WORKING PAPER SERIES ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA CONCESSIONARY POLITICS IN THE WESTERN CONGO BASIN: HISTORY AND CULTURE IN FOREST USE by Rebecca Hardin November 2002 WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE Institutions and Governance Program Series Editors Jesse C. Ribot Peter G. Veit Institutions and Governance Program World Resources Institute 10 G Street, N.E., Suite 800 Washington, D.C. 20002 USA
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[email protected] (202) 729-7600 ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA WORKING PAPERS: WP #6 CONCESSIONARY POLITICS IN THE WESTERN CONGO BASIN: HISTORY AND CULTURE IN FOREST USE by Rebecca Hardin November 2002 EDITORS World Resources Institute Jesse C. Ribot and David Stemper 10 G Street, NE COPY EDITOR Washington DC 20002 Florence Daviet www.wri.org ABSTRACT The origin of “concessionary politics” that shape forest use and management in equatorial Africa can be traced to pre-colonial and colonial practices. Yet these political processes are constantly being re-invented, and their consequences for ecological and social systems reach far into the future. Gleaned from fieldwork among residents of a protected area and logging zone in Central African Republic, this concept relates village-level analysis to national and international adoptions of co-managed concessions for the management of tropical forests. Hardly new, the breaking of forests into mosaics of territorial control has been happening since the early days of European expansion. Protected areas were, in many cases, an extension of the concession system for the use and management of natural resources. Conservation has thus long benefited from and contributed to concessionary logics for the use of valued natural resources.