CfP POLLEN18 – Securing Green, Greening security: Examining the Intersection of Green Economies and Green Securities 

*** Posted on behalf of the organizers ***

POLLEN18 – Political Ecology, the Green Economy, and Alternative Sustainabilities

20- 22, June 2018, Oslo and Akershus University College (HiOA), Oslo, Norway

Securing Green, Greening security: Examining the Intersection of Green Economies and Green Securities

Conveners: Francis Massé,1 Brock Bersaglio,2 and Rosaleen Duffy3

1Department of Geography, York University

2 Department of Geography, University of Sheffield

3 Department of Politics, University of Sheffield

Analyses of green militarisation, related practices of securitisation, and the green economies they are embedded in have become an important focus in political-ecological work on biodiversity conservation (Büscher & Ramutsindela, 2015; Duffy, 2014; 2016; Lunstrum, 2014). Although some of this work is explicit about combining analyses of green economy practices and securitisation practices (Cavanagh et al., 2015; Dunlap & Fairhead, 2014; Massé & Lunstrum, 2016), the interplay between green economies and green securities in different places, spaces, and times warrants ongoing investigation. Accordingly, this panel aims to bring together papers that examine the intersection of green economies and green securities (broadly understood).

Towards this objective, this panel draws inspiration from existing work that examines the related practices and processes associated with ‘securing green’ and ‘greening security’. For example, Massé and Lunstrum (2016) understand efforts to secure green as entailing both the acquisition of land and biodiversity and the practice of securing such acquisitions using (para-)military practices and technologies – a phenomenon they call “accumulation by securitisation”. Relatedly, some political ecologists examine how efforts to secure green end up (re-)producing certain forms of violence in different places, spaces, and times (Bersaglio, forthcoming; Büscher & Ramutsindela, 2015; Devine, 2014; Ojeda, 2012). Concerning efforts of green security, this panel is motivated by recent work that engages with the spectacle of green militarisation (Igoe, 2017; Marijnen & Verweijen, 2016; McClanahan & Wall, 2016). Insights into green security are also derived from work that considers the markets and patterns of accumulation that are emerging with growing demand for new partnerships and technologies for securing conservation areas or green investments (Adams, 2017; Labban, 2011; Lunstrum, forthcoming; Parenti, 2011).

With this in mind, we seek papers that consider the different places, spaces, or times in which green economies and green securities intersect. We welcome papers that make empirical, methodological, or theoretical contributions to the work outlined above – or to other relevant literatures. Paper topics might include, but are certainly not limited to, themes such as: intersectionality (e.g. class/ethnicity/gender/race/sexuality/etc.) at the intersection of green economy and green security practices; the spatial and temporal workings of green violence; the interplay between green economies, green securities, and ethnic, nation, or state identities; the geopolitics of green security practices; as well as the various ways that nature might become enrolled in green militarisation, security, or violence more broadly. In short, this panel seeks to build on existing and developing debates to examine the myriad ways that efforts to develop green economies and the intensification of conservation’s securitisation and militarisation articulate and give rise to new political economies, market dynamics, accumulation possibilities, changing conservation/security spatialities, and familiar and novel forms of violence and dispossession.

The following questions offer some additional guidance into potential topics, themes, and questions that submissions might focus on:

How, and to what extent, are green economies and green securities ‘co-consistituted’? What is the interplay between green economies, securities, and violence in particular places, spaces, and times?

What new markets, values, and patterns of accumulation are emerging with securitisation practices in/around conservation areas or green investments? What are the implications for wider political ecologies and economies?

How does extiction, the illegal wildlife trade, and poaching factor into the geopolitics of green economies and green securities? What interventions do elicit or illegal green economies evoke from different types of security actors and should such interventions be considered just, measured, or warranted?

How should political ecologists make sense of the different actors and stakes represented by the private, public, and hybrid actors involved in militarised conservation and green violence? What concepts or methods might add to existing debates or understanding of how green economies are – or should be – governed?

How do the impacts of green militarisation, security, and violence differ along the lines of biology, gender, race, etc.? How do such distinctions ultimately shape peoples’ experiences with green economies and green securities? Moreover, how might such distinctions influence the way green militarisation, security, or violence is performed?

Please send abstracts of 300 words or less to Francis Massé (massef@yorku.ca) and Brock Bersaglio (b.bersaglio@sheffield.ac.uk) by 6 December 2017. We will notify authors of their acceptance as soon as possible.

Works cited

Adams, W. M. (2017). Geographies of conservation II: Technology, surveillance and conservation by algorithm. Progress in Human Geography, 0309132517740220.

Bersaglio, B. (Forthcoming). Green Violence: Market-driven conservation and the re-foreignization of space in Laikipia, Kenya.

Cavanagh, C. J., Vedeld, P. O., & Trædal, L. T. (2015). Securitizing REDD+? Problematizing the emerging illegal timber trade and forest carbon interface in East Africa. Geoforum, 60, 72-82.

Devine, J. (2014). Counterinsurgency ecotourism in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32, 984-1001.

Duffy, R. (2014). Waging a war to save biodiversity: the rise of militarized conservation. International Affairs, 90(4), 819-834.

Duffy, R. (2016). War, by conservation. Geoforum, 69, 238-248.

Dunlap, A., & Fairhead, J. (2014). The Militarisation and Marketisation of Nature: An Alternative Lens to ‘Climate-Conflict’. Geopolitics, 19(4), 937-961.

Igoe, J. (2017). The Nature of Spectacle: On Images, Money, and Conserving Capitalism: University of Arizona Press.

Labban, M. (2011). The geopolitics of energy security and the war on terror: the case for market expansion and the militarization of global space. Global Political Ecology, London, Routledge.

Lunstrum, E.  (Forthcoming). Capitalism, Wealth, & Conservation in the Age of Security: The

Vitalization of the State. Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

Marijnen, E., & Verweijen, J. (2016). Selling green militarization: The discursive (re) production of militarized conservation in the Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Geoforum, 75, 274-285.

McClanahan, B., & Wall, T. (2016). ‘Do Some Anti-Poaching, Kill Some Bad Guys, and Do Some Good’: Manhunting, Accumulation, and Pacification in African Conservation The Geography of Environmental Crime (pp. 121-147): Springer.

Parenti, C. (2011). Tropic of chaos: Climate change and the new geography of violence: Nation books.