustice and support local and regional environmental justice initiatives. These – to be sure – will never be perfect, and whenever money from outside is thrown at a problem, it is likely to create as many problems as it aims to solve. The major advantage vis-à-vis the PPF approach, however, is that the money would bypass the wealthy elites that the PPF consists of and that support the organisation – many of whom are deeply implicated in and have hugely benefitted from creating the social and environmental problems they say they aim to address through the PPF[3] – and instead goes directly to those actors that could benefit from external support. That would, in line with the mission of the Dutch postcode lottery’s dreamfund, truly be ‘new, courageous and path-breaking’.”
[1] See the earlier quoted literature on this.
[2] Interview, 11 February 2014, Hoedspruit, South Africa.
[3] I refer to the Rupert family who founded the PPF, as well as PPFs ‘club 21’, consisting of wealthy elites and corporations that combined have a rather poor track record when it comes to their environmental and social impacts. See, again, the quoted literature on peace parks in Southern Africa.
Posted in Conservation, Rhinos, Southern Africa on 7 April 2014| Leave a Comment »
I have been in South Africa since December and should have posted something long ago already. I guess I have been enjoying fieldwork too much to post anything online – which is weird considering that my fieldwork is a combination of studying online and offline conservation dynamics. Perhaps it is because when you are in ‘fieldwork mode’ it is simply more interesting to listen to and learn from others than to broadcast your own thoughts. Be that as it may, I have been listening to a lot of people, online and offline, over the last months, in particular in relation to THE biggest conservation issue in South Africa today: the rhino-poaching crisis. I guess we all know about it: rhinos are being poached in increasing numbers in South Africa and last year the teller only stopped at 1004. The first months of this year do not show a reversal of this trend. In response, a massive mobilization has taken place and the diversity of this mobilization is truly amazing. Everything in South Africa these days is ‘for rhinos’. Here are some of the more interesting ‘… for rhinos’ that I have found (not limited to South Africa…):
And related: naked skydive for rhinos
– and if running is too exhausting, you can join the groupwalk for rhinos
– and of course, at Woolies you can always shop for rhinos…
Posted in Conservation, Cyberpolitics, Politics on 4 December 2013| Leave a Comment »
Organized by: Bram Büscher (ISS, Erasmus University, the Netherlands).
Date: 24-30 May 2015.
Place: Plan del la Tour, Aosta Valley, Italy (2 hours from Milan) – see http://www.plandelatour.it/index.html.
The idea: through this CfP, I would like to invite scholars working on the links between new media (web 2.0 and social media) and environmentalism or conservation to submit an abstract for a dedicated work/writeshop in (late) May 2015 in the Aosta Valley in Italy. The idea is to come together with a small group of scholars (max. 10-12) to present and discuss draft papers on this topic and have them ready for submission to a journal by the end of the week. The workshop will be held in a beautiful agriturismo (plan del la tour), with plenty of time and space for hikes, discussions, good dinners and creative leisure time.
Below you can find some more information on the topic and the broad array of potential contributions we are interested in. If you feel that your research fits this description, or that you can quite easily extend your current research to fit the topic, do consider submitting an abstract. From the abstracts, we will chose 4-6 participants to join 6 others already involved in the project in this exciting workshop. If your abstract is selected, your participation will be fully funded. Scholars from the global south are especially encouraged to submit abstracts.
Deadline for abstracts: We request paper abstracts by 1 February 2014. Please send a 250 word abstract, with title, contact information, and three keywords as an attachment to buscher AT iss DOT nl. If approved, full papers are due 1 May 2015.
More information: if you want more information, please do not hesitate to get in touch: buscher AT iss DOT nl.
The topic:
With much global biodiversity, ecosystems and natural landscapes in persistent rapid decline, conservation actors and concerned individuals and organisations are looking for novel ways to pursue conservation objectives. A major new frontier is the so-called ‘web 2.0’ and related social media. Web 2.0 applications like Wikipedia and YouTube and social media such as Facebook and Twitter allow people to create, rate and change online content and share these within cyberspace. These developments enable internet-users to now ‘co-create’ and co-produce the online activities, services, spaces and information they produce or consume, at least within the limits of possible action. Conservation actors are rapidly deploying new web 2.0 and social media techniques and facilities, allowing those who are concerned about global biodiversity and ecosystem decline to (seemingly) more directly engage with conservation activities in other parts of the world. The term ‘Nature 2.0’ aims to capture these dynamics and the natures to which they lead.
The workshop and the special issue that it wants to produce aim to produce a set of papers on the concept (and practices) of Nature 2.0 and the way it changes the global political economy of conservation in our neoliberal times. We invite papers that critically interrogate how social media, web 2.0 applications and new forms of online activism change the politics and material/cultural forms and practices of global conservation and how they affect people and biodiversity in different spatial and temporal contexts. Of special interest are papers that connect spaces of online conservation consumption (through activism, images, videos, fundraising, etc) with offline spaces of conservation production (protected areas, biodiversity hotspots, wildlife corridors, etc) in/from different parts of the globe.
In sum, the workshop and related special issue aim to address the following core questions:
– How can we conceptualize Nature 2.0 as a new space of enacting/practicing/experiencing global conservation and what new (or familiar) political conservation geographies follow from this?
– Does the concept of Nature 2.0 reflect an emerging political economy of global conservation and what roles do variously positioned conservation ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’ play in this?
– In what ways do web 2.0 technologies constrain and/or broaden the field of possible practices and discourses of environmental conservation?
– What are the epistemological and methodological challenges of conducting Nature 2.0 research?
– How can we identify the relevant negative and productive aspects of power at work in the spaces/bodies/publics of and in relation to Nature 2.0?
– How have social media and web 2.0 changed online conservation activism and the cyberpolitics of global biodiversity conservation?
– What are some of the dominant Nature 2.0 on-line practices and how do they influence the work and activities of conservation producers and consumers?
– How do online and offline conservation spaces affect and involve each other, and how does that influence global, national and local politics of conservation?
– In which ways is Nature 2.0 characterized and influenced by broader changes in neoliberal capitalism, and which aspects of nature 2.0 are not sufficiently explained by these dynamics?
– How can race, gender, sexuality, class, emotion, and other concepts inform our understanding of Nature 2.0?
For more content info, see also the following two papers, both of which can be downloaded from the publications page on this website:
Büscher, Bram and Jim Igoe (2013). ‘Prosuming’ Conservation? Web 2.0, Nature and the Intensification of Value-Producing Labour in Late Capitalism. Journal of Consumer Culture 13, 3: 283-305.
Büscher, Bram (2013). Nature 2.0. Geoforum 44, 1: 1-3.
Posted in Conservation, Development, Neoliberalism, Southern Africa on 24 April 2013| Leave a Comment »
My book, ‘Transforming the Frontier. Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Africa’ is out now with Duke University Press. Go to the book page or click on the below picture to find out how to get your hands on a copy!
Bram Büscher 