Jón Geir Pétursson – PhD Defence on the 19th of August

Evy Jørgensen

The evaluation committee has approved Jón Geir's thesis for public defence. The trial lecture and defence will take place on August 19th at 12:00.

Title of the trial lecture:
What is institutional analysis, and how can it be applied to improve our understanding of changes in land use in conservation landscapes in East Africa.

Title of the dissertation: Institutions and transboundary protected area management: The case of Mt. Elgon, Uganda and Kenya

Time and venue:
Trial lecture: August 19, 2011, 12:00 at Bioforsk Auditorium
Defence: August 19, 2011, 13:00 at Bioforsk Auditorium

Supervisors:
Prof. P. Vedeld, Noragric, UMB
Prof. Arild Vatn, Noragric, UMB

Evaluation committee:
Dr. Brian Child, University of Florida, USA
Professor Audun Sandberg, University of Nordland, Norway
Dr. Thor S. Larsen, Noragric, UMB

Jon Geir Petursson Photo: Evy Jørgensen

ABSTRACT

This thesis analyses institutional challenges related to the transboundary protected area management (TBPAM) policy strategy, with a special focus on the role of local communities. TBPAM is an influential biodiversity conservation strategy that suggests joint management of adjoining protected areas across national boundaries. The thesis uses Mt. Elgon in Uganda and Kenya as a pioneer case for analysing the TBPAM strategy in East Africa. The work is rooted in contemporary classical institutional theory used to generate subsequent theoretical frameworks and methodological tools for the individual studies presented. The findings reveal that protected area (PA) governance on Elgon involves complex formal and informal institutional structures, with significant interplays between institutions at different levels of governance and that has had major impacts on both policy goals and outcomes. In the colonial period, external agents used quite decisive coercive powers to gazette the PAs. The PA regimes have evolved over time in path dependent trajectories where institutions have been constituted and reconstituted reflecting the multiple actors’ asymmetric powers and interests.

There is a distinct historical evolution that has strong bearings on the present-day TBPAM considerations. There are currently five different formal PA regimes on Elgon that have quite different and partly conflicting management goals and capacities. There are clearly quite disparate strategies towards local community involvement and their access to resources within these PAs. In addition to the formal PA regimes, there is a multitude of other institutional arrangements at different levels on Elgon that shape, and are shaped by, human activities in the area. This complex institutional arrangement is an outcome of an evolutional process of power struggles from long before the colonial period. The thesis comprises four individual but interrelated studies that address distinct aspects of the TBPAM institutional challenges. Paper I “Nine lives of protected areas: Historical-institutional analyses of community-protected area interactions on Mt. Elgon, Kenya and Uganda” examines the historical-institutional background for TBPAM, analyzing how institutions to govern protected areas emerge and evolve. Such institutional evolution constitutes historical accounts of successive policies that clearly shape the current arrangements and inevitably impact the prospects for future institutional change.

The paper examines the PAs historical evolution, from their establishment to the most recent policy alternative, transboundary PA management. The paper uses historical-institutional analytical tools to examine the actors and forces behind the PA emergence, how their governance has been evolving, who has had the power to induce changes and what interest such changes served. A key analytical focus is put on the interactions between PA polices and local communities. The study shows that PA regimes are highly enduring, path-dependent institutions that persist throughout major societal transformations. PA policies and institutions are set and successively changed by the more powerful actors, imposing their interests on the less powerful actors. However, like a red thread, local community interests are found to be alienated throughout history, and attempts for community-based institutional reforms are perverted by the historically nested asymmetric power relations. Our analyses display the complications of including community rights and interests later into already established PA institutions. This becomes highly apparent in the most recent institutional change, TBPAM that is found to entail further alienation of local actors’ interests. PA regimes with formalized rules and law enforcement services thus emerge as powerful, long lasting “fortresses”, used to impose the institutional preferences of the authoritarian actors.

Protected areas constitute a country’s key strategy to conserve and manage forest resources. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the effectiveness and efficiency of PA institutions in delivering sustainable outcomes is debated, however, and deforestation has not been avoided within such formal regimes. TBPAM is promoted as a PA reform to advance conservation. Paper II “Deforestation processes in protected areas: The case of Mt Elgon, Uganda and Kenya” examines the processes that have led to deforestation within the PAs on the transboundary Elgon. The study shows how, since 1973, about a third of all forests within the PAs on Elgon have been cleared in successive processes, mainly related to governance failures and rent seeking by powerful actors in plantation management, poorly implemented resettlement schemes and subsequent land grabbing and wider political turmoil in weak nation states. The paper challenges the still dominating Neo-Malthusian narrative on population growth and scarcity as decisive argument for PA expansion to counteract drivers of deforestation. The paper shows how complex political and institutional factors and actors drive forest loss within formal PAs. Such factors however were not found to be of transboundary origin and should therefore not be a rationale for transboundary governance strategies. The paper therefore argues that policies to counter deforestation using a PA model have to be considered and understood against the broader background of these factors, originating both inside and outside the existing PA regimes.

Paper III “Going transboundary? Institutional and organisational analyses of transboundary protected area management challenges. The case of Mt. Elgon in Uganda and Kenya” analyses institutional and organizational challenges for a joint transboundary protected area regime. TBPAM is actively promoted by powerful and influential pro-conservation international actors, arguing for advanced nature conservation. The study reveals how such a regime will be seriously constrained by the interplay of complex institutional factors, and further, on Elgon are few ecological arguments for such joint regime. Transboundary regimes are often thought to provide better institutional fit to an ecological resource. However, fitness is a contested phenomenon. So, although TBPAM might at first glance be considered to provide better institutional fit to the Elgon ecosystem attributes, institutional interplay of multi-level institutions that operate in the area severely constrain such ambitions. In the case of two PAs happening to be adjoining in neighboring countries, the paper suggests policy makers to carry out a distinct institutional analysis; identifying both common and conflicting interests and look for appropriate content and levels of cooperation. It is no panacea to establish an integrated comprehensive transboundary regime, even if two protected areas happen to be physically adjoining each other.

Paper IV “Transboundary biodiversity management. Institutions, local stakeholders and protected areas; a case study from Mt Elgon, Uganda and Kenya” focuses on the institutional challenges of TBPAM governance at the local stakeholder level. A stakeholder analysis was conducted in border communities to analyze institutional frameworks of different protected area regimes coordinating local people's forest resources access, focusing on rights to access, returns, relationships and responsibilities at the local stakeholder level. The paper shows that institutional complexities constrain an ideal of common transboundary protected area management regime with a joint approach to local livelihood improvements. If institutional complexities lead to a lower priority of other concerns than biodiversity conservation in transboundary protected area programs in Africa, there may be an erosion of future support for such programs. It is a real threat that TBPAM can be used by influential pro-conservation actors to advance “back to the barriers” strategies and actually be counterproductive to community conservation approaches.

Finally, the thesis concludes that bringing PA governance in the two countries to a joint integrated TBPAM regime is a highly challenging institutional exercise and the perceived gains seem vague. TBPAM is driven by the interests of powerful international pro-conservation actors, a top-down driven process, where there is a great risk that local community interests will be further neglected. This might include stronger PA conservation enforcement and further deprivation of local community rights and livelihoods. The thesis suggests an institutional disaggregated view on TBPAM. This implies disaggregation of the PA governance by the type of activities and role of stakeholders, unfolding the properties of the resources itself and the heterogeneous interests of the actors involved. TBPAM is thus no panacea to solve important management challenges, even if two PAs happen to adjoin. These issues demand careful analytical scrutiny.

Updated: 09.08.11
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