Creating Africas : Struggles Over Nature, Conservation and Land

In Africa, conflicts between protected areas for fauna and flora and their surrounding human populations continue despite years spent trying to find an accommodation between the needs of both parties. Creating Africas investigates the roots of the current conservation boom, demonstrates that it is part of a struggle over definitions of realities, and examines the global effects of this struggle. The book discusses the first UNESCO World Heritage Site in South Africa, the Isimangaliso (St Lucia) Wetland Park. Here, conservation interests are pitted against those of industrial forestry, commercial farming, and the local communities struggling to have their land returned to them. They all seek to define and create their own realities but do so with very different resources at their disposal. These realities are treated not as different representations but rather as multiple, often competing, realities that involve a wide range of actors, both human and non- human. The book argues that to avoid being accused of neo-colonial land grabbing, the conservation lobby will need to find a way of imagining nature and protection that includes people.