At the North Eastern Workshops on Southern Africa (NEWSA) meeting in Vermont, USA, PhD researcher Jessica Milgroom presented a paper entitled: Surfing levels: negotiations of resettlement in the Limpopo National Park, Mozambique

ABSTRACT – Conservation-induced displacement constitutes a new wave of population resettlement in the name of the global environmental good.  This resettlement is therefore justified and normalized, often to the detriment of local residents.  The World Bank developed a framework to guide projects involving resettlement that is now considered the standard for conservation projects.  International groups, policies and procedural frameworks can heavily impact the lives of people who have no influence over the creation of these international bodies or policies.  There are many factors, interests and actors that exert pressure on the decision-making process and that take the focus off the local level problems or appropriate solutions.  As a result, the local response to the resulting decisions and policies can be very surprising to invested actors.  This paper examines how discourses and resulting decision-making at one level shape, limit and/or widen the space for meaningful negotiation and joint decision making at another level.  Using a case study from the Limpopo National Park in Mozambique, the communication and decision-making process for the compensation of eight villages displaced from the center of the park is analyzed.  I especially focus on the connections between levels that often consist of one person, a small group of people, or an object capable of and permitted to cross the boundaries between one level and another and the negotiation strategies employed by different interest groups.

For more information see: https://segue.southwestern.edu/sites/greenmue