Description
Uganda has extensive protected areas and iconic wildlife (including mountain gorillas), which exist within a complex social and political environment. In recent years Uganda has been seen as a test bed and model case study for numerous and varied approaches to address complex and connected conservation and development challenges. This volume reviews and assesses these initiatives, collecting new research and analyses both from emerging scholars and well-established academics in Uganda and around the globe. Approaches covered range from community-based conservation to the more recent proliferation of neoliberalised interventions based on markets and payments for ecosystem services.
Drawing on insights from political ecology, human geography, institutional economics, and environmental science, the authors explore the challenges of operationalising truly sustainable forms of development in a country whose recent history is characterised by a highly volatile governance and development context. They highlight the stakes for vulnerable human populations in relation to of large and growing socioeconomic inequalities, as well as for Uganda’s rich, unique, and globally significant biodiversity. They illustrate the conflicts that occur between competing claims of conservation, agriculture, tourism, and the energy and mining industries. Crucially, the book draws out lessons that can be learned from the Ugandan experience for conservation and development practitioners and scholars around the world.
Table of Contents
Part I: Introduction
1. Dynamics of uneven conservation and development in Uganda
Connor Joseph Cavanagh, Chris Sandbrook, and David Mwesigye Tumusiime
2. Histories and genealogies of Ugandan forest and wildlife conservation: the birth of the protected area estate
Abwoli Yebezi Banana, Steve Nsita, and Allan Bomuhangi
3. An overview of integrated conservation and development in Uganda
Medard Twinamatsiko, Julia Baker, Phil Franks, Mark Infield, Fanny Olsthoorn, and Dilys Roe
Part II: Celebrity sites and case studies of conservation, development practice, and research
4. Bwindi Impenetrable National Park: a celebrity site for integrated conservation and development in Uganda
David Mwesigye Tumusiime, Robert Bitariho, and Chris Sandbrook
5. Managing the contradictions: conservation, communitarian rhetoric, and conflict at Mount Elgon National Park
David Himmelfarb and Connor Joseph Cavanagh
6. Budongo Forest: a paradigm shift in conservation?
Fred Babweteera, Christopher Mawa, Caroline Asiimwe, Eric Okwir, Geoffrey Muhanguzi, John Paul Okimat, and Sarah Robinson
Part III: Conservation and development approaches in policy and practice
7. An environmental justice perspective on the state of Carbon Forestry in Uganda
Adrian Nel, Kristen Lyons, Janet Fisher, and David Mwayafu
8. Parks, people, and partnerships: experiments in the governance of nature-based tourism in Uganda
Wilber M. Ahebwa, Chris Sandbrook, and Amos Ochieng
9. Cultural values and conservation: an innovative approach to community engagement
Mark Infield and Arthur Mugisha
Part IV: Cross-sectoral dynamics and their links to conservation and development
10. Conservation and agriculture: finding an optimal balance?
Katy Jeary, Matt Kandel, Giuliano Martiniello, and Ronald Twongyirwe
11. Lost in the woods? A political economy of the 1998 forest sector reform in Uganda
Jon Geir Petursson and Paul Vedeld
12. Dialectics of conservation, extractives, and Uganda’s ‘land rush’
Patrick Byakagaba, Bashir Twesigye, and Leslie E. Ruyle
Part V: Conclusion
13. Conservation, development, and the politics of ecological knowledge in Uganda
Connor Joseph Cavanagh, Chris Sandbrook, and David Mwesigye Tumusiime
