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Green Territoriality: Conservation as State Territorialization in a Resource Frontier

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Abstract

I explore how and in what ways global conservation projects carried out in forest frontiers under rebel authority can serve to assert state control over resource-rich territories and populations. I advance the concept of “green territoriality” to describe how conservation practiced beyond the state can serve counterinsurgency aims based on a two-year field case study in a global biodiversity hotspot under armed conflict and inhabited by Karen in south-eastern Myanmar. I analyze military-led forced displacements by economic concessions and conservation during war alongside more recent conservation projects during the ceasefire. My findings reveal how military offensives, economic concessions, and conservation activities threaten to bring state agencies, administration, and management into rebel forests where Karen fled from war but have not yet returned. These findings highlight the importance of integrating conservation activities in conflict affected areas with humanitarian assistance, land restitution, and livelihood rehabilitation.

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Notes

  1. Mathieu Pellerin created all maps illustrated here, using mapping data provided, in part, under the auspices of the Fauna & Flora International (FFI) with funding from the Helmsley Charitable Trust. I assembled other mapping data with the help of field research teams for some of the oil palm concessions data, and the Thailand-Burma Consortium (TBC) in Thailand for archival data on trends in displacement and return/resettlement trends.

  2. Interviews with KNU leaders, Karen CBO representatives, and Karen refugees from these areas, Thailand, 2014 and 2015.

  3. Interviews, KNU 4th Brigade Forest Department official, former head of 4th Brigade, and Karen CBO representatives, Thailand, 2014 and 2015.

  4. Karen refugees from Tanintharyi Region interviewed in 2015 in a refugee camp on the Thai border not far from where they crossed into Thailand.

  5. The military regime followed a particular type of scorched earth campaign known as the Four-Cuts Policy: cutting links of food, funds, information, and recruits between the insurgents and their families and the local populace.

  6. These national companies have been able to secure high-level lucrative business deals because of their good relations with top-level military officials.

  7. Data for the Tanintharyi Region for 2013 are from the regional government and are significantly higher than recorded by the central government. Data for the Tanintharyi Region provided by the regional government before 2013 are not available, however, and I therefore used central government data for figures prior to 2013.

  8. A degree of deforestation can be seen outside oil palm concessions, and both inside and outside forest reserves, but this appears as the exception.

  9. Interview, Thailand border, December 2014.

  10. On how the contemporary land laws and policies have been designed to dispossess ethnic minority upland agriculturalists, see Oberndorf (2012).

  11. Interview with respective head of department, Thailand border, 2015.

  12. Personal communication, former KNU park warden in 4th Brigade in the targeted protected area, Thailand, 2014.

  13. Interview with Karen CBO representatives, Thailand, 2014 and 2015.

  14. Interview with Karen CBO representatives, Thailand, 2014 and 2015.

  15. Personal communication with the former Kaserdoh Reserve Warden, Thailand, 2014 and 2015.

  16. Interview, GEF Southeast Asia REDD+/SFM grants officer, Washington DC, September 2014; Interview, UN REDD+ Readiness regional officers, Bangkok, Thailand, 01 December 2014.

  17. The US$22 million project is being implemented by United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Fauna and Flora International (FFI), Smithsonian Institute, and Myanmar’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC).

  18. In addition, other international agencies, such as the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) and foreign governments (Korea, Japan, and Norway in particular), have also begun to promote and facilitate programs linked to REDD+.

  19. Interview, Thailand border, December 2014.

  20. Interview with former head of the KNU’s 4th Brigade, Thailand, 2015.

  21. Interview with KNU 4th Brigade officer, Thailand border, November 2014.

  22. On file with author.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my field research teams and local community organizations and leaders (all who remain anonymous for security reasons) who continue to show me their affected lives—and, despite the challenges, remain committed to their struggle to achieve more equitable and just outcomes for their communities. Thank you also to Mathieu Pellerin for the long hours spent on helping me make the maps. The Border Consortium (TBC), through their humanitarian relief efforts and published reports, taught me about the lives of IDPs and refugees, introduced me to the refugee camp I visited, and allowed me to look over their office files to help locate more field data. Annie Shattuck provided continual encouragement and insight during the writing of this article and its many iterations, and helped me fine-tune my framing of green territoriality and the intervention I seek to make.

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  1. Department of Geography and Environment, University of Hawaii at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Kevin M. Woods

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Woods, K.M. Green Territoriality: Conservation as State Territorialization in a Resource Frontier. Hum Ecol 47, 217–232 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-019-0063-x

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