Browsing by Author "Dressler, Wolfram H."

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Co-Opting Conservation: Migrant Resource Control and Access to National Park Management in the Philippine Uplands
(2004) Dressler, Wolfram H.
"This paper examines a case in the Philippines where the transition from coercive conservation (Yellowstone Model) to more devolved management (community-based conservation) has been implemented at one national park, the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park (see Dressler and McDermott). Here, both migrants and an indigenous people (named Tagbanua coexist in villages adjacent to the park, where the latter faces the brunt of inequitable social relations of production and exchange, while having access to forest resources curbed by park managers. For decades each factor has built on the other to increase indigenous peoples livelihood vulnerability. Changes from coercive conservation (restrictive resource access) to current 'community-based' conservation (local involvement and livelihood support), has only exacerbated pre-existing patterns of social and economic differentiation. While new laws grant Tagbanua certain land rights and greater political leverage, migrant control over trade and resources by-passes the efficacy of new legal measures, such as ancestral domain claims, and does little to offset the risks imposed by park management. By using historical accounts, I show how migrant settlers land uses, political networks, and wealth grew in parallel to and shaped park management to support their own agricultural base. Colonial era classifications of land uses and identity have dichotomized migrants and indigenous peoples and led to inequities in wealth and political power, a pattern further exacerbated by national park management (Dressler and McDermott, 2004). "The papers second section provides the background for the case study by describing early Philippine land laws, forestry policy and transitions in national park management. Section three introduces the case study area, while section four introduces Tagbanua and migrant settlement periods. These sections trace patterns of socio-economic differentiation by comparing and contrasting changes in social relations and land uses between each group before and after migration. Against this backdrop, section five shows that despite the transition from punitive to community-based management at Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, managers still favor migrant lowlanders paddy rice over uplanders swidden agriculture. As park management became institutionalized, so did the suppression of indigenous livelihood strategies around the park. Conversely, since migrant land uses were favored, they were the first to be drawn into the national parks management structure. Section six examines why social inequities persisted despite changes in land classification, particularly ancestral domain claim delineation, management authority and expansion of the park as a World Heritage Site. Section seven finds that the shift to community-based conservation at the park has neither redressed socio-economic differentiation between households, nor achieved the dual objectives of poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation."
How Biodiversity Conservation Policy Accelerates Agrarian Differentiation: The Account of an Upland Village in Vietnam
(2013) Dressler, Wolfram H.; To, Phuc Xuan; Mahanty, Sango
"This paper shows how the implementation of Vietnam's recent biodiversity conservation policy in Ba Vi National Park has increased the economic value of nature, created sustained conflict, and exacerbated agrarian differentiation in an upland village in northern Vietnam. Increased global and national interest in biodiversity conservation has intersected with markets for ecosystem services that attempt to commoditise biodiversity resources in Ba Vi National Park and reconfigure conservation as market-based development. Efforts to marketise conservation have simultaneously increased the financial value of forestland and drawn new capital investments. In Ba Vi, local elites have captured these new forms of wealth through their connections to political parties, reinforcing the already unequal distributions of wealth and power. Coupled with political power, rising land value has also allowed local elites to become landlords, with the capacity to further dispossess other villagers. The resulting skewed access to natural resources has widened the gap between poor and wealthy villagers, and contributes to their over-exploitation of forests within the Park through informal agricultural expansion. The ensuing local conflicts have also negatively affected livelihoods and biodiversity resources."
Linking Neoprotectionism and Environmental Governance: On the Rapidly Increasing Tensions between Actors in the Environment-Development Nexus
(2007) Büscher, Bram; Dressler, Wolfram H.
"There are rapidly increasing tensions between actors engaged in the governance of environment and natural resources in Africa. This becomes clear when reviewing current trends in the conservation-development debate and combining these insights with trends in environmental governance, most especially the commodification of nature under pressures of neoliberalism. Our argument starts by showing how the conservation-development debate has become polarised due to increasing criticism of community-based approaches to nature conservation and how these unfold in terms of value and scale. We argue that the strong sense of urgency involved in this neoprotectionist turn amongst conservation practitioners has been reciprocated by an equally strong reply from community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) advocates, thereby further straining the choices that must be made with respect to conservation practice. Through a discussion of the current neoliberal turn in environmental governance, we suggest that the potential of actors to promote divergent and ambiguous values in policy and practice across scale has increased over the past decade and will continue to do so. This, in turn, may lead to environmental governance that favours the sustained polarisation of actors priorities in research and policy concerning conservation-development. We provide evidence for our case with empirical data from research done on the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) in Southern Africa."
On the Local Community: The Language of Disengagement?
(2007) Mavhunga, Clapperton; Dressler, Wolfram H.
"Social scientists advocate and steer participatory, grass-roots research to engage, transfer authority to, and empower 'the community.' Does this mark the end of centrist, top-down research initiatives? Probably not because those engaged in participatory research still interpret 'the local' and 'the community' in simplistic, discrete categories. Categories turn complex abstract settings into concrete solutions and conclusions. This dumbs down the social sciences. As a result, the use of such categories by researchers ensures that local settings remain simple so that themes and participants are readily accessible. Rather than allowing local people to speak on matters that concern them, participatory research ensures that researchers speak on behalf of 'the community.'"
People, Power and Timber: Politics of Resource use in Community-Based Forest Management
(2008) Pulhin, Juan M.; Dressler, Wolfram H.
"Political powers emanating from the state continue to drive the management of forest stands in the Philippines. This paper examines how centralized state political power is exercised through devolved or 'centered' powers at the policy, program and project level in forest management in the southern Philippines. We investigate how centralized political power emanates through networks to affect the success of local timber utilization through community-based forest management (CBFM) in Mindanao Island. By examining the shift from centralized to devolved forest management, results suggest that centralized power continues to be exercised as a form of local control through CBFM. The conclusion asserts that, in certain conditions, local communities can use their political capacities to effectively negotiate, or even resist centralized state control over 'their own' timber resources."
The Persistence of Social Differentiation in a Rural Philippine Village
(2006) Dressler, Wolfram H.
"This paper examines how unequal commodity relations and reifying ethnic difference sustains social differentiation between so-called uplanders and lowlanders on Palawan Island in the Philippines. Drawing on various case studies, it examines how two seemingly distinct social groups -- migrants and the indigenous Tagbanua -- use their respective positions in society to mark differences in ethnic identity and livelihood, and how despite these differences, many social and economic 'markers' have become blurred. NGOs that borrow and construct notions of indigeneity as a means to facilitate and strengthen their programs, neglect how identity and livelihood overlap among the poor in each group. As NGOs construct and reify notions of indigeneity in support of land claims and conservation, they render ethnic differences explicit and influence how locals act out such differences accordingly. The paper concludes that while NGOs attempt to remedy the long-standing disparities between each social group, their simplification of local landscapes supports earlier stereotypes of people and land uses."