Making justice the subject of resettlement planning

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

In development and conservation projects that induce displacement and resettlement, proponents increasingly focus on procedural justice. They assume that this focus leads to recognition of displaced people’s expressed needs and distributive justice. By critically applying Robert Lake’s conceptualisation of “justice as the subject of planning”, this paper examines ways the current framing of justice in resettlement planning assumes that justice is a technically achievable object and prevents a new social imaginary in which justice is the subject that enables a collective pursuit of quality life. The paper analyses a resettlement project as a set of physical infrastructure where resettled people are corporeal citizens as opposed to static, one-time beneficiaries. Through this framing of a resettlement project, justice needs to be constantly ensured, even after promises agreed in consultations have been fulfilled. The case of the resettlement project of Limpopo National Park in Mozambique is used to illustrate the discussion.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1745-1766
Number of pages22
JournalAntipode
Volume53
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
I am indebted to three anonymous reviewers who shared invaluable suggestions on the first version of this article. I am thankful for the support of Toyota Foundation, Cidalia Bombe from PLADISMA and João Ngoca from CEDES. Last but not least, I thank all the people who interacted with me during my fieldwork in Massingir. 1

Funding Information:
The field research for this paper has been generously funded by Toyota Foundation (D17‐R‐0498).

Funding Information:
The LNP forms part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park that additionally consists of Kruger National Park in South Africa and Zimbabwe’s Gonharezou Park. This Transfrontier Park is managed by South African Peace Parks Foundation, which receives money from various European donors to turn the area into “the globally preferred prime ecotourism” destination (Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park 2019 ). As the LNP had no large game animals such as lions or elephants at the time of its creation in 2001 due to the ravages of independence war in 1975 and the subsequent civil war, which was intense in the LNP area during 1975–1992, as well as due to the presence of a large number of residents, fences between Kruger and the LNP were removed to facilitate the repopulation of the LNP. In 2002, the LNP decided to displace 7,000 people living in the so‐called low‐density tourism zone with financial support from the German Development Bank (KfW). The KfW insisted that the people living in the park would have to voluntarily leave the LNP after consultations based on the World Bank’s OP 4.12 guidelines (Milgroom and Spierenburg 2008 ) even though defining displacement as a “voluntary” action was known to be controversial (Schmidt‐Soltau and Brockington 2007 ) and the World Bank guidelines were meant for involuntary resettlement.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Antipode published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Antipode Foundation Ltd.

Keywords

  • Mozambique
  • displacement
  • infrastructure
  • justice
  • planning
  • resettlement

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Making justice the subject of resettlement planning'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this