ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the theoretical frame of the book, starting from the concept of borderlands, then discussing the elaboration of eco-borderlands, and concluding with forest waterlands. Forest waterlands build on Borderlands Studies, which elucidates different kinds of edges of empires, peripheries, and margins that have been left underfoot, overshadowed by predominant narratives. Borderlands are often Indigenous lands and places of encounter with their own dynamics and cores, and they can also be located in international borderlands. Although Borderlands Studies has often neglected nature, many borderlands have become central places for biodiversity conservation, now mapped as ecoregions and hotspots. They are eco-borderlands subject to environmental concerns and priorities, yet politically divided into categories such as “water”, “forest”, and “land”. This chapter problematizes these categories and concludes by proposing the analytical perspective of forest waterlands that allows one to address their fluid, political edges.
