Drawing the Line

Nature, Hybridity and Politics in Transboundary Spaces

Juliet Fall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351159548
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias físicas
• Subtopic: Geografía

This book provides the first comprehensive and critical examination of the spatial assumptions underpinning transboundary protected areas in Europe, at a time of surging global enthusiasm in creating and managing such areas. It explores how the reliance on the natural science approach to space within environmental planning has led to a return of exclusionary discourses, in paradoxical contrast to the stated claims of designing 'peace parks'. The book builds a much-needed link between the critical geopolitical literature on boundaries and social approaches to nature and hybridity. Drawing the Line is theoretically informed yet grounded in substantial fieldwork from sites in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and the Ukraine. It uses material from the field to build and question theoretical debates, moving beyond site-specific issues to wider patterns and trends.

Chapter 1
Introduction

This book was symbolically born on two mountain summits, as I stood gazing down to the valleys below: a perplexed geographer recovering from a walk. On the first, in 1997, towering above the city of Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina, I looked down on a divided city. I walked among the abandoned strongholds, picking up discarded tins of food in the dry scrub. Soldiers had fired from the mountain, aiming at the famous bridge, enforcing divisions along the front line. The city was split in two, divided by bitter enmity. Tanks enforced the peace. As I surveyed the city, a United Nations official explained how people coped and organised their daily life in a town cut down the middle. On the second peak, in the Carpathians in 1998, I looked over undulating green forests along the border between Slovakia and Ukraine. A large strip of trees had been cleared, searing the green for miles on end. A little further away, a rusting barbed-wire fence was still regularly patrolled. Politics were inscribed on the landscape, entrenching difference. A national park guard stood next to me, showing how bison climbed over the fence in winter, when snow lay on the ground.

Both mountain panoramas involved boundaries and imaginary lines inscribed in space by human beings. In both places, these abstract boundaries had very real effects in the daily lives of people. For a geographer, both scenes suggested possible research topics, leading in different directions. Climbing down from the second mountain, I wondered what the bison thought when confronted with a fence. Did she calmly ponder, waiting for it to snow? Was her strategy substantially different from that of people in Bosnia waiting for peace to erase divisions? What did it fundamentally mean to suggest that 'nature knows no boundaries', although humans spend inordinate amounts of time constructing them? Was this question, suggesting a division between 'nature' and 'culture', essentially misguided? Musing about my role, I was reminded of a quote by Paasi who clearly laid out the task assigned to the discipline:

Geography had to produce and reproduce territoriality, to create and establish boundaries on the horizontal continuum of absolute space, nature and culture that prevailed on the globe, and to establish the stories of creating a distinction between us and the Other

(Paasi 1996: 21).

In this sentence, Paasi suggested that the function of geography as a discipline and practice was to establish boundaries, creating distinctions between individuals, enshrining and structuring how we relate and behave in space. Despite a great admiration for Paasi’s work, I felt that this sentence did not go far enough: 'space, nature and culture' could not be considered an unproblematic continuum. The bison was subtly breathing down my neck, suggesting her role had been forgotten in the catchy formula. Despite the wealth of writing about territory, territoriality and boundaries, there was a lack of engagement and conceptualisation of nature in the broadly political literature in geography. After climbing up and down many other mountains, this book was written as an indirect response to the bison.

Bison, goats and bandwagons

The objects examined in this book are protected areas – national parks, nature reserves, biosphere reserves and the like – established in locations that span international political boundaries. Local projects have existed around the world carrying out 'transboundary' projects within protected areas for many years, yet this only became a fashionable cause on an international level around the beginning of the 1990s. In an increasingly competitive world of organisations vying for limited funding, it has become a leading paradigm, portrayed as the current Big Thing in nature conservation. The World Parks Congress held in South Africa in September 2003 – the global meeting of the international protected area movement that takes place every decade – was fittingly titled Benefits Beyond Boundaries. Transboundary issues held centre stage, referred to in the opening keynote speech by Nelson Mandela. In the past five years, few international meetings on protected areas have taken place without at least some acknowledgement, working group or discussion on transboundary issues.

Transboundary protected areas have indeed been seized upon with vigour. Few people remain unconvinced when told that thanks to such areas, African elephants, European mountain goats or South American panthers can migrate ‘as nature intended’. A wealth of articles has appeared on the subject, largely produced by international conservation organisations or non-specialist journals such as National Geographic. This popular enthusiasm has generated a self-quoting clique, with key references systematically appearing unchallenged within the literature, as new authors jump on the bandwagon quoting others in a closed circle, with little fieldwork informing the discussion. These have furthered the suggestion that transboundary protected areas are unproblematic territorial objects that exist because they can be listed. Different terms for such areas are used in the literature, including 'transfrontier' (Zbicz and Green, 1997), 'transborder' (Hamilton et al., 1996), 'transboundary', 'peace parks', or the more neutral 'internationally adjoining protected area' (Zbicz 1999d: 2). I have chosen the term 'transboundary' as the most appropriate, influenced by boundary studies.

Instead of a celebration of these projects as a fin-en-soi, this book suggests a critical and political approach, using transboundary protected areas to discuss issues related to boundaries, identity and cooperation. Such a discussion is overdue, as the surge in enthusiasm for creating such areas has not been followed by clear analytical discussion. In particular, the difficulty of carrying out 'transboundary' projects in practice has been blamed on lack of funds or time, rather than on deeper social, cultural, political or conceptual factors. In order to move beyond such shortcomings and identify what these factors are, this book suggests deconstructing the complex socio-spatial processes by focussing on boundaries. This involves identifying what it means to 'draw a line' within different academic and professional traditions, as well as in different cultural contexts, transposing this to protected areas. The implications of such differences are discussed in the context of postmodernism in which stark dualisms – and therefore boundaries – are taken as conceptually transcended.

Protected areas are rarely discussed as territorial objects or spatial scenarios. This conceptual slant allows this book to question what initially appears in Paasi's quotation as an unproblematic division between space, nature and culture. Previous political studies of protected areas have mostly been carried out in the field of environmental geopolitics, something of an offshoot of critical geopolitics applied to the environment. In a study of protected area boundaries in Trinidad, for example, Sletto argues that 'boundary making in the name of conservation has become an increasingly complex social act, shaping and reflecting local and state practice and relations of power between local, national and international actors' (Sletto 2002: 184). Although there have been tentative attempts to use approaches within environmental geopolitics to examine the construction of boundaries to protected areas, this has taken place in the absence of a comprehensive conceptual and practical link between writings on boundaries and reflections on nature. This book forges such a link, arguing that the complex transboundary character of the objects studied requires it. In particular, it explores the relevance of linking up social approaches to nature and critical geopolitical approaches to boundaries. It discusses how this has further implications for how space and territory are conceptualised within geography. More concretely, it helps to answer a series of questions where nature, territory and identity appear intertwined. Why did a German biologist tell me he couldn't work with his colleagues in France because they didn't understand what nature really was? What did it mean when a Polish forester accused his Slovak counterpart across the border of interfering with nature by feeding deer in the winter? Why did none of the transboundary sites have a common management plan when all the people I spoke to suggested this was crucial? Why did it matter that Italian ornithologists who had participated in the creation of a protected area stretching across two countries were jubilant when birds released in France came to live in Italy? Why was I intrigued when national park managers said they were more progressive because they cut down trees in a more natural way than in the neighbouring country? How had nature come to be associated with reason? How was nature being used to ground politics?

Structure of the book

One of the delights of a life as a geographer is that, as a profession or a passion, it provides a copper bottomed excuse to spend time in the oddest corners of the world

(Haggett 1990: 95).

The 'corners of the world' is one of those wonderful expressions that harks back to former worldviews – similar to the idea that the sun rises and sets, true to a pre-Copernican ritual. If 'odd corners' are marginal spaces, spaces of exclusion or periphery, then borderlands certainly qualify. They qualify not because these spaces of Otherness are far away from a mythical central point, different from those surrounding the barely disguised omniscient observer. Rather, boundaries and strangeness are inextricably linked, as Self and Other intermingle in ritual separations, fusions and hybridisations. It is because boundaries provide such a copper bottomed excuse to perform, question and celebrate 'oddness' that they are worthy of research.

Boundaries and boundary regions are not in themselves original topics for research. Within geography, studies of boundaries and boundary effects have taken many forms, although the wealth of approaches can be divided into three main questions: Do boundaries matter? If boundaries matter, how can they be overcome? And finally, how are such boundaries constructed? (Van Houtum 2000: 73). These three general questions lead to three very different lines of enquiry. This book broadly lies within the field of the third question, additionally discussing what boundaries mean or imply once they have been constructed.

The critical tradition that considers boundaries as more than simple lines traced along some predetermined pattern is the starting point. The action of 'drawing a line' is seen as a complex process intimately related to issues of power, identity and control. Boundaries need addressing critically in all their complexity if the spatial and social processes taking place within protected areas are to be understood. The problematic placing of boundaries, both symbolic and concrete, plays a part in governing the shifting understanding of what is Self (inside) and Other (outside) as it reflects on 'society' and 'nature' being territorialized as distinct ontological domains (Whatmore 2002: 61). This involves addressing who the archetypal 'Other' defined by a boundary is, or who /what lies on the 'other side' of a line. What constitutes 'nature' is contingent on social practices and culturally-specific definitions. Thus the boundaries between the distinct domains of 'nature' and 'culture' are defined and negotiated differently in different contexts, constructed discursively by the different relations and links within heterogeneous social networks that include both human and non-human actors (see Haraway 1985; Braun & Wainwright 2001; Whatmore 2002). The following paragraphs present an outline of the argument, demonstrating how approaches to boundaries, territoriality and 'social nature' are bound together.

This book draws from fieldwork carried out in five 'transboundary protected areas' around Europe. An overview of the methodology adopted in the field is laid out briefly in a box at the end of the third chapter. Brief descriptions of the case studies can be found in the appendices (Appendix I), providing background information to avoid repeating factual details throughout the discussion.

Boundaries and territoriality

Establishing a protected area implies the reinvention and redefinition of both social and spatial practices by a variety of actors involved and affected by the process. Individual and collective spatial identities are negotiated between an increasingly complex set of local, national and international actors. In Chapter 2 (Drawing Lines, Constructing Spaces), I discuss the concept of boundary as a socio-spatial phenomenon, the redefinition of which has an impact on collective territorial identities. Drawing on the pool of Foucaldian notions of power and critical geopolitics (Raffestin 1986; Paasi 1996; Albert 1998; Ò Tuathail 1998; Newman 1999), boundary making is an act of power establishing a spatial entity. This process is made visible within a discernible discourse. The focus is on the role boundaries play in the construction of space, as identities are constructed by symbolic and material boundaries that define Self and Other. Shifting territorial discourses enshrine and construct spatial entities. I specifically explore the constructed nature of scientific knowledge and the differing uses made of both biophysical and societal arguments in defining boundaries. The establishment of a spatial entity implies the territorialisation of a given territory by those involved in the process by defining, and subsequently managing and appropriating the area, implying the use of differing discourses in the construction of space. I use Paasi’s discussion of concepts such as place and region (Paasi 1991; 1996 & 1998) to explore how spatial concepts are used to construct space. This is linked to the process of spatial socialisation that implies the construction and attachment of significance to demarcations and boundaries by a variety of actors.

One approach to studying such dynamic processes has been to identify three steps, identifying territorialisation, de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation (Raffestin 1997: 100; Albert 1998: 61; Paasi 1998: 69; see also Deleuze & Guattari 1992), sometimes known as TDR or de/re-territorialisation (What-more 2002: 60). Dividing it into three stages seems to imply the existence of a point zero, a time in which the spatial slate is scrubbed clear before the process can restart. This is unsatisfactory as the process is evidently ongoing. The term '(re)territorialisation' has also been used, a typographical trick that avoids the problem of resetting the clock and implicitly focuses on the dynamic nature of the process.

Territorialisation, with or without a prefix, is always dynamic, shifting and changing in the face of modified power relations. For Raffestin, 'the spatio-temporal container within which power relations are born must be seen as a whole. Therefore, the boundary or frontier is not only a spatial but also a temporal phenomenon. The matrix ("quadrillage") is not solely territorial since it is also temporal: activities are regulated, organised, controlled both within space and time, in a place and at a specific time, or over a certain extent and over a stretch of time. This simultaneous construction of both space and time has been too often forgotten or perhaps has not been put forward enough. This has led to a formal treatment of boundaries which are treated either superficially or negligently, considering they constitute one of the bases of spatial practices'¹ (Raffestin 1980: 152). With Raffestin, I suggest that if boundaries are reified power, and key elements in the construction of territories, then changes in these boundaries shake up the balance, bringing about (re)territorialisation. 'To destroy or erase previous boundaries is to disorganise territoriality and consequently to lay open to question the daily existence of populations'² (Raffestin 1980: 156). Thus the creation or redefinition of boundaries are far from innocent and represent key challenges to a status quo. This focus on times of 'crisis' during which boundaries are contested, demonstrates the dynamic character of boundaries and boundary definition. Different forms of knowledge and different conceptions of boundaries begin to emerge, hinting at the struggles involved in constructing spatial entities.

Boundaries and hybrid nature

Protected areas are territorial projects uniquely bound up with the idea of 'nature'. It is not enough to study them only as lines on maps, or as jurisdictional designations, without engaging with their historical association with notions of 'wilderness' removed from 'civilisation'. Such notions refer to an essential boundary between 'nature' and 'culture' that must be addressed if protected areas are to be understood. Instead of accepting this distinction as fundamental, I follow in Castree’s footsteps in suggesting that 'politics is always geographical. (...) Time and again, "nature" is identified with certain spaces – such as "rural" spaces (...), zones of "wilderness", and formally designated "nature reserves". (...) This equation of nature with certain delimited geographical territories where environmental politics can focus many of its energies is problematic: for these spaces are neither wholly natural nor merely zones where certain social actors impose their culturally specific ideas of what nature is supposed to be' (Castree & MacMillan 2001: 220). Protected areas are therefore unique examples through which to (re)introduce explicitly the 'political' into discourses of 'nature', transcending what Gregory has called imaginative achievements or 'conceptual constructions, the product of imaginative cuts in the fabric of the world' (Gregory 2001: 87).

Rather than negating the physical materiality of the world, this constructivist position supposes that nature can only be known through culturally-specific systems of meaning and signification. This implies that human representations of nature are not simply 'mirrors of nature', but instead are 'cultural products freighted with numerous biases, assumptions and prejudices' (Castree & MacMillan 2001: 209). In Chapter 3 (Divide and Rule: Defining the Boundaries of Protected Areas), I therefore analyse protected areas as spatial objects constructed around a concrete set of arguments and assumptions. These can be identified through changes in the way nature has been perceived and identified as having spatial dimensions that require management. This includes a discussion of 'biosphere reserves', a model for nature conservation and sustainable development that builds on the idea of protected areas, created by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in the early 1970s. The brief history of the model explores the underlying conceptual assumptions contained within the proposed spatial model of zonation. This is followed by a discussion of new trends, including the increased enthusiasm for ‘transboundary’ protected areas.

The discussion in subsequent chapters focuses primarily on protected area managers, individuals working within protected area administrations in various roles who are involved in 'drawing lines': people who define the boundaries of protected areas. By exploring the particular discourses put forward by these actors in different situations, I illustrate how each stage of boundary definition is imbued with power struggles and conflicts as actors call upon a variety of biophysical or societal arguments. In Chapter 4 (Science, Politics and Legitimacy in the Design of Protected Areas), I explore both the return of the idea of ‘natural’ boundaries and the support for the idea of a societal definition of boundaries linked to human spatial practices, building on ideas introduced earlier. I suggest that because the assimilation of biophysical and societal boundaries has attained the status of a sacred myth in protected area planning, it is promoted as the main objective of successful design. This is linked to what Massey has called ‘t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• 1 Introduction
• PART I: DEFINED BOUNDARIES
• PART II: CONTESTED BOUNDARIES
• PART III: HYBRID BOUNDARIES
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index