Speaking of fire: reflexive governance in landscapes of social change and shifting local identities

ABSTRACT

The concept of reflexive governance has to a large extent emerged from an increasing recognition of the need to consider different meanings of nature in the environmental policy-making process. Yet, so far, little attention has been paid to creating conditions for reflexive governance among different actors in intercultural settings, particularly in the context of environmental conflict and strong cultural change among indigenous peoples. This paper reviews three participatory research projects carried out in the Gran Sabana in Canaima National Park, Venezuela, which facilitated dialogue among indigenous people regarding their conflicting views of fire, in part by developing community-wide critical reflections on processes of cultural change and identity formations. These experiences suggest that once marginalized environmental knowledge is publicly acknowledged within the context of endogenous cultural processes, indigenous people feel more confident to engage in dialogue with other actors, thus allowing the emergence of reflexive environmental governance.

KEYWORDS:

• Fire management
• cultural identity
• reflexive governance
• Pemon
• Canaima National Park

Acknowledgements

We thank the STEPS Centre in the University of Sussex, UK, and particularly Ian Scoones, for having inspired us to write this manuscript during a visiting fellowship that Iokiñe Rodríguez carried out to this Centre in March 2010. Also, the School for International Development (DEV) at the University of East Anglia, and specially Adrian Martin and Bruce Lankford, for proving an institutional base to exchange ideas and write an important part of this manuscript. We are grateful also to two anonymous external reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. In Venezuela we thank the National Fund for Science and Technology (FONACIT) for funding the Risk Project (Proyecto No. G-2005000514). In Gran Sabana we thank Anibal Herrera, Antonio González, Antonio Pérez, Erica Duran, Héctor Fernández, Julio Enrique Lambos, Juvencio Gómez, Leobaldo Pinzón, Mario González, Yraida Fernandez, Yirolaisa Pérez, Rafael Rodríguez, Alicia Contasti, and their families, as well as numerous other youth and elders in Kumarakapay, Monte Bello, and Kavanayen for their support and participation in the field investigations. In Kavanayen we especially thank our colleagues in the Risk Project: Filiberto Lambos, Ana Karina Lambos, Michel Mariño, Humberto Chani, Salvador Peña, Francisco Pérez, Jesús García, Irene Basabe, and Valeriano Constati. We also thank other members of the Risk Project, especially Lionel Hernandez, Judith Rosales, and Hebe Vessuri, for nurturing many reflections made in this manuscript and the Parupa Biological Station for all the logistical support in the field investigations. The support of Noeli Pocaterra, Asamblea Nacional; Gabriel Picon, EDELCA; and Stanford Zent and Eglee Zent, IVIC was also invaluable for the completion of Bjorn Sletto's field research, which was funded through a Fulbright-Hays dissertation award; a Peace Studies Fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation (administered by the Peace Studies Program, Cornell University); and an NSF Geography doctoral dissertation research award (no. 0221324). All omissions and errors are those of the authors alone.

Notes

*The full version of this article will shortly be published as a STEPS Centre working paper with the tittle “Opening up” the Fire Conflict in Canaima National Park, Venezuela: Reflexive Governance and Transformative Knowledge Networks in Culturally Fragile Indigenous Landscapes. See www.steps-centre.org/publications.

1 The formal title of the Project is ‘Risk factors in the reduction of habitats in Canaima National Park: vulnerability and tools for sustainable development’.

2 This workshop was followed by others which focused on discussing sociocultural change, views of development, critical community problems and how to solve them and views of a desired future.

3 This long-term fire experiment was initiated in 1999 under the ‘Atmosphere-biosphere interaction in Gran Sabana, Canaima National Park’ multidisciplinary project and continued within the Risk Project.

4 Jesus Garcia, now deceased.