Political Ecologies of Security: Privatisation, Militarisation and Conservation
Presentation Duffy
Tuesday 12 November 2019 , from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
University of Antwerp - City Campus
Rodestraat 14 - R.002 - 2000 Antwerpen (how to reach the city campus?)
In this debate, we delve into the convergence of security and conservation. The illegal wildlife trade and spikes in poaching have raised international concern thus heightening the sense of urgency in conservation and a call to do something to tackle poaching and trafficking before they drive species to extinction. This sense of urgency has produced a series of practical shifts in conservation which demand a more thorough investigation and analysis. Conservation can provide cover for other motives such as excuses for evicting resistant populations, opening new markets for private security companies and a justification for greater resource allocation to militaries. To understand all this, this debate presents a new theoretical framework, the political ecology of security with three key strands – imperatives, framings and logics.
Rosaleen Duffy
(keynote speaker) is a professor in the department of Politics and International Relations at The University of Sheffield since September 2016. Before joining Sheffield, she held posts at SOAS University of London, University of Manchester and University of Lancaster. She has undertaken fieldwork in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, Madagascar, Belize, Ethiopia and Thailand.
Professor Duffy’s main research interests are political ecology, global environmental governance, biodiversity conservation, transfrontier conservation, tourism/ecotourism, wildlife trafficking, poaching and security. Rosaleen uses a political ecology lens in order to understand global environmental change. She is particularly interested in the global politics of biodiversity conservation, and focuses on global environmental governance, wildlife trafficking, poaching, transfrontier conservation and tourism. Recently, her work has sought to understand the growing links between global security and biodiversity conservation. More information here
Ms. Christine Lain (discussant) has been managing international programs and supporting local organizations’ initiatives in the South in an international development and advocacy environment. From 2003 to 2019 Ms Lain acted as a program advisor for several countries in Central Africa, traveling extensively to the region, with a special focus on North and South Kivu. Since 2008 she works for IUCN NL, which is the Dutch national committee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. IUCN is the world’s oldest and largest global environmental organization. From 2010 Christine has been coordinating IUCN NL DR-Congo programs as well as the regional programs in the Horn of Africa and Great Lakes region addressing environmental crime and illegal wildlife trade among other things.
The debate will be moderated by Ivan Ashaba, assistant at the Institute for Development Policy (IOB) at the University of Antwerp, whose PhD research is on conservation in Uganda