NGOs

Bas Verschuuren reviews the book World Heritage Sites and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, edited by Stefan Disko and Helen Tugehndhat.

Synthesizing ethnographic case studies from mainland Southeast Asia, the authors critically review the implementation of REDD+, a UN project to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. They argue that REDD+ maps onto local power structures and political economies in its implementation, rendering it blunt as a tool for change.

Fei Sheng traces the development of environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs) in China, and describes the challenges they face in the political and cultural spheres.

In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Swati Sidhu, Ganesh Raghunathan, Divya Mudappa, and TR Shankar Raman discuss human-leopard coexistence in the Anamalai Hills, India. They suggest a combination of measures to mitigate negative interactions and support continued human-leopard coexistence.

In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Emmanuel Sulle and Holti Banka explore the impacts of taxes imposed on tourism activities occurring on communal lands and the emerging politics of resource and revenue sharing among Wildlife Management Area (WMA) member villages in Tanzania.

In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Gretchen M. Walters and Melis Ece analyze the project development negotiations in a World Bank-led REDD+ capacity building regional project, involving six Central African countries between 2008 and 2011. It explores how the project created a “negotiation table” constituted of national and regional institutions recognized by the donors and governments, and how this political space, influenced by global, regional and national political agendas, led to “instances” of recognition and misrecognition among negotiating parties.

In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Melis Ece argues that Senegal’s 1996 regionalization reforms narrowed down local democracy via neoliberal processes.

In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Robert Mbeche argues that even though REDD+ claims to be democratic and participatory, the Uganda program allows the input of only a few selected stakeholders – mainly the government actors and a limited number of NGOs.

In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Papa Faye shows that “derecognition” is effectively a new “recognition” dynamic in decentralized forest management in Senegal, in which Forestry officials and agents derecognize elected local governments (ELGs) drawing upon technical claims.

In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Emmanuel O. Nuesiri critically examines the United Nations’ REDD and REDD+ programmes (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation plus the sustainable management of forest and enhancement of carbon stocks) in Nigeria and finds them to exclude politically weak rural people.