The counterinsurgency/conservation nexus: guerrilla livelihoods and the dynamics of conflict and violence in the Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Abstract

The growing militarisation of nature conservation has refocused attention on the relations between counterinsurgency and conservation. This contribution analyses how these two phenomena entwine in the Virunga National Park, located in the war-ridden east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It examines how this entwinement relates to dynamics of conflict and violence, and how these dynamics shape and are shaped by the livelihood and resistance practices of local inhabitants. As it shows, a particularly important form of resistance is ‘guerrilla livelihood’ activities, or cultivation, (prohibited) fishing and logging within the boundaries of the park, which often take place under the protection of armed groups. By studying the interplay among such unauthorised exploitation of natural resources, different types of conflict, and insurgent mobilisation, it is demonstrated that strict law enforcement and joint operations of the Congolese army and park guards fuel, rather than mitigate, the dynamics feeding into armed mobilisation.

Keywords:

• militarisation
• nature conservation
• counterinsurgency
• natural resources
• rural livelihoods
• peasant resistance
• DR Congo
• Virunga National Park

Additional information

Funding

This contribution partly draws upon research funded by the Swedish Research Council [grant number 348-2013-145].

Notes on contributors

Judith Verweijen

Judith Verweijen is a senior researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, and a postdoctoral research fellow of the Conflict Research Group at Ghent University, Belgium. She specialises in the study of civilian–military interactions, processes of militarisation, and the interplay of conflict dynamics and armed mobilisation in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she has conducted field research since 2010.

Esther Marijnen

Esther Marijnen is a PhD candidate at the Institute for European Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research interests include nature conservation in conflict areas, the politics of ‘development’ and political ecology, with a focus on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For her PhD, she conducted multi-level field research on the support of the European Commission to the Virunga National Park and its effects on livelihoods and structures of public authority. Email: [email protected]