Bas Verschuuren reviews the book World Heritage Sites and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, edited by Stefan Disko and Helen Tugehndhat.
Drawing on interviews with the managers of 56 internationally adjoining protected areas in 18 countries in the Americas, the study focuses on the link between land use change and environmental change, and on three adaptation strategies, namely diversification, pooling, and out-migration. It suggests that the impact of adaptation depends on the adaptation strategy chosen.
The authors draw on empirical experience to assess the extent of the impact of race and social equity in conservation, with the aim of promoting sustainable and more inclusive conservation practices in South Africa. Their findings suggest conservation practices in post-apartheid South Africa are still exclusionary for the majority black population.
Ludger Brenner analyzes the potentials and limitations of multi-stakeholder platforms (known as advisory councils) in Mexico that are involved in protected area and resource management in the peripheral regions.
The authors explore the case of a Privately Protected Area (PPA) in Chilean Patagonia to learn its impact on local residents. Based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews, they find that the park has been detrimental to local livelihoods, has disrupted systems of production, and has elicited a negative emotional response.
Nancy Shoemaker considers the four main products harvested in the nineteenth-century sperm whale trade.
The authors highlight how the Indian state increasingly views adivasis (=indigenous people) as a possible ethno-environmental fix for conservation, and how non-adivasis project their environmental subjectivities to claim that they, too, belong.
This paper uses data from a long-term ethnography of both the local people and the conservation agenda in the Pantanal wetland, Brazil, to discuss how environmentalists used the National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities (PNDSPCT) to justify the displacement of local people.
Bas Verschuuren reviews the book Indigenous Sacred Natural Sites and Spiritual Governance: The Legal Case for Juristic Personhood by John Studley.
