Guerrilla agriculture? A biopolitical guide to illicit cultivation within an IUCN Category II protected area

Abstract

Protected areas now encompass nearly 13 percent of Earth's terrestrial surface. Crucially, such protection often denotes exclusion – of farmers, of pastoralists and of forest-dwelling people. Engaging with the biopolitical implications of these displacements, this paper explores the emergence of an increasingly widespread type of resistance to conservation in the developing world: guerrilla agriculture, or the illicit cultivation of food within spaces zoned exclusively for the preservation of nonhuman life. In doing so, it undertakes a comparative analysis of three groups of farmers at Mount Elgon, Uganda, which support an overarching strategy of illegal cultivation with a variety of nonviolent, militant, discursive and formal-legal tactics. Far from passive victims of global economic and environmental change, we demonstrate how the struggles of farmers at Mount Elgon are frequently effective at carving out spaces of relative autonomy from both conservationists and the Ugandan state apparatus.

Keywords:

• biodiversity conservation
• resistance
• biopolitics
• Uganda

Acknowledgements

Funding for this research was provided by the Norwegian Research Council through the Protected Areas and Poverty in Africa (PAPIA) project. The first author also gratefully acknowledges research funding from the Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric) at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and thanks both Adrian Nel and Dave Himmelfarb for useful comments and discussions. Permissions for the PAPIA project were granted by the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology and the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

Notes

¹See, for example, Holmes’ (2007) review of 34 case studies of resistance to conservation.

²See, for example, Beymer-Farris and Bassett (2012) and the response from WWF in Global Environmental Change (Burgess et al. 2013).

³See Norgrove (2002) for a detailed analysis of livelihoods in Mount Elgon National Park (MENP)-adjacent communities.

⁴For an extra-regional comparison, see also James Scott's (2009, especially 187–207) work on practices of state-evasion and ‘escape agriculture’ in upland southeast Asia.

Additional information

Connor Joseph Cavanagh is a PhD Fellow in the Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and a Research Fellow at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi. Recent articles have appeared in Geoforum, Antipode and Forum for Development Studies. Email: [email protected]

Tor A. Benjaminsen is a human geographer and Professor in the Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Using a political ecology approach, he carries out research on pastoralism, land-use conflicts and conservation in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Norwegian Arctic. Email: [email protected]