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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Sandra PannellWhile a study on alternative livelihood preferences conducted by TNC states that “villagersfrom Kampung Komodo expressed an interest in tourism activities” and also requestedassistance from the Park Authority for handicraft development and “in training to becomePark staff” (PHKA and TNC 2000, Vol. 1: 69), it appears from the experience of Komodoislanders that tourism and training are not the gilded pathways to “economic prosperity”promised in the Plan. This is not so surprising given that the kind of tourism promoted in thePlan, so-called ‘eco-tourism’, is depicted as “visiting natural areas to view and enjoy the plantand animal life with minimal or no impact on the environment” (loc. cit.). Contrary toinformation posted on TNC’s website, there is little, if any, evidence of TNC “establishingecotourism as a means of sustainable income for local villagers”. Furthermore, given theaforementioned response of Park staff to the involvement of local people in tourism, and thegeneral view espoused in the Plan of the resident communities as ‘poorly educated’, thesuggestion of training local people to become rangers appears as nothing more than thePlan paying lip-service to the developmental mantra of ‘capacity building’ and ‘communityengagement’ promoted by TNC.Judging by conditions at the Park’s main visitor centre at Loh Liang, it appears that lipserviceis also paid to the idea of managing the World Heritage-listed values of KomodoNational Park. While baiting and feeding the dragons officially ceased more than a decadeago, based on my observations in October 2005, Park staff at Loh Liang feed their kitchenrefuse and food scraps to a resident group of lizards on a thrice daily basis. In addition,Komodo lizards, as well as wild pigs and deer, scavenge in the open rubbish pit establishedless than 100 metres away from the staff kitchen. In the absence of a patrol boat, the Park’srangers are largely confined to the ranger station, except on those occasions when a charterboat arrives with tourists. Tourists to Komodo Island are prohibited from venturing outside ofthe Loh Liang facility by themselves. While this regulation is justified by reference to the‘dangerous’ nature of the dragons, it also produces some useful economic outcomes. Toview the dragons at Banu Nggulung or undertake one of the ‘nature walks’ on the island,visitors are required to pay for the services of a ranger to guide them on these outings.Payments from guided walks, together with the entrance fee, camera / video surcharge, andany overnight accommodation charges, comprise the main source of tourism-generatedrevenue in the Park. On guided tours around the Loh Liang facility rangers readily useforked sticks to prod supine dragons into action for the benefit of camera-wielding tourists.Increasingly, the human-habituated Komodo dragons found lying around and underneath theraised staff canteen at Loh Liang are the only lizards seen by tourists. The cessation of thegoat-gobbling spectacle at the official dragon-viewing area has resulted in the creation of‘natural’ dragons, too ‘wild’ to hang around the viewing area to satisfy the curiosity ofirregular visitors.In late 2005, on-ground ‘management’ of the natural values of the park, in particularprotection of the endangered Komodo monitor, certainly contravened key elements of thecurrent management plan, while the daily practices of park staff stood in stark contrast to themany signs erected around the facility reminding visitors to remove all rubbish from the Park.Indeed, if my stay at Loh Liang is anything to go by, on-ground ‘management’ of KomodoNational Park amounts to nothing more than feeding the dragons, guiding fee-paying touriststo and from the dragon viewing site for a couple of hours per day, and paying the odd visit toKampung Komodo to see what is happening there. In many respects, Komodo National Parkcan be viewed as a live, in situ exhibition, which creates the effect and experience of ‘real’nature, somewhat reminiscent of W. Douglas Burden’s life-like display of the ‘Dragon lizardgroup’ at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (see Figure 5).The reality of so-called ‘management’ stands in stark contrast to the rhetoric of managementproduced by The Nature Conservancy through its internet website, its Bali-based, ‘CoralTriangle Centre’, and its reams of glossy information sheets, media releases, assessments,reports and other publications. In this respect, TNC is highly successful in its management42
Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context?Lessons from the World Heritage Listof the virtual environment of Komodo National Park. Certainly, Komodo National Parkhighlights the disjuncture that exists between the discourse of management (see Pannell1997), with its emphasis upon natural values, biodiversity, habitat conservation, andcollaborative partnerships, and the day-to-day drudgery of cleaning toilets, emptying rubbishbins and controlling the movement of people to and from designated visitor destinations.While some may argue that bridging this discontinuity between discourse and de jourpractices is simply a matter of translation, made possible by more funds and resources, thetruth is that the role of national environmental agencies and international conservationorganisations in managing nature in the new millennium increasingly revolves around imagemanagement and the manipulation of the eco-tourism experience. Like the creation of anIndigenous culture, in order for the nature produced by these forms of political ecology to beperceived as environmental realism, the anthropogenic conditions of its production must beconcealed or back-grounded. As this suggests, the highly mediated ‘naturalisation’ of natureis an overtly political act, which consumes its own agency and motivations.Based on the experience of Komodo National Park, serious questions need to be askedabout the identities of the producers and consumers of this nature. For example, ‘fromwhom’ and ‘for whom’ is TNC ‘saving the last great places on Earth’ (TNC logo). Given thenumerous references in TNC-produced material about the ‘destructive fishing practices’ oflocal people, the answer to the first part of this question is obvious. As Katz points out, TNC“works in partnership with national environmental organisations to block all ‘humaninterference’ with the environment it protects” (1998: 59). In Komodo National Park this lastpoint is evident in TNC’s arguments that the “carrying capacity of the park for permanentpopulation is currently exceeded” and that villagers within the Park should “move to adjacentlarger islands” to restore balance to the Park’s ecosystems (Singleton et al. 2002: 9). Whilethe evidence strongly supports the claim that the preservation efforts of TNC “insistently evictpeople from nature” (loc. cit.), as the example of Komodo National Park illustrates, onlycertain kinds of people are affected. ‘Eco-tourists’ and the ‘nature lovers’ from around theworld who underwrite TNC’s international biodiversity investments are certainly not amongstthose evicted from nature. While some have referred to the development ofenvironmentalism as a form of ‘green imperialism’ (Grove 1995), the kind ofenvironmentalism practiced by TNC today constitutes a modern-day form of mercantilecolonialism, with the self interests and motivations of those involved in this privatecorporation concealed by a feel-good mantle of global green altruism. Notwithstandingcurrent talk of post-colonialism and multiculturalism, as Masao Miyoshi argues, “colonialismis even more active now in the form of transnational corporatism” (1996: 79).This analogy with the likes of the Dutch East India Company, operating in this region somethree hundred years ago, is even more fitting when the nature of TNC’s ‘partnership’ with theGovernment of Indonesia is taken into consideration. The granting of the multi-million dollartourism concession in the Park to TNC’s joint venture company, PT Putri Naga Komodo,enabling this corporation to “develop the Park as an eco-tourism destination and to collectentrance fees” (TNC 2002: 5), aptly illustrates how these ‘partnerships’ serve as gatewaysfor the privatisation of nature. In keeping with the analogy of mercantile colonialism (and thelogic of modern global capitalism), nature, like the sought after resources of the old worldplundered in the past, is regarded as a universal commons 48 . And, as Cordell (1989, 1993)and others have identified (see Ganter 1994), those local people erased by the concept of a‘public space exploited by private interests’ bear the full brunt of the ‘tragedy of thecommons’ (Hardin 1968).As this talk of privatisation and the tragedy of the commons suggests, the issues hererevolve around local ownership, security of tenure, and ‘resource sovereignty’ (Howitt et al.48 Similar ideas about the existence of a universal common underwrite the notion of World Heritage.43
Page 3 and 4:
RECONCILING NATURE AND CULTUREIN A
Page 5:
Reconciling Nature and Culture in a
Page 8 and 9:
Sandra PannellCOLOUR PLATESLIST OF
Page 10 and 11:
Sandra PannellMap 2: No ‘Terra Nu
Page 12 and 13:
Sandra PannellMap 4: The varied cul
Page 14 and 15:
Sandra PannellFigure 3 (left):Walla
Page 16 and 17: Sandra PannellFigure 7: Komodo drag
Page 18 and 19: Sandra PannellFigure 10 (above):Fis
Page 20 and 21: Sandra Pannell(a)Figure 14: Aerial
Page 22 and 23: Sandra PannellFigure 16 (above): Bu
Page 24 and 25: Sandra PannellFigure 19: The ‘cul
Page 26 and 27: Sandra Pannell‘habitats of threat
Page 28 and 29: Sandra PannellIn keeping with this
Page 30 and 31: Sandra PannellLike other ‘natural
Page 32 and 33: Sandra Pannelltogether, “they co-
Page 34 and 35: Sandra Pannellof rainforest and the
Page 36 and 37: Sandra PannellAs Raymond Williams (
Page 38 and 39: Sandra Pannelland twentieth century
Page 40 and 41: Sandra Pannelldepiction of Brazilia
Page 42 and 43: Sandra PannellIn the operationalisa
Page 44 and 45: Sandra PannellJakarta introduced pr
Page 46 and 47: Sandra PannellNeedham, provides a d
Page 48 and 49: Sandra PannellPresenting a ‘Komod
Page 50 and 51: Sandra PannellFurthermore, Komodo l
Page 52 and 53: Sandra Pannelltourist facilities es
Page 54 and 55: Sandra Pannellearth’s fauna and f
Page 56 and 57: Sandra Pannellintroduces a new role
Page 58 and 59: Sandra Pannellgebang palm, has dire
Page 60 and 61: Sandra Pannellpromoted in the three
Page 62 and 63: Sandra Pannellmethodology of modern
Page 64 and 65: Sandra Pannell‘Integrated Conserv
Page 68 and 69: Sandra Pannell1996). In TNC’s Ede
Page 71 and 72: Reconciling Nature and Culture in a
Page 93: Reconciling Nature and Culture in a
Page 96 and 97: Sandra PannellLike Marilyn Strather
Page 98 and 99: Sandra Pannellprovide research and
Page 100 and 101: Sandra Pannelland visitor informati
Page 115: Reconciling Nature and Culture in a
show all

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

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?