Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context? - Rainforest ...

Sandra Pannellintroduces a new role for the National Park as a “genetic / species storehouse with which toreplenish and recolonise devastated coral habitats elsewhere in Indonesia and the widerIndo-Pacific region” (Singleton et al. 2002: 8). TNC’s promotion of Komodo National Park asan “exceptional storehouse of both terrestrial and marine biodiversity” (ibid: 3) signals the“conversion of nature into an accumulation strategy” (Katz 1998: 47). In keeping with thelogic of corporate environmentalism, biodiversity is depicted as an ‘asset’, while nature isreferred to as a ‘bank’ or ‘fund’ where organisations like TNC make ‘sensitive’ and‘sustainable’ investments (see Singleton et al. 2002).In this more inclusive view of nature, introduced animals and translocated native species,such as wild boar, Timor deer, horses, buffalo, macaques, as well as introduced plantspecies, are all regarded as part of the Park’s ‘rich biodiversity’, and thus afforded protection.It is apparent from the plan that Homo sapiens is not regarded as part of the region’sbiodiversity. Interestingly, dogs and cats, both of which are linked to the local residents inthe Park, are the only animals identified in the management plan as ‘exotics’ that pose athreat to the biodiversity of the region (PHKA and TNC 2000, Vol. 1: 21, Vol. 2: 67) 34 . Asstated in the 2000 plan, one of the primary objectives of management is to “reduce boththreats to the resources and conflicts between incompatible activities” (PHKA and TNC 2000,Vol. 1: 5). As these comments suggest, the reinvention of the Komodo archipelago as anarea of “rich biodiversity”, with one of the “world’s richest marine environments” (TNC n.d. b:1), has serious consequences for local people.CULTURE WARS, PART IIAs discussed in the previous section, the implementation of the first management plan forKomodo National Park had a significant impact upon local communities resident in the Park.For example, on the island of Komodo itself, local houses and gardens at Loh Liang weredemolished and obliterated with the establishment of the Park’s administrative centre andtourist accommodation facilities on this site in the 1980s. On the island of Rinca, unable toprove that they existed prior to the area becoming a reserve (i.e. prior to 1928 when KomodoIsland was first declared an official ‘wilderness reserve’), the villages of Loh Baru andTambora were declared illegal and removed (Ellis 1998: 78). The operationalisation of thelatest plan in the past five years continues the process of disenfranchising and depicting localresidents as ‘ignorant’, ‘destructive’, ‘illegal’, and ‘polluting immigrants’. Paradoxically, thisprocess of disempowerment and marginalisation is couched in terms of the latestdevelopment buzzwords – ‘alternative livelihoods’, ‘market transformation’ ‘environmentalawareness programs’, ‘education partnerships’ and ‘communication strategies’. Whilecommunity ‘engagement’ is expressed in terms of the language of modernisation, thefundamental reasons for the need to implement these programs and strategies are explainedin debatable scientific terms.As in previous plans, the 2000 management plan identifies the presence of resident humancommunities as a critical problem and their activities as a major threat to the Park’s faunaand flora. The 2000 plan identifies the human population of the Park as “already over thecarrying capacity of the area” (PHKA and TNC 2000, Vol. 2: 66) and states that ‘humanpopulation pressure’ is “leading to degradation of the terrestrial resource base” and“overharvesting of marine resources” (ibid: 67). There are constant references in the plan tothe exponential increase of the local population, citing the figure of thirty people living onKomodo Island in 1928 and the current (i.e. 1999) number of 1,169 people living inKampung Komodo (ibid: 55). Similar claims are made about the population of Kampung34 A similar situation emerged in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, established in Botswana in1961. As Adam Kuper reports, “environmentalists complained that residents were keeping donkeysand goats that interfered with the game and that they were engaged in poaching” (2003: 393).32