The importance of the will to improve: how ‘sustainability’ sidelined local livelihoods in a carbon-forestry investment in Uganda

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a ‘win–win’ discourse on local sustainable development and global climate change mitigation regarding Kachung, a Swedish–Norwegian climate forestry investment in Uganda certified under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). In many ways, this investment is a typical example of how private interests and capital accumulation are prioritised over local concerns in natural resource management under neoliberalism. This study, however, indicated that investors had genuine intentions of creating mutual benefits for the global environment and local people. Drawing on Li (2007), we show that this ‘will to improve’ was nevertheless constructed in ways that resulted in prioritisation of global climate change mitigation over local context-specific concerns.

We identify three core factors making the win–win discourse around Kachung plantation especially resilient: (i) the perceived urgency of climate change mitigation, (ii) the apolitical framing of ‘sustainability’ as an environmental issue that can be fixed through external technical interventions and (iii) the devaluation of local and context-specific knowledge. We end by suggesting that research on the neoliberalisation of nature focus more on analysing the rationales behind specific interventions. This would leave us better equipped to suggest how such interventions should be modified to produce true wins for local contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberal
• climate change
• forestry
• expert
• sustainable

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Master’s students Filippa Kavallin Giertta, Tove Ellingsen, Lovisa Neikter, Julia Hoight and Ghide Habtetsion Gebremichael for sharing with us their findings from fieldwork in villages around Kachung, and Alan Ocen for his invaluable work interpreting for us when talking to people living around Kachung. We also thank Linda Engström, the editor, and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on an earlier version of the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Klara Fischer is researcher in Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Klara's research concerns how, in our quest for sustainability, different future visions, interests and livelihood struggles must be negotiated. Theoretically Klara's research is framed by a political ecology perspective, drawing in particular on Science and Technology Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis. Empirically Klara's focus concerns (bio) technology in agriculture, carbon forestry investments and agricultural development policy and intervention, in Uganda, South Africa, Kenya and Sweden.

Flora Hajdu is Associate Professor in Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Her research concerns various aspects of rural livelihoods and the policies affecting them in Southern and Eastern Africa, as well as in rural Sweden. Current research includes the role potential of cash transfers to improve rural livelihoods in the long term in rural South Africa, Malawi and Lesotho; and changes in livelihoods and diversification in Swedish farming. Degradation narratives in relation to rural livelihoods have been investigated both in South Africa and Uganda. Other projects have focused on win-win narratives in large-scale agricultural investments in Tanzania, and effects of AIDS on young people's future livelihood opportunities.

ORCID

Klara Fischer http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6590-4025

Flora Hajdu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8967-0152

Notes

1 It should nevertheless be noted that SEA has emphasised in international negotiations that it is important that the meaning of sustainable development within CDM is clarified (SEA, 2014a).

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the Swedish Research Council [SWE:2012-083].