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Transforming the Frontier: Peace Parks and the Politicsof Neoliberal Conservation in Southern AfricaRoderick P. Neumanna

a Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies, Florida International University, Miami,FL.Published online: 14 May 2014.

To cite this article: Roderick P. Neumann (2014) Transforming the Frontier: Peace Parks and the Politics of NeoliberalConservation in Southern Africa, The AAG Review of Books, 2:2, 51-53, DOI: 10.1080/2325548X.2014.901858

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Bram Büscher. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. xviii and 290 pp., maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $89.95 cloth (ISBN 978-0-8223-5404-8); paper $24.95 (ISBN 978-0-8223-5420-8); e-book $24.95 (ISBN 0-8223-5420-9).

Reviewed by Roderick P. Neu-mann, Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies, Florida International University, Miami, FL.

Peace parks, transfrontier protected areas, and other such transboundary conservation ter-ritories have been around for decades. In recent years, however, these reterritorializing projects have become all the rage within the global conservation-industrial com-plex and their numbers have increased rapidly. Although proponents cautiously downplay peace parks as a panacea, any scheme that purportedly saves biodiversity, reunites fragmented ecosystems, alleviates poverty, empowers ru-ral communities, soothes an anxious urban bourgeoisie, and heals the wounds of international conflict comes pretty darn close to one. Such win–win–win peace park discourse constitutes the “bubble of neoliberal conserva-tion,” in author Bram Büscher’s phrase. Transforming the Frontier draws the reader into a world where conserva-tion discourse is reified and magically transcendent of the actual material effects associated with the park project. Indeed, one of Buscher’s central revelations is how the transboundary project has been wholly formed within the logic of neoliberal capitalism, where all desires are ful-filled in representation, no matter how contradictory they might be in practice. As he makes clear, this is a familiar modern phenomenon. Capitalism’s distinctive traits have

long included hucksterism, boosterism, and a tenuous relationship between representation and reality. Don Draper would feel comfortably at home in the world of neoliberal conservation.

Büscher’s book advances the frontier of political-ecological studies in conser-vation and development. First, he has produced the definitive political ecol-ogy monograph on a transboundary park, no small accomplishment con-sidering the areal extent, sociopolitical complexity, and growing prominence of such projects. Second, he has de-vised a distinctive analytical approach that can inform future studies of the changing nature of conservation and development interventions. Theoreti-

cally, it is equal parts Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. Methodologically, it constitutes what one might term project ethnography. That is, it is ethnography defined by the boundaries of a project rather than a community and therefore focused on the documents, practices, institu-tions, personnel, and targets of a particular conservation and development scheme.

Knowing the basic geography and history of Büscher’s empirical case is key to grasping the full import of his analysis and findings. The project is the Maloti-Drakens-berg Transfrontier Conservation and Development Area (M-DTCDA), established in 2001 by mutual agreement between Lesotho and South Africa. It straddles 300 km of the countries’ border, covers 13,000 km2, and is home to 1.5 million people on the South African side alone. The postcolonial context of contemporary southern Afri-can political economy, Büscher insists, was central to the conceptualization and operation of M-DTCDA. Lesotho, a sovereign enclave state, is a by-product of Anglo–Boer hostilities in Victorian South Africa. Completely con-tained within South Africa, it served as an internationally

Transforming the Frontier: Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal

Conservation in Southern Africa

The AAG Review OF BOOKS

The AAG Review of Books 2(2) 2014, pp. 51–53. doi: 10.1080/2325548X.2014.901858. ©2014 by Association of American Geographers. Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC.

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bounded reserve of cheap black labor for South African mines and industry and remains today highly dependent on South Africa’s economy. Lesotho’s postcolonial poli-tics are stirred by aspirations to redress the injustices of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa. Thus, in-creased economic opportunity for black Africans and enhanced local control over land and resources are re-curring popular demands. Postapartheid South Africa’s political economy dominates the political economy of Lesotho, as well as those of other southern African states. The technical and scientific resources it commands for conservation and development projects dwarf those of Lesotho. South Africa also must address its own internal racially structured inequalities and the demands for social and economic justice from its black citizens. In sum, the M-DTCDA is burdened with the history of colonialism and apartheid, embedded in highly unequal international relations of power, and hindered by frequently incompat-ible national agendas.

The book is structured in two parts. The first two chap-ters provide the historic and political-economic context for transboundary protected areas in southern Africa and reveal how the discourse of peace parks became divorced from the contradictory realities of transboundary conser-vation. Büscher argues that the movers and shakers be-hind the peace park project consciously worked to “con-struct a dominant discourse that favors broader neoliberal devolved governance,” one that emphasizes finding “har-mony between capitalism and nature” (pp. 52–53). The park promoters employed “all the familiar marketing moves of contemporary advertising and public relations to make TFCAS meaningful” (p. 67). His interest here is in tracing the political effects of this discursive framing. For Büscher, park marketing is a political strategy, an effort to claim consensus in spite of the contradictory realities on the ground. Thus in these two chapters he illustrates his central argument that neoliberal conservation, and the peace park in particular, “hinge on three modes of politi-cal conduct: consensus, antipolitics, and marketing” (p. 18). Paradoxically, the sheer size and grandiosity of neo-liberal conservation discourse creates a model of mean-ing whereby project “success” need not have any direct relation to the actual contentious politics, contradictory desires, and incompatible goals among those affected.

The next five chapters present the detailed ethnograph-ic work on the M-DTCDA project, proceeding roughly from coarser to finer grained geographic scale. His field work ranged from public planning meetings, to govern-ment and nongovernmental organization offices, and to the everyday lives of rural residents in two countries.

Throughout these ethnographic chapters, Büscher lucidly details how postcolonial southern African political econ-omy presented particular challenges to the neoliberal dis-course of promoters. Chapter 4, which concerns the rela-tions between each country’s Project Coordination Unit (PCU)—established to implement the project on the ground—provides a good sense of how his ethnographi-cally grounded analysis operates. First, his interviews and observations revealed that Lesotho’s PCU’s epistemologi-cal understanding of the project differed strikingly from that of the PCU in South Africa. Specifically, Lesotho’s PCU had a political agenda of emancipating poor rural communities and was interested in the project as means to promote community-based resource management. South Africa’s PCU had a political agenda of biodiversity protection and was driven by the interests of biological scientists promoting bioregional technocratic planning. Second, postapartheid racial tensions characterized many of the PCUs’ attempts to coordinate efforts. The majority of South Africa’s PCU members were white, whereas most of Lesotho’s PCU members were black. Criticisms and differences of opinion took on racial connotations. Third, the PCUs’ institutional positions differed significantly in each country. In Lesotho, the PCU was positioned within a national ministry and shared the minister’s office build-ing. South Africa’s PCU was located institutionally and contractually at the provincial level and occupied its own offices. Relative to Lesotho’s PCU, South Africa’s PCU was thus in a weaker domestic political position, the drawbacks of which became evident when the provincial PCU office clashed with the central ministry in Preto-ria. In the end what developed were two discrete national projects rather than a transformative transboundary ven-ture. Both countries had vested political-economic inter-ests in downplaying the differences and touting consen-sus, however. They found common ground in embracing a “devolved neoliberal approach” (p. 132) made up of envi-ronmental services payments, tourism development, and the promotion of private sector investment.

Throughout the book, Büscher reminds us that the poli-tics of antipolitics, the celebration of win–win–win con-sensus, and the generalized focus on the abstract and dis-cursive that today characterize neoliberal conservation make it “all the more important to emphasize material consequences” (p. 210). It is this elevation of the abstract and discursive as the preferred mode of conservation implementation that leads Büscher to conceptualize the bubble of neoliberal conservation. He provides numer-ous examples of disconnects between conservation dis-course and actual effects and of contradictory outcomes. There is the improbable project goal of participatory rural

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community development for a population of 1.5 million. The promotion of community-based management contra-dicted the encouragement of private investment. Tradi-tional common lands were privatized and made off limits to rural communities as speculative investment was drawn by the promotional rhetoric of potential tourism. Project documents targeted the water-wasting practices of Lesotho agriculturalists while remaining silent on the consump-tion of water on South African golf courses. Racial dis-parities were highlighted more than alleviated. Ultimately, although the bubble of neoliberal conservation celebrates benefits for all in the M-DTCDA, the structural inequali-ties embedded in the southern African political economy were mostly reinforced, if affected at all, by the project.

Transforming the Frontier is a brilliant and original achievement and a highly readable one at that. As I read, I became increasingly awed by the magnitude of Büscher’s feat, in terms of both the expansiveness of ethnographic field work and the complexity and nuance of his theoreti-cal interpretation. I fear that this review might fall short of doing full justice to Büscher’s accomplishment. His work will immediately inform my own writing. I also plan to use the book in my future political ecology courses, where it will serve as an exemplar of the expanding canon of critical conservation studies. It should also be an ideal choice for courses in environmental anthropology, devel-opment studies, African studies, international relations, and environmental studies.

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