Across the world, ‘green grabbing’ – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances where ‘green’ credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel – as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for ‘more efficient farming’ or ‘food security’, but also to ‘alleviate pressure on forests’. In other cases, however, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs – whether linked to biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services, ecotourism or ‘offsets’ related to any and all of these. In some cases these involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects. Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment – whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances – as pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once-unlikely common interests. This collection draws new theorisation together with cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings, and links critical studies of nature with critical agrarian studies, to ask: To what extent and in what ways do ‘green grabs’ constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? How and when do circulations of green capital become manifest in actual appropriations on the ground – through what political and discursive dynamics? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? And who is gaining and who is losing – how are agrarian social relations, rights and authority being restructured, and in whose interests?

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Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?

The emergence of global history has been one of the more notable features of academic history over the past three decades. Although historians of disease were among the pioneers of one of its earlier incarnations—world history—the recent “global turn” has made relatively little impact on histories of health, disease, and medicine. Most continue to be framed by familiar entities such as the colony or nation-state or are confined to particular medical “traditions.” This article aims to show what can be gained from taking a broader perspective. Its purpose is not to replace other ways of seeing or to write a new “grand narrative” but to show how transnational and transimperial approaches are vital to understanding some of the key issues with which historians of health, disease, and medicine are concerned. Moving on from an analysis of earlier periods of integration, the article offers some reflections on our own era of globalization and on the emerging field of global health.

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A Global Perspective: Reframing the History of Health, Medicine, and Disease.

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Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

This essay, in two parts, argues for the centrality of historical thinking in coming to grips with capitalism’s planetary crises of the twenty-first century. Against the Anthropocene’s shallow hist...

The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis

▪ Abstract This review asks the question: What new avenues of social science enquiry are suggested by new ecological thinking, with its focus on nonequilibrium dynamics, spatial and temporal variation, complexity, and uncertainty? Following a review of the emergence of the “new ecology” and the highlighting of contrasts with earlier “balance of nature” perspectives, work emerging from ecological anthropology, political ecology, environmental and ecological economics, and debates about nature and culture are examined. With some important exceptions, much social science work and associated popular and policy debates remain firmly wedded to a static and equilibrial view. This review turns to three areas where a more dynamic perspective has emerged. Each has the potential to take central elements of new ecological thinking seriously, sometimes with major practical consequences for planning, intervention design, and management. First is the concern with spatial and temporal dynamics developed in detailed and s...

/pdf/new-ecology-and-the-social-sciences-what-prospects-for-a-3jyw7okqrd.pdf

New Ecology and the Social Sciences: What Prospects for a Fruitful Engagement?

INTRODUCTION: CONQUEST, THE STATE AND SOCIETY PART I: A STATE WITHOUT A NATION PART II: AFRIKANER POWER AND THE RISE OF MASS PART III: THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA, 1994-2000

Twentieth-Century South Africa

(1984). Soil erosion, conservationism and ideas about development: a Southern African exploration, 1900–1960. Journal of Southern African Studies: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 52-83.

Soil erosion, conservationism and ideas about development: a Southern African exploration, 1900–1960

Preface and Acknowledgements Lists of Figures, Illustrations, Tables, and Maps Introduction: Livestock Farming and Environmental Regulation at the Cape 1. Scientific Travellers, Colonists, and Africans: Chains of Knowledge and the Cape Vernacular, 1770-1850 2. Defining the Problems: Colonial Science and the Origins of Conservation at the Cape 1770-1860 3. Fire, Vegetation Change, and Pastures 1860-1880 4. Vets, Viruses, and Environmentalism in the 1870s and 1880s 5. Water, Irrigation, and the State 1880-1930 6. The Night of the Jackal: Sheep, Pastures, and Predators 1890-1930 7. Drought, Conservation, and Nationalism: the Career of H. S. du Toit 1900-1940 8. Prickly Pear in the Cape: Useful Plants and Invaders in the Livestock Economy 1890-1950 9. 'The Farmer as a Conservationalist': Sidney Rubidge at Wellwood, Graaff-Reinet 1913-1952 10. Debating Conservation in the African Areas of the Cape 1920-1950 11. Postscript: Debating Degradation over the Long Term: Animals, Veld, and Conservation Bibliographical Note Select Bibliography of Secondary Sources Index

The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770-1950

In a world of shrinking habitats and increasing competition for natural resources, potentially dangerous predators bring the challenges of coexisting with wildlife sharply into focus Through interdisciplinary collaboration between authors trained in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, this paper offers a review of current approaches and a vision for future approaches to understanding and mitigating adverse human-predator encounters The paper first reviews some limitations to current approaches to mitigation Second, it reviews an emerging interdisciplinary literature, identifying key perspectives on how to better frame and therefore successfully mitigate such conservation conflicts Third, it discusses the implications for future research and management practice It is concluded that a demand for rapid, ‘win-win’ solutions for conservation and development favours dispute resolution and technical fixes, obscuring important underlying drivers of conflicts Without due cognisance of these underlying drivers, our well intentioned efforts, focussed on ‘human wildlife conflicts,’ will fail

An interdisciplinary review of current and future approaches to improving human-predator relations

1. Introduction 2. Environmental Aspects of the Atlantic Slave Trade and CaribbeanPlantations 3. The Fur Trade in Canada 4. Hunting, Wildlife, and Imperialism in Southern Africa 5. Imperial Travellers 6. Sheep, Pastures, and Demography in Australia 7. Forests and Forestry in India 8. Water, Irrigation, and Agrarian Society in India and Egypt 9. Colonial Cities: Environment, Space, and Race 10. Plague and Urban Environments 11. Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis in East and Central Africa 12. Imperial Scientists, Ecology, and Conservation 13. Empire and the Visual Representation of Nature 14. Rubber and the Environment in Malaysia 15. Oil Extraction in the Middle East: the Kuwait Experience 16. Resistance to Colonial Conservation and Resource Management 17. National Parks and the Growth of Tourism 18. The Post-Imperial Urban Environment 19. Reassertion of Indigenous Environmental Rights and Knowledge

William Beinart

Papers

Twentieth-Century South Africa

Soil erosion, conservationism and ideas about development: a Southern African exploration, 1900–1960

The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770-1950

An interdisciplinary review of current and future approaches to improving human-predator relations

Environment and Empire