Conflicts forever : Understanding the role of conflicts in conservation tourism

Summary

In this thesis I explore the role of conflicts in conservation tourism. Conservation tourism forms a commercial practice that intends to contribute to economic development and biodiversity conservation. Conflicts can be expected to play a role here considering the potentially contradicting objectives, practices and discourses. However, by scanning associated policy reports and literatures, I found that limited attention is being paid to conflicts. If mentioned at all, conflicts are predominantly seen as negative and temporary situations resulting from incompatible differences between actors. Consequently, academics and practitioners narrowly look for logical inputs (what causes conflicts to happen?) and outputs (how can we resolve the outcomes of conflict?). Yet what seems to be missing here is a more processual understanding of conflicts.

To contribute to a better understanding of conflicts in this aspect, conflicts are examined in this thesis as social systems, as suggested by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Using Luhmann as a core post-structural point of departure, I principally wondered whether conflicts can have a social life (whether conflicts endure as social systems, and if so, how?), and to what extent this social life plays a role in shaping the realities of conservation tourism (are these conflict systems performative?). Furthermore, and complemented by Evolutionary Governance Theory, I explored how conflicts evolve in relation to the many discursive and material events unfolding in their (in-) direct environment. To better understand and illustrate this evolution of conflicts, I empirically examined three related conservation tourism case studies in context of Namibian conservancies (chapter 2), Kenyan conservation enterprises (chapter 3) and Portuguese rewilding projects (chapter 4). Across these cases, I found that conflicts are typically subject to their own path dependencies, interdependencies and goal dependencies. Path dependencies illustrate how conflicts have their own genesis, rooted in those destinations where they develop over time. Interdependencies explain how conflicts are coupled with other discursive and/or material events in their environment. And goal dependencies describe how ideas or expectations of the future inform related actors as they anticipate conflicts and adapt their behaviour accordingly.

In chapter 2, the path dependency of conflicts is discussed in relation to the specific case of Anabeb Conservancy in Kunene in Namibia. In this case, I looked into ongoing community conflicts and their persistence over time. Conflicts have emerged and re-emerged here as a recognisable modes of ordering that have become all but normal to insiders of this community. In fact, the way in which conflicts play out in the wider Kunene region today is similar to previous conflict episodes of up to 30 or 40 years ago. However, the form in which these conflicts re-occur is somewhat different as they relate to changing discourses today. Prior to Namibia’s independence, for instance, conflicts may have been about pension fund distributions; today conflicts re-emerge in light of Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) and related opportunities offered by conservation tourism. To better understand the endurance of conflicts in this case, this chapter zooms in on the technologies that can irreversibly shape and maintain conflicts, namely through: reification, solidification, codification, naturalisation, objectification and institutionalisation.

In chapter 3, the interdependency of conflicts is studied in context of Loisaba Conservancy, a private conservancy situated in the northern County of Laikipia, Kenya. For a long time, Loisaba’s management was focused on wildlife conservation, high-end tourism and commercial ranching. Developments and events at neighbouring ranches and community conservation areas shifted this focus. Decades of more or less peaceful regional co-existence has recently transformed into a situation full of conflicts and sometimes even violence. At first sight, these emerging conflicts seem related to recurrent droughts, scarce resources, national elections, and incitements by wealthy and influential politicians. For this study, however, I conceptualised conflicts as particular kinds of discourses that emerge, exist and change. This happens not only according to their internal logic, but also as a result of the dependencies between different conflict discourses. In this chapter, I characterise the relations between conflicts on a range from tight to loose couplings and introduce three related forms of coupling, namely: overpowering, resisting, and resonating.

In chapter 4, I explore the performative role of conflict avoidance in the rewilding and ecotourism discourse of one of the first European rewilding pilots situated in Western Iberia, Portugal. Conflict avoidance is delineated here as a process based on expectations of potentially enduring, mutually contradicting and heated interactions. As various actors have experienced such interactions, a natural response is to avoid (potential) conflicts. Various examples of conflict avoidance are correspondingly described as either a form of proactive anticipation to conflicts as risks or as a reactive adaptation to conflicts as dangers. The findings illustrate various forms of anticipations upon potential conflicts in terms of silence (non-communication or concealment of own practices/goals), materialisation (of potential conflicts in the construction of various ecotourism products), or co-optation (bringing problematic individuals on board). Adaptation is especially found in the ad hoc manoeuvring (reactive solutions to sudden and potentially dangerous conflict processes) by rewilding and ecotourism organisations. These anticipations/adaptations to conflict are each argued to be subject to different goal dependencies found in associated organisational visions of the future.

In chapter 5, I conclude by synthesising how conflicts evolve through the path dependencies, interdependencies, and goal dependencies found across the case studies. At the same time, I emphasise how these dependencies are interrelated as conflicts not only function as parasitic systems, as Luhmann indicated, but also evolve as heated communications. Conflicts can have an aggressiveness similar to that of fire: once they burn — and if they are fuelled — they are very hard to extinguish. The resources that fuel conflicts are those recurrent contradictions found in conservation tourism, including ways in which self-proclaimed ‘outsiders’ perceive of conflicts as trivial events or avoid them where possible. However, as I have illustrated repeatedly throughout this thesis, conflicts themselves can generate reality effects, such as the distinction between in- and outsiders as conflicts can develop their own (and possibly new) subjects or objects; can marginalise or strengthen other communications; and can persist by parasitising on their environment (even if we decide to avoid them). Given these performative effects, and given their persistence as heated communications, this thesis ends with a discussion of implications leading to the recommendation for practitioners and researchers to have patience, to stay prudent, and to remain open to conflicts.