In this panel, presenters focus on land grabs conducted in the name of environmental stewardship. Although most of the attention on land-grabbing has gone to corporate and government buyers, the expropriation or use of land for the purposes of conservation and/or eco-tourism represents an important phenomenon and requires detailed analysis.
Demands made by international environmental NGOs are shaped by the same structural imperatives that influence the corporate rush to secure land assets, and they often have similar effects regardless of intention. The researchers on this panel present a varied set of cases: Maanda Ngoitiko and Ben Gardner discuss the tensions between corporate tourism and local livelihoods in Tanzania, Ngeta Kabiri focuses on Land Conservation Trusts in Kenya and Tanzania, Diana Ojeda looks at ecotourism politics in Colombia and Dianne Rocheleau examines the different conservation discourses in southern Mexico that together serve to legitimate ethno-political cleansing.
Chair: Wendy Wolford, Cornell University,USA
- Maanda Ngoitiko, Kenyatta University and Benjamin Gardner, University of Washington, Community-based tourism in Tanzania: Dispossession or empowerment?
- Kabiri Ngeta, University of Cape Town, South Africa, WWildlife Conservation and Land Acquisitions: A case study of the Tanzania and Kenya Land Conservation Trusts
- Diana Ojeda, Clark University, USA Whose Paradise? Conservation, tourism and land grabbing in Tayrona Natural Park, Colombia
- Dianne Rocheleau, Geography and Global Environmental Studies, Clark University, USA and Rosaluz Perez, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico, Dispossession by Green Deceit (Presentation)