Biodiversity conversation against small-scale farming ? Towards new types of land crises

In: The changing politics of land in Africa : domestic policies, crisis management and regional norms. 2005; The changing politics of land in Africa : domestic policies, crisis management and regional norms, Pretoria, ZAF, 2005-11-28-2005-11-29, 11 p.

Open Access

Abstract

What is really at stake when scientific arguments are put forward to oppose environmental issues to agrarian reform and agricultural development? The aim of this paper is to contribute towards an identification and analysis of the patterns of this new kind of situation where farmers are confronted with ecological requirements. Such contradictions appear as a potential source of major land crises for the near future in Africa but also in other countries. We will see that growing environmental concerns such as the maintenance of biodiversity are tending to partially shift the issues of land conflict by emphasizing long-term sustainability of natural resources. This goal requires the mobilization of scientific knowledge that the various protagonists do not all possess to the same degree. Hence, the function of scientific knowledge in political decision-making is changing, as the increasing use of the concept of evidence-based policy' attests. It therefore seems relevant to identify the main lines of a critical analysis of this new role of scientific knowledge in decisions on land policies. This reflection is particularly necessary in so far as convergent observations show that the focus on scientific arguments often seems to be a pseudo-rationalization of policies used to reinforce the balance of power in place, rather than a real attempt to reshape society-environment relations.