Divide and Rule

Based on my ongoing comparative research project on the high profile global REDD+ initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) ¹ in developing countries, I shall present some findings from studies in the Amazon, Tanzania, and Indonesia that show how a project, initially perceived by the financiers (UN, World Bank, Norwegian government, etc.) as a straight-forward ‘nature’ (in this case forest) project, with technocratic solutions, has turned into a highly complex ‘society’ project. ² The original exclusive focus on preserving forests can be brought back to the misconception that forests exist outside society. The policy makers failed to appreciate that people are intrinsically involved in, rather than separate from their environments. In many parts of the world local ontologies (theories about what exists in the world and how they are related) and epistemologies (theories of the nature and grounds of knowledge), and practices that are predicated upon these, intimately intertwine ‘society’ and ‘nature’ in ways that science ignores. I shall suggest that this misconception by the initiators of REDD was a result of an assumed and unquestioned conceptual division between nature and society. ³ Perceived consequences upon the life of the people who live in tropical forests, and are dependent upon them for their livelihood, activated international and national environmental and human rights NGOs as well as indigenous forest populations. At the discursive level, ⁴ I argue that this has resulted in a shift from a focus upon trees to a focus on the people who live among the trees. NGOs' vocal protests and activities have forced a shift in the rhetoric that, if not totally collapsing a nature/society separation, has at least led to a blurring of the boundary between them. In what follows I shall be examining some of the paths that led to this shift and raise some questions about how to interpret the imaginaries and narratives of the four main categories of stakeholders: policy makers, NGOs, local populations, and entrepreneurs. I shall suggest that we are dealing with four distinct narratives about the relationship between the natural and social worlds and that while each of these narratives is more or less coherent in its own terms, they, in important ways, do not overlap. Drawing on some recent theories about the interpretation of ‘nature’ in social life, I will examine this plurality of narratives.