Reality effects of conflict avoidance in rewilding and ecotourism practices – the case of Western Iberia

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the performative role of conflict avoidance in enabling rewilding and ecotourism visions in Western Iberia, one of the first European rewilding pilots situated in Northeast Portugal. Conflict avoidance is delineated here as a process based on expectations of potentially enduring, mutually contradicting and heated communications. In line with and contributing to a Social Systems Theory of conflicts, various examples of conflict avoidance are described as either a form of proactive anticipation to conflicts as risks or as a reactive adaptation to conflicts as dangers. The findings illustrate various forms of conflict avoidance in terms of silence, materialisation, co-optation, and ad hoc manoeuvring. These forms are subject to different goal dependencies of rewilding and ecotourism visions. Furthermore, these findings support a more critical discussion of the highly co-productive role of latent conflict processes in evolving rewilding and ecotourism practices in places like Western Iberia.

KEYWORDS:

• Conflict avoidance
• rewilding
• ecotourism
• Western Iberia
• Social Systems Theory

1. Introduction

Where rewilding is commonly known as a conservation discourse that aims at increasing or maintaining wilder landscapes, its recent introduction as an alternative and more progressive biodiversity conservation strategy has led to heated public and scientific discussions in Europe (Lorimer et al., 2015). These discussions are primarily based on (potential) contradictions that rewilding may present to other forms of land-use like agriculture, pastoralism or hunting (Bulkens, Muzaini, & Minca, 2016; DeSilvey & Bartolini, 2018; Navarro & Pereira, 2012; Wynne-Jones, Strouts, & Holmes, 2018). As proponents describe rewilding as a more ‘progressive’ biodiversity conservation discourse in Europe, rewilding is discussed as a form of ‘kick-starting’ restoration by which natural processes are selectively recovered to allow ‘nature’ to gain control again (Jørgensen, 2015; Keulartz, 2012; Monbiot, 2013). This establishes a kind of laissez-faire management or ‘controlled decontrolling of ecological controls’ (Keulartz, 2012, p. 60), as an intended move towards more natural/wilder landscapes in Europe. The proponents legitimise this primarily ecological motivation to rewild from the idea that:

… [t]he vast majority of the world’s biodiversity occurs outside of parks. To save it, conservation has to protect entire ecosystems, reducing fragmentation and isolation, which inevitably means rewilding across landscapes dotted with human populations and private property. (Fraser, 2009, p. 203)

With this proposal to transform cultural landscapes into more natural ones, proponents present rewilding as a bold alternative in comparison to more conservative biodiversity conservation policies in Europe (Jepson, 2016). However, on a local scale, rewilding may also fuel potential conflicts (DeSilvey & Bartolini, 2018; Lorimer et al., 2015), which are expected to emerge due to: competing claims between biodiversity conservation and other forms of development (Redpath et al., 2013; Young et al., 2016); tensions between progressive and conservative forms of conservation policies (Corlett, 2016; Jepson, 2016; Lorimer et al., 2015); or competition between reintroduced ‘authentic’ wildlife populations and locally established populations (Rubenstein, Rubenstein, Sherman, & Gavin, 2006). Furthermore, especially in Europe, rewilding is prone to clash with more ‘traditional biocultural landscapes that are valued for both their cultural significance and the biodiversity they support’ (Corlett, 2016, p. 130).

Likewise, one can argue that experiments with rewilding are not just about progressive ecological change. They also touch upon a broader co-existence of humans in these wilder imagined landscapes of the future. For instance, where rewilding proponents generally applaud the return of keystone species such as the wolf, beaver or bison, there is typically little consideration of how these will effect local populations living in, or close to, targeted rewilding landscapes (Hintz, 2007; Lorimer et al., 2015). As a result, rewilding proposals could face local opposition when people think these are imposed from the ‘outside’ (Lorimer et al., 2015). Anticipating on such potential resistance, European rewilding plans often incorporate a commercial component to stimulate nature-based economies, including a notable role for ecotourism as a means to finance related local rewilding pilots and provide promising local employment opportunities (Pellis & de Jong, 2016).

As promising as this may sound, ecotourism practices are not necessarily a panacea. In fact, the development of ecotourism is likely to experience a broad range of social tensions (Connell, Hall, & Shultis, 2017; Kothari & Arnall, 2017; Øian, Aas, Skår, Andersen, & Stensland, 2017; Pellis, Pas, & Duineveld, 2018). It is surprising however how little attention has been paid in the ecotourism literature to notions of conflict and wider frictions or controversies (Connell et al., 2017). Where conflicts are addressed, they are commonly explained in terms of incompatible goals and motives found in manifestations of human-wildlife conflicts, rivalry over tourism benefit sharing in communities, contradicting depictions of human and non-human spaces, or other land-use practices existing competing with nature-based tourism (Hoefle, 2016; Kothari & Arnall, 2017; Øian et al., 2017). Resulting from a predominantly negative predisposition to conflict processes, a broad range of conflict resolution or mitigation attempts have been explored in places where conservation and ecotourism practices traverse beyond public or private park boundaries since the 1980s/90s (Plummer & Fennell, 2009; van der Duim, Lamers, & van Wijk, 2015). To navigate in such often unfamiliar and ‘messy’ terrains, ecotourism developers and academics have extensively explored collaborative management strategies to deal with emerging conflicts up until today. Example strategies range from participatory decision-making to co-ownership, from the management of the commons to public-private partnerships, from adaptive planning to landscape governance in ecotourism (Islam, Ruhanen, & Ritchie, 2019; Pellis, Lamers, & van der Duim, 2015; Plummer & Fennell, 2009; Tosun, 2000). Despite good intentions, underlying conflicts remain rather under-analysed in these strategies. Such negligence may be explained by how ecotourism studies/practices generally tend to have actor-centred orientations when it comes to conflicts, by which its inputs, being the many presumed differences existing between actors, are explored in relation to its outputs, namely conflict and/or the range of possible effects. And while various actors project their own input-output models in relation to conflict encounters, the process of conflicts remains untouched in our observations (Mol, 2002).

In this paper, conflicts are counterintuitively conceptualised differently as more enduring, heated yet possibly invisible processes to start with. This paper aims to document latent conflict processes and offer an insight into how involved networks learn and respond to such processes in a rewilding context (Wynne-Jones et al., 2018). The following question stands particularly central in this regard: What happens if potential conflicts are (un)consciously avoided while novel visions, such as rewilding and ecotourism, are planned to gain local support? If one examines the literature, conflict avoidance is generally conceptualised as a ‘strategy’ by which actors misrecognise, postpone, or avoid occasions where inter-personal/organisational differences (may) become enacted into manifest forms of conflict (Castro & Nielsen, 2003; Dalisay, 2012). Conflict avoidance is often explained then to occur due to: a lack of motivation to enter into a conflict if nothing is to be gained or something is to be protected (e.g. maintaining personal relationships); a form of oversight where older conflicts seem hidden yet occasionally resurface as ‘underlying conflicts [have a tendency to] remain’ (Castro & Nielsen, 2003, p. 9); or a fear of conflicts due to a general lack of understanding about conflicts in the first place (De Dreu, 2005; Robbins & Moore, 2013).

To explore and illustrate what role conflict avoidance plays in practice, this paper describes the case of Western Iberia, a pioneering rewilding pilot situated in Northeast Portugal. This paper continues, first, with a short contextualisation of: Rewilding Europe as a pan-European rewilding movement; Western Iberia as one of its pilot projects; and contested projections of rewilding and ecotourism practices found in early stages of this pilot. Second, to better understand the role of conflict avoidance in such practices, this paper uses Social Systems Theory (Luhmann, 1993, 1995) to explore what conflicts are, what conflict avoidance means to different cultural groups, and how subsequent practices can lead to particular reality effects. Third, corresponding methods are described after which various examples of conflict avoidance (silence, materialisation, co-optation, and ad hoc manoeuvring) are discussed in relation to how ecotourism practices have evolved in Western Iberia and what lessons one may take from these forms of conflict avoidance beyond a European context.

2. Context

2.1. Rewilding Europe and Western Iberia

Rewilding Europe is a Netherlands based initiative that takes rewilding as a general organisational principle to make Europe’s mainland ‘wilder again’ (Rewilding Europe, 2016). Rewilding Europe was launched in 2010 aiming to rewild at least one million hectares of land by 2022 by means of ten pilot projects established with the support of local conservation organisations across Europe. These pilots function as rewilding experiments envisaged as developing into the new ‘Serengeti’ parks of Europe. Related conservation enterprises are designed to help finance future rewilding projects. Ecotourism is considered critical in the new rewilding pilots, as 61 per cent of recent rewilding enterprise loans have been issued to support such enterprises across Europe (Pellis & de Jong, 2016; Rewilding Europe, 2015).

In 2011 one of the first rewilding pilots was launched in Western Iberia. This is a pilot area of approximately 100,000-120,000 hectares that is primarily managed locally by Associação Transumância e Natureza (ATN), a conservation NGO based in Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, Northeast Portugal. Traditional local land-use practices, such as sheep herding and olive production, have been subject to changing economic conditions, land abandonment, seasonal wildfires, the UNESCO protection of regional rock engravings and changing demands for local products (Rewilding Europe, 2013). Since 2000, ATN has had a mission to ‘conserve, value, study and promote the natural heritage of Northeast Portugal, through sustainability and community participation, by managing and protecting natural areas’ (Associação Transumância e Natureza, 2017). As envisioned in the collaboration of ATN and Rewilding Europe, Western Iberia presents a different wilderness future for 120,000 hectares of land. In their plans, Western Iberia is expected to experience spectacular wildlife returns, including Iberian Lynxes, various species of eagles and vultures, and the introduction of wild cows (Auroch) and horses (Tarpan) (Rewilding Europe, 2013). Additionally, this pilot aims to connect future wilderness areas at a scale that will allow the region to adopt an alternative wildlife-based economy attracting a range of potential ecotourism enterprises, particularly that of wildlife photography, dinners in the wild, and nature-based accommodation such as the recently established Starcamp.

2.2. First projections of the Starcamp in Faia Brava

In April 2014, the author joined a site visit to Faia Brava, a private nature reserve included in this novel Portuguese rewilding pilot, to observe how local hoteliers, ATN staff members and ecotourism consultants working for Rewilding Europe thought tourism possibilities would materialise in this reserve. During this visit, these actors discussed how an exclusive tented camp could materialise in the middle of this specially protected area. The design of this tented camp, or ‘Starcamp’, was inspired by pictures of similar ecolodges established in Eastern Africa (Lamers, Nthiga, van der Duim, & van Wijk, 2014; Pellis et al., 2018). The hoteliers received extensive advice from the present rewilding consultants who had longstanding experience with similar ecotourism projects in Africa. Their advice ranged from positioning the lodge in an international wilderness tourism segment to locating and designing the camps in the future rewilding landscape. Whilst exploring different opportunities across multiple sites in Faia Brava, these consultants spelled out what a future tented camp needed to look like:

… imagine sitting amidst wild horses and cows while enjoying your breakfast. […] One should look that way [pointing north-eastwards towards a natural landscape] instead of that way [pointing westwards to the remains of a former agricultural area] to avoid looking at the remains of that village [pointing towards the partly abandoned village of Cidadelhe] as your clients expect an exclusive and pristine wilderness experience. (ecotourism consultants of Rewilding Europe)

This example illustrates how rewilding and ecotourism expectations inform a high-end tourism vision for Faia Brava. What these consultants and entrepreneurs did not take into account is that their dreams of wildness would become subject to multiple potential conflicts in the near future. To start with, human presence would be minimised, narrowly allowing only high-end tourists and rewilding ecologists (see also Kothari & Arnall, 2017; Lorimer & Driessen, 2016). But how would other actors (potentially) respond to these dreams? Consider, for instance, how ‘rurals tend to associate rewilding areas not so much with “real nature” but rather with “neglect”, chaos or even litter’ (Drenthen, 2014, p. 156). At that time these developers were not aware of the many contradictory and dismissive ways in which other social groups, such as local hospitality entrepreneurs, herdsmen or private landowners, would react to their visions.

3. Conceptual framework

3.1. Conflicts as heated communications

The presence of contradictory reactions may feed into conflicts. Conflicts can generally be defined as heated, emotionally charged, destructive and long-lasting communications (Malsch & Weiss, 2002; Pellis, Duineveld, & Wagner, 2015; Vallacher et al., 2013). Once communication has become a conflict it has the tendency to heat up and endure. Emotional utterances may stimulate or provoke involved actors in a conflict situation to behave or communicate in ways beyond their self-control (Fuchs, 2001; Vallacher et al., 2013). This loss of control is characteristic of the social life of conflicts, as they have the potential to spread like wildfire (see also Law & Singleton, 2005). Once conflicts arise and are fuelled, they can burn until all its resources are consumed (Luhmann, 1995). A conflict furthermore has a tendency to develop parasitically, reinterpreting everything in its environment (other communications, policies, and so on) in terms of the conflict (idem). Everything in the environment of a conflict then has the potential to become fuel for that conflict. As a result, conflicts can develop rapidly in directions where it may leave further destructive traces. But when resources become scarce, and conflicts temporally seem to be resolved, such conflicts may nevertheless simmer under the surface and become (re-)fuelled again as someone says, or does, the ‘wrong’ things (Pellis et al., 2015; Venturini, 2010).

Conflicts thus present specific kinds of persistent communications that tend to be perceived as (contagious) problems that are often considered ‘too hot to handle’. By identifying related communications, including the wide range of contradictions expressed in conflicts and the many attempts to solve or mitigate them, one may recognise a range of social systems at play here (|Luhmann, 1995, 2012). ‘A social system consists of communications and only communications communicate, not humans, artifices, things, individuals, washing machines, animals or rocks’ (Pellis et al., 2015, p. 117). To understand conflicts, one should correspondingly not commence with individuals but rather with conflict communications by which related entities, including conflicting individuals, are recurrently given shape. If we technically want to speak of conflicts, different communications need to mutually reject one another. Conflict may thus be recognised as an enduring and evolving unity of mutually rejecting communications that has a past, present and (possibly) a future too (Beunen, Van Assche, & Duineveld, 2015; Van Assche, Beunen, & Duineveld, 2014).

3.2. Conflict avoidance

Each social system depends on its own past legacies, future desires, and present operations in parallel with other social systems unfolding in its environment (Beunen et al., 2015; Luhmann, 1995). Conflict avoidance is similarly subject to discursive and recurrent operations that are dependent on previous or parallel communications. For instance, past observations of similar conflicts could inform present observations of (potential) conflicts (Hitchcock & Darma Putra, 2005; Van Assche et al., 2014).

What is recognised as a potential conflict by one social system does not necessarily have to be recognised as such by another. A pastoralist way of life, for instance, may clash with future rewilding and ecotourism proposals since the latter would typically restrict open access to land. Rewilding and ecotourism discourses, on the other hand, present more opportunist visions of nature-based economies that offer supplementary benefits to local communities including pastoralists. A potential conflict concerning access to land can hence be considered present in one social system (here: pastoral discourses), yet simultaneously absent in another (here: rewilding and ecotourism discourses).

Such diverse observations of potential conflicts contribute to the many attempts by which the social and material environment becomes aligned with system-specific objectives (Beunen et al., 2015; Fuchs, 2001). Conflict avoidances are as such undeniably part of goal dependencies in social systems. Goal dependency can be defined as ‘the influence of shared visions or plans on changes in the actor/institution configuration [that can have] real effects’ (Van Assche et al., 2014, p. 31). These plans and visions can inform either anticipations or adaptations over time. Luhmann explains this distinction by how social systems differentiate between risks or dangers. By avoiding conflicts through calculated and anticipated action, potential conflicts become internalised as ‘risks’ (Luhmann, 1993; Renn, 2008). This internalisation only makes sense to the calculating social system, as ‘the outside world itself knows no risks, for it knows neither distinctions, nor expectations, nor evaluations, nor probabilities’ (Luhmann, 1993, p. 6). On the other hand, a social system may also distinguish potential conflicts as dangers. Where ‘risks are in effect possibilities of future loss which the system is able to see and “understand”’ (King & Thornhill, 2003, p. 186), dangers stand for those unknown processes that lie beyond the control and/or language of the system, making it impossible to anticipate on the uncertain emergence of (unknown) conflicts (Luhmann, 1993). If these conflicts do emerge nevertheless, one may then adapt its practices to secure one’s objectives.

3.3. Reality effects of conflict avoidance

Conflict avoidance can have other effects than the realisation of social system objectives. By avoiding that a conflict interferes with, for instance, the realisation of ecotourism dreams, other (unanticipated) reality effects may emerge. For the act of avoidance means reacting to (an expected) reality by which the latter simultaneously becomes co-constructed (Callon, 2010; Foucault, 1998; Law & Urry, 2004). As conflict avoidance anticipates or adapts to expected conflict, one can observe a ‘generative’ process as expectations:

… guide activities, provide structure and legitimation, attract interest and foster investment. They give definition to roles, clarify duties, offer some shared shape of what to expect and how to prepare for opportunities and risks. (Borup, Brown, Konrad, & Van Lente, 2006, pp. 285–286)

In theory, conflict avoidance helps to prevent expected conflict from escalating. Yet, in practice, actual avoidances can temporarily sustain such, or related, conflict processes that may escalate later nonetheless. Any conflict avoidance thereby contributes to an evolving and uncertain process of co-performations by which future conflicts may, or may not, (re-)emerge, aggravate, or disappear over time (Anderson, 2010; Brown, 2002; Laclau & Mouffe, 2001).

Furthermore, avoidance practices may be generative to a wider environment in terms of, for instance, its organisational, institutional or material effects. Organisationally, avoidance can correspond to organisational culture and routine by which, for instance, opportunistic organisational behaviour is supported at the expense of more reflexivity (Law, 1994). Institutionally, conflict avoidance can require (in)formal rules to help prevent past conflicts from reoccurring (Van Assche et al., 2014). And materially, conflict avoidance can lead to physical changes to sustain certain operations. For instance, conservation practices build fences to stop human-wildlife conflicts and to preserve biodiversity. Nevertheless, what happens in conflict avoidance can often only be reflected upon in hindsight. ‘It is [namely] impossible for any system to predict accurately the outcome of its own activities beyond its own system boundaries since the consequences of these activities are co-determined by the actions of other systems’ (Renn, 2008, p. 31).

4. Materials and methods

For his case study participant observations were conducted in addition to follow-up interviews during five consecutive field visits to Western Iberia between 2011 and 2018. First observations were based on the facilitation of educational field workshops reflecting on new rewilding ideas and requirements for nature/tourism entrepreneurship (see further Jobse, Witteveen, Santegoets, & Stobbelaar, 2014). These workshops were organised with the support of Rewilding Europe, local conservation NGOs and residents, as well as an interdisciplinary group of students and scholars from different European universities. During these workshops, residents, politicians, conservationists and local entrepreneurs were invited to share their visions of a future Western Iberia (see also Kok & Timmers, 2013). The contradictions observed in these early visions were further explored in two subsequent studies focusing on the social role and acceptability of rewilding and ecotourism in Western Iberia (Leuvenink, 2013; Walet, 2014), next to 20 supplementary in-depth interviews held between 2015-2018.

For these interviews, a topic list was used to encourage in-depth conversations about issues regarding the envisaged future development of the region; the participation and perceptions of local residents in/on these developments; the identification of controversial practices and discourses; the role of tourism development in new rewilding landscapes; and finally, how interviewees perceive and deal with an emerging potential for conflicts given the range of organisational goals and practices.

Interviews were audio recorded and translated verbatim. Transcripts were subsequently systematically coded with KODANI, an Excel-based coding tool that supports the conventional analysis of qualitative data through open, axial and selective coding (Boeije, 2009; Doorewaard, Kil, & Ven, 2015; Verschuren & Doorewaard, 2007). Finally, due to the political nature of the (potential) conflicts described in this paper, all references to respondents have been anonymised.

5. Results

The following discussion of conflict avoidances picks up on previous rewilding and ecotourism visions in Faia Brava that, over time, required a greater abundance of wildlife, an extension of the reserve, and the development of suitable accommodations. Four illustrative examples of conflict avoidance are described here in the context of how rewilding and ecotourism practices deal with either expectations or emergences of early conflicts.

5.1. Conflict avoidance by silence

The first example of conflict avoidance can be found in how new rewilding and ecotourism practices in Western Iberia tend to operate in silence. Silences can be deliberate, as a risky strategy to anticipate on the (re)occurrence of heated, emotional and unproductive communications with others. Silence can take the form of the literal absence of dialogue, but can also appear through the exclusion of opposition. These silences are however potentially ‘pregnant with every meaning’ (Van Assche & Costaglioli, 2012, p. 130) as they invite surrounding social systems to make sense of these anomalous practices, often with distrust.

An interesting example here is the case of ecotourism development in Cidadelhe. Ecotourism developers working with Rewilding Europe often refer to this town as the ‘Eagle’s Nest’ as it overlooks the ‘majestic cliffs’ on which Faia Brava’s protected bird species breed. Due to its unique location and UNESCO protection of adjacent rock engravings, great tourism potential is attributed to Cidadelhe. ATN and Rewilding Europe have hence supported interest from Dutch investors to transform ruins in Cidadelhe into ecotourism resorts. In bidding for these ruins, these investors were facilitated by a real estate broker who indirectly mediated the bidding through further intermediation by ATN.

Intermediation seemed necessary here due to the sensitivity of ATN’s presence in Cidadelhe. ATN had previously experienced a longstanding conflict with its former mayor. Consequentially, ATN decided that the bidding needed to happen in secret: ‘That is easier, because we don’t get seen in Cidadelhe, nobody really knows who is buying or is interested in buying what’ (employee ATN). When they first arrived, Rewilding Europe staff was somewhat surprised by this complex history:

The longer you are active in a region, the more complex and diverse reality seems to become. Each time you get more deeply entangled into how society works […] and where you start evaluating abstract interests, you come across individual levels where people have begrudged others for generations. (ecologist Rewilding Europe)

For ATN this is different, as individual relationships have been of utmost importance in dealing with the necessary land-use changes for rewilding practices on properties outside protected areas. Some employees of ATN stress that ‘ … it is not enough to just be here […] in our office and go [to Cidadelhe] just when we need something’ (employee ATN). Instead, several employees would argue for more open and active communication about plans as they were used to in the past. Nevertheless, the current formal take of ATN’s board is to approach community collaborations passively by upholding a ‘live and let live’ or ‘no confrontation’ policy (ATN staff and board members). However, the rewilding experiments in the region have been frowned upon by many local residents who commonly distrust these ecological experiments as forms of landscape ‘littering’, unproductive land management, or an attractor of feared predators (e.g. wolfs) who may return to the region (Leuvenink, 2013; Walet, 2014). In response to any potential conflict with residents, ATN staff largely avoided the term rewilding in their interactions with residents (Leuvenink, 2013).

5.2. Conflict avoidance by materialisation

Conflict avoidance also led to interesting materialisations of potential conflict in the ongoing development of ecotourism in Faia Brava. To start with, Starcamp hoteliers and ATN foresaw that the intended design of an ecotourism enterprise in Faia Brava would not be completely in line with Natura 2000 regulations. Instead of consulting the Portuguese nature conservation authority (ICNF) overseeing Natura 2000 sites, Starcamp owners decided to construct their tented camps as semi-permanent and flexible structures that could be removed from the site within a matter of days. This decision was deliberate anticipation to ICNF’s expected rejection of this initiative and the conflicts that could spring from it. Nevertheless, just before the formal launch of the Starcamp in the summer of 2015, ATN and Starcamp owners decided to discuss their initiative with the ICNF, as they feared that it would be rejected during the launch event:

We passed by and briefly mentioned that there was this new enterprise. [Yet] there was not much of a reaction. They said: ‘oh, nice’ and so we moved on. (employee ATN)

The reaction of ICNF surprised the hoteliers and ATN, particularly considering previous experiences where the ICNF, for instance, objected the presence of a previous ATN tree nursery in Faia Brava. Yet, in this case, the ICNF argued that the Starcamp has the potential to inspire and help finance nature conservation across Portugal.

This example of materialised conflict avoidance is not unique as ATN similarly faced potentially conflicting demands from local municipalities whom ATN depends on to develop rewilding on a regional scale. The envisioned rewilding in Western Iberia spans from Vila Nova de Foz Coa past Faia Brava along the Coa valley and ends in Malcata. Along with this Coa valley, ATN recently established a ‘Grand Route’ (‘Grande Rota’) to allow visitors ‘to explore the natural beauty of the region’. This recreational corridor was the first endeavour to establish a regional brand in which multiple landowners, businesses and municipalities could, in theory, collaborate and benefit. Beforehand, ATN staff members explored 200 km of the future route to find the best views and experiences from an ecotourism perspective. However, this route traversed various municipalities, and local mayors demanded that the route would pass important sites for their own municipalities. As such, each municipality operated as an island unable to look across its own administrative borders. This, according to an employee of ATN, is a common problem in a region where land is fractioned into many small plots and related self-interests. ATN, on the other hand, depends on the same municipalities for multiple conservation initiatives they work on in the region.

You have to manage that relationship, and […] they are not used to hear ‘no’, they are the power, the local power. We had to move some [parts of the track]. Some of them […] are clearly not the right option for the people that are going to use it. They are too hard, they pass by not very interesting landscapes, plantations, windmills, and the whole objective of the project was to stay close to the river, whenever possible. (employee ATN)

The Grand Route eventually materialised through ‘surprising’ bends near municipal boundaries along the route.

5.3. Conflict avoidance by co-optation

A third example of conflict avoidance is found in the co-optation of potentially undesirable subjects. This process occurs when ‘risky’ others are invited to support intended visions. In Western Iberia, traditional herding and hunting practices tend to be a mismatch with the desire to rewild. Instead of actively confronting herders/hunters, Rewilding Europe, ATN and supportive ecotourism developers are inclined to approach a few key herders or hunters to invite them to adapt their practices in favour of rewilding and tourism objectives. However, such an approach is challenging in practice. If we take traditional pastoralism, its transformation towards a rewilding alternative is complex if we consider how livestock remains a key asset for many residents in Western Iberia, particularly extensive cattle farmers and traditional sheep herders. These typically migrate through the region and use slash and burn methods to improve grasslands.

Such contradictory practices are common in places like Cidadelhe. Founders of ATN came across multiple occasions wherein they describe how local residents engage in ‘illegal’ practices.

[For decades] it was really the complete use of the entire system; people killed otters, badgers, eagles, owls, rabbits. They killed everything they could […]. [Nowadays], you cannot use poison, you cannot kill raptors or otters. You cannot detonate bombs in the river because everything is protected right now. (board member ATN)

The tensions between ATN and residents of Cidadelhe peaked when ATN began its operations in the region and bought its first pieces of land for the protection of what Faia Brava is today. One of these pieces had an ancestral connection to the same (former) mayor of Cidadelhe who recently grazed his sheep on this land. ATN, as the new landowner, granted the mayor grazing access on one condition: ‘don’t use fire, […] four days later he burnt the place’ (board member ATN). Even though ATN felt it was necessary to take immediate legal action against the mayor, they regret such a decision as this eventually worsened wider relationships between ATN and Cidadelhe.

Whereas this illustrates a clear example of a past conflict, it is an important event to understand how ATN shifted its approach towards contradictory practices by either turning a blind eye and (again) opt to operate in silence: ‘If a hunting party uses a part of Faia Brava, as they are allowed to hunt wild boar several times a year, and they accidentally kill a horse, then ATN does nothing’ (employee ATN). Or by strategically proposing alternative strategies, such as selectively employing those residents who go against rewilding and related ecotourism visions. In the case of the former mayor, a job with ATN was eventually offered to combine sheep herding with the monitoring of ‘illegal’ practices found around Faia Brava.

5.4. Conflict avoidance by ad hoc manoeuvring

The fourth illustration of conflict avoidance is found in relation to the ad hoc manoeuvring through which potentially emerging conflicts may be outwitted. Such avoidance generally occurs where a social system is forced to react to unpredictable developments that suddenly appear as a threat to its goals. The introduction of wild grazers in Faia Brava by ATN and Rewilding Europe during the official opening of the Starcamp in 2015 is illustrative here. ATN was given the opportunity by Rewilding Europe to expand its existing herd of Garrano horses in Faia Brava on the condition that it would expand the size of this reserve. Land property in these parts of Portugal is complexly organised and cadastral data are limited. In practice, this leaves developers in the dark when it comes to sorting out who owns what part of land. Taking these conditions, as well as the timing of the Starcamp opening, into consideration, ATN chooses to take a risk by replacing the fences on the northern edges of Faia Brava without the full approval of affected landowners:

ATN makes a move first and then just waits how the village reacts, and will then start to solve any off the conflicts that emerge, in the trust that this will sort itself out. It is a bit of a game that is played these weeks. (employee ATN)

A few landowners were not amused with this sudden relocation of the fence, as they suddenly found their land included in an extended rewilding reserve. In their response, protesting landowners demanded that their land would be bought or that the fence be replaced again by ATN. Rewilding Europe reacted to such local concerns by framing these as ‘unavoidable’ (ecologist Rewilding Europe), whereas ATN staff started to panic as they instantly felt a need to look for solutions to overcome these rejections and restore personal relationships that they had built up in nearby villages over the past 15 years (communication advisor ATN). Eventually, ATN decided to partially relocate the fence in combination with a call for additional funds to buy remaining gaps of land in the future. Again, such ad hoc measures resonate with previous examples of how potential conflicts may materialise over time nevertheless.

6. Conclusion and discussion

In this paper, conflict avoidance is conceptually and empirically described as a performative process in which multiple social systems face the potential of enduring and heated conflict communications in their environment. This potential has been explored in the context of rewilding and ecotourism visions in Western Iberia. These visions cannot materialise through well-intended blueprints alone, including the top-down reintroduction of species; extension of fences; construction of ecolodges; or land appropriation (see also Lorimer et al., 2015). Instead, such visions depend on the co-performation of (potential) conflict processes through which these visions percolate over time (Tsing, 2005). This is especially the case when new visions are caught up in other discourses, including ambiguous roles and rules, as well as fierce competition for different futures (Borup et al., 2006; Krauß & Olwig, 2018).

Examining the various examples of conflict avoidance found in Western Iberia, it is argued here that these examples relate to anticipation to and/or adaptation of (potential) conflicts. Anticipation has been illustrated in terms of recurrent silences (towards unwanted practices or concealing own practices/goals), the materialisation of potential conflicts in the construction of various ecotourism practices, or co-optation (bringing problematic individuals on board). Adaptation is especially found in ad hoc manoeuvring (reactive solutions to sudden and potentially dangerous conflict processes). Where anticipations can be interpreted as a calculated approach by which the potential for conflict is internalised as a risk, adaptations may be considered as a more reactive approach to overcome unpredictable situations in which conflicts suddenly emerge in front of us (Luhmann, 1993; Renn, 2008).

In practice, the avoidance of potential conflicts has contributed to a unique social and material organisation of ecotourism practices in Western Iberia, such as the construction of special rewilding lodges, ecotourism tours, and conservation fences; and the co-optation of rewilding subjects (Bluwstein, 2017; Fletcher, 2010); as well as recurrent uses of silence (Brown, 2002; Venturini, 2010). Silent conflict avoidance may however paradoxically trigger louder and more heated conflict interactions at times of which some are obvious and predictable, as clear risks of resurfacing old conflicts (Hitchcock & Darma Putra, 2005; Luhmann, 1993), and others need to be explored as unforeseeable dangers, and adapted to in anticipation to their future potential.

Given this distinction of potential conflicts as risks and/or dangers, this paper contributes to the underexposed social organisation and contested nature of rewilding and related ecotourism practices in Europe. The recurrent and at times deliberate use of silences in practices of rewilding and ecotourism, reflects the rather closed social operations aiming to control day-to-day practices in light of rigid internalised plans and visions. This social rigidity of rewilding practices paradoxically contradicts with how rewilding proponents advocate ecological indeterminate and uncertain ecological change (see also Lorimer & Driessen, 2014). However, various examples in this paper explain that such controlled and rationalised operations cannot guarantee that plans unfold smoothly (e.g. bended fences, peculiar walking routes or growing distrust), since any social system depends on the many (un)foreseeable co-determinations by other systems in its environment (Law, 2004; Renn, 2008; Venturini, 2010).

And finally, one must question to what extent these findings are unique for the case of Western Iberia, European rewilding or ecotourism practices? Given the longstanding experience with conflict encounters by involved ecotourism developers in an African context, we can argue that diminutive collective learning has taken place when it comes to taking (potential) conflicts in ecotourism and conservation practices seriously (Connell et al., 2017). In fact, the many resolutions, mitigation or avoidance attempts in African and European ecotourism arrangements have not necessarily resolved conflicts, but also run the risk of becoming counterproductive to these arrangements in the long run (Pellis et al., 2015; Pellis et al., 2015; Pellis et al., 2018). And given these encounters with dynamic conflicts and our predominant avoidances of them, future research should explore further how and to what extent conflict avoidances play a role in contemporary society at large.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks René van der Duim, Martijn Duineveld and anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Arjaan Pellis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7495-9156