Overview

Peace parks are imagined landscapes and seascapes created through narratives and science. This book uses a political ecology framework to explore the colonial and uneven geography of peace parks in post-independence Africa. It illuminates the regional milieus impacting these parks and the consequent socioecological and political dynamics. This book curates a space for multiple voices and knowledges of peace parks and highlights the limits to truth claims. It presents peace parks as a milieu that enables the assemblage of underexamined concepts in political ecology. The book advances four arguments. The first is that critical scholarship on the peace parks initiative in Africa and elsewhere has been crowded out by a dominant and well-sponsored narrative of these parks. Second, the ideology of peace parks capitalises on societal aspirations and challenges to wage the ‘war of the mind’. Third, peace parks are a geographical expression of coloniality. The fourth argument is that the regional dynamics account for the uneven geography of peace parks in Africa. These dynamics reveal the symbiotic relations between politics and ecology. The founding of peace parks animates resource politics but also depoliticises the resource question. Situated in the ongoing debates on protecting the planet in an unequal world and the pathways for a just society, this book will be of interest to researchers of African studies, political ecology, human geography, sociology, environmental studies, and political science.

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9780815358299

Table of Contents

Reviews

""The Political Ecology of African Peace Parks is pioneering, theoretically sophisticated, and substantively rich. It meticulously challenges the dominant (neo) colonial conservation agenda and offers an alternative schema. This precious gift from Africa’s leading political ecologist should be a standard textbook in African universities."" Abdi Samatar, Professor of Geography, University of Minnesota and member of Pan African Parliament. ""In a thoroughly researched and well written text, Maano Ramutsindela convincingly presents Peace Parks as critical sites for political ecology research. He deftly shows the colonial nature of transboundary conservation, the politics of land alienation, and the unresolved tensions within peace parks. A must-read for anyone studying African conservation efforts."" William Moseley, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Geography, Macalester College, author of Decolonizing African Agriculture. ""This book provides a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the history, socio-political context, and on-the-ground impacts of peace parks in Africa; a must-read for conservation scholars and practitioners alike. It provides a well-substantiated and much-needed counterargument to the ideology avidly promoted by its privileged supporters and beneficiaries."" Marja Spierenburg, Leiden University.

Author Information

Maano Ramutsindela is Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town and Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology, University of Pretoria. He is the University of Pretoria-University of Cape Town Future Africa Research Chair in Sustainability Transformations. He has researched peace parks in Africa for more than two decades.

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