Green surveillance: the social implications of harnessing local communities for conservation law enforcement in Namibia

Abstract

In response to the social injustice and counterproductivity attributed to militarised conservation, anti-poaching efforts increasingly focus on ‘inclusivity’ and surveillance. This shift can be explained with the emergence of ontopower, a new form of environmental power that focuses on anticipatory and pre-emptive actions to avoid the virtual, future destruction of nature. This article argues that conservation’s novel combination of inclusivity, surveillance, and ontopower produces a particular mode of conservation governance which I call ‘green surveillance’. Green surveillance captures the open-ended use of military and criminal intelligence approaches to the collection of universal information on environmental crime which target local communities in the pursuit of conservation security. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the article examines what green surveillance looks like in north-west Namibia, where local people are being ‘harnessed’ for conservation law enforcement. By showing how local people experience green surveillance, the article responds to calls to investigate the social implications of community-focused surveillance efforts employed as part of militarised conservation. The analysis reveals that green surveillance can have severe negative social implications for rural communities, such as local instrumentalisation, exploitation of precarious livelihoods, physical and slow violence, social exclusion, breakdown in trust and social cohesion, and false reporting; all contributing to social conflict.