SEMINAR: Making Parks out of Making Wars: Transnational Nature Conservation and Conflict Resolution

An unexpected outcome of the global environmental crisis is the emergence of conservation as an important aspect of conflict resolution. While there has always been a strong historical association between conflict and resources, with disagreements arising over their use and ownership, it is somewhat surprising to find that the new connotation is not about resource use and war but about nature conservation and peace. "Peace parks", nature conservation areas that abut or cross international frontiers, are trumpeted by such prestigious institutions and personages as the United Nations Environment Programme and Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, as a new panacea to solving longstanding internal conflicts. Over less than thirty years, environmental issues in general and peace parks in particular have gone from relative insignificance to command a prominent place in matters of conflict resolution. But are the latter so much the novel phenomena that they are claimed to be and are conflict and conservation really such strange bedfellows? This paper explores the provenance of these peace parks from the perspective of Paul Martin and Christine Szuter's notion of "war zones" and "game sinks". Frontier zones or border areas historically have been (or have been made) liminal spaces with transitory or sparse populations, no-man's lands where wildlife was able to prosper only periodically disturbed by human activities.