To see accurate pricing, please choose your delivery country.
 
 
United States
£ GBP
All Shops

British Wildlife

8 issues per year 84 pages per issue Subscription only

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Subscriptions from £33 per year

Conservation Land Management

4 issues per year 44 pages per issue Subscription only

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

Subscriptions from £26 per year
Academic & Professional Books  Conservation & Biodiversity  Conservation & Biodiversity: General

The Invention of Green Colonialism

By: Guillaume Blanc(Author), Helen Morrison(Translated by)
222 pages, 2 b/w maps
Publisher: Polity
NHBS
A thought-provoking critique of the outdated ideas behind wildlife conservation in Africa today.
The Invention of Green Colonialism
Click to have a closer look
Select version
Average customer review
  • The Invention of Green Colonialism ISBN: 9781509550890 Paperback Jun 2022 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £15.99
    #256876
  • The Invention of Green Colonialism ISBN: 9781509550883 Hardback Jun 2022 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £49.99
    #256875
Selected version: £15.99
About this book Contents Customer reviews Biography Related titles Recommended titles

About this book

The story begins with a dream – the dream of Africa. Virgin forests, majestic mountains surrounded by savanna, vast plains punctuated with the rhythms of animal life where lions, elephants and giraffes reign as lords of nature, far from civilization – all of us carry such images in our heads, imagining Africa as a timeless Eden untouched by the ravages of modernity.

But this Africa does not exist and has never existed. The more nature disappears in the West, the more we fantasize about it in Africa. The more we destroy nature here, the more energetically we try to save it there. Along with UNESCO, the WWF and other organizations, we convince ourselves that the African national parks are protecting the last vestiges of a world once untouched and wild.

In reality, argues Guillaume Blanc, these organizations are responsible for naturalizing large tracts of the African continent, turning territories into parks and forcibly evicting thousands of people from the lands where they have lived for centuries, subjecting them to violence and destroying their fields and grazing land in order to create a supposedly natural world where man has no place. Making use of unpublished archive materials and oral histories, Blanc investigates this battle for a phantom Africa and the contradictory claims of nations who destroy their own nature while believing that they are protecting the natural world abroad. In so doing, they enact a new type of colonialism: green colonialism.

Contents

Acknowledgements
History as a Starting Point: Preface to the English Edition

Introduction
Chapter 1. Deconstructing our Beliefs, (Re)-thinking Nature
Chapter 2. Turning Africa into Parkland (1850-1960)
Chapter 3. A Special Project for Africa (1960-1965)
Chapter 4. The Expert and the Emperor (1965-1970)
Chapter 5. Violence Below the Surface of Nature (1970-1978)
Chapter 6. The Sustainable Development Trap (1978-1996)
Chapter 7. The Fiction of the Community Approach (1996-2009)
Chapter 8. The Roots of Injustice (2009-2019)
Conclusion

Looking Ahead: Afterword
Notes
Index

Customer Reviews (1)

  • Searing and thought-provoking critique of conservation
    By Leon (NHBS Catalogue Editor) 6 Mar 2023 Written for Paperback


    This is a searing critique of wildlife conservation in Africa. Establishing national parks often means the forced eviction of poor people, all to recreate an unspoilt version of African nature that never existed in the first place. This thought-provoking book has already ruffled quite some feathers but forces critical reflection.

    These accusations—levelled explicitly at the IUCN, the WWF, and UNESCO—might seem heretical. However, it is no secret that the first national parks were game reserves and that today's conservation organisations were established to protect and support them. Also, Blanc is not alone in his criticism, other books have voiced similar concerns.

    Blanc's main bone of contention is that wildlife conservation in Africa is deeply rooted in colonial clichés. A century of books, travel magazines, and nature documentaries have portrayed Africa as the world's last remaining wildlife paradise. To support his argument, Blanc discusses nature conservation in Africa from 1850 to today at two levels. First is the history of Ethiopia, and that of Simien National Park in particular. Second is a comparison to the situation in Africa more generally. I will dip into Blanc's chronology to pick out some of the moments that support his claim that colonialism never really went away, instead acquiring a shade of green.

    Colonialism and racism were blatant in the 1850s. Europeans caused immense environmental destruction and wildlife decline but deflected the blame on rural Africans. Even scientists concluded that the natives just did not know how to properly manage their environment. Colonial governments happily accepted this explanation to justify continued exploitation. This is the context in which game reserves were established where rich white men went on safari and hunting by Africans was called poaching. Attempts were made to evict local farmers and herders, encouraged by doling out fines and prison sentences for everyday subsistence activities such as farming or chopping firewood.

    As time passed, fortress conservation and colonialist notions of Africa as a Garden of Eden remained the norm.

    It remained true when, by the start of the 20th century, game reserves transformed into national parks.

    It remained true when UNESCO and the IUCN cooperated on the 1960–1963 African Special Project that sought to halt wildlife decline by putting conservation on the African political agenda. One of the countries that requested assistance was Ethiopia and three UNESCO missions concluded—as they did for many other African countries—that its unspoilt nature was under threat.

    It remained true in the 1960s when some African countries gained independence. Many former game wardens found new employment as consultants or international experts, inculcating a new generation of African conservationists with colonial notions of nature.

    It remained true in the 1970s when UNESCO drew up its brand-new World Heritage List. The Ethiopian Simien Mountains were amongst the first sites to be added, on the condition that local agro-pastoralists would be relocated.

    It remained true in the 1980s when international frameworks changed. We entered the era of sustainable development that promised we could have our cake and eat it. This went hand-in-hand with community-based conservation that is dressed in such respectable-sounding technobabble "that it can no longer be challenged" (p. 132). Though the language was sanitized, on the ground it remained a case of fortress conservation. Local people were relocated from core zones inside national parks to nearby buffer zones.

    It remained true in 1996, when UNESCO put Simien National Park on its List of World Heritage in Danger, hoping it would force Ethiopia to get its act together. The government dangled various carrots in front of the agro-pastoralists in the form of new infrastructure, financial compensation, and training, hoping to tempt them to resettle voluntarily. Because of regime changes and civil wars, relocation was delayed until 2016, and still involved brute force.

    A new afterword allows Blanc to respond to some of the criticism of the French original. Unsurprisingly, both UNESCO and the IUCN swiftly condemned his work. I will take their response with a grain of salt as I think Blanc convincingly shows that there is a seedy side to today's wildlife conservation. However, despite writing on page 12 that he does not want to denigrate the environmental cause, the danger with critiques like these is that authors get so caught up in making an incendiary argument that they forget to provide some balance, and I was left with some unanswered questions.

    One response by three French researchers pointed out that the IUCN uses seven national park categories, some of which are less restrictive and allow for economic activities. Blanc does not address this. Though his critique applies to Ethiopia and several other countries, are there really no examples of wildlife conservation done right? Is the whole enterprise flawed? Although Blanc does not explicitly say so, he also does not explicitly disavow it, leaving him open to accusations of overextrapolating his findings.

    The second question is: what is the solution then? Should the West just get out and leave Africa alone? Is this just, given the mess we have left after centuries of colonialism? Blanc opts for a more general solution. "The blame lies with consumerism and the capitalism that encourages it" (p. 184), and thus "only a radical reform of the world capitalist system can offer a solution to the current ecological crisis" (p. 185). That is obviously an ambitious goal, though there are many other good reasons to pursue it. However, what exactly he means by this and how he thinks we should achieve it are questions left up in the air. I was rather hoping to hear his thoughts on whether the developed world, given its past track record, can tell the developing world what to do. Who are we to take the moral high ground?

    The last question is whether national parks work. Blanc skirts around this question but, reading between the lines, my impression is that he thinks it they are are a palliative solution to a systemic problem, i.e. the environmental destruction inflicted by capitalism. But could they be an interim solution? And what to do when species are genuinely at risk of extinction?

    By not working out his proposed solutions, nor considering wildlife conservation's positive achievements, this book will undoubtedly upset some readers. That does not take away that it highlights uncomfortable realities and forces critical reflection, something for which I will happily make time. One does not have to solve a problem to point out that there is a problem. I laud Polity for making this book available to a broader, English-speaking audience.
    Was this helpful to you? Yes No

Biography

Guillaume Blanc is a Lecturer in Contemporary History at Rennes 2 University.

By: Guillaume Blanc(Author), Helen Morrison(Translated by)
222 pages, 2 b/w maps
Publisher: Polity
NHBS
A thought-provoking critique of the outdated ideas behind wildlife conservation in Africa today.
Media reviews

"Blanc has created a masterpiece in contrasts that has much to teach us about nature conservation, "sustainable development", power and equity on a global scale. This book deserves a spot on the shelves of every major library, a large number of policymakers’ desks and the bedside tables of many ordinary folks interested in Africa, nature conservation, social justice or the sustainable development of our planet."
– Diana K. Davis, author of The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge

"Guillaume Blanc, with passion as well as thorough research, pushes his readers to think anew about the relationship between humans and animals in Africa. This book is both a valuable contribution to environmental history and an argument that needs to be taken seriously about the misconceptions that often shape international interventions in that continent."
– Frederick Cooper, author of Africa since 1940:  The Past of the Present

"Blistering"
The Financial Times

Current promotions
New and Forthcoming BooksNHBS Moth TrapBritish Wildlife MagazineBuyers Guides