Conclusion: Socio-Technical Imaginaries of Future Conservation
Based on the different future visions from 20th and 21st centuries, we were able to show continuities and ruptures. Doom scenarios have been consistently used to legitimize actions and the extension of conservation measures, which in turn are employed to sketch a bright future vision for the African conservation continent, and thus generate positive sociotechnical imaginaries (STI) in Jasanoff’s sense. The necessary ‘solidity to win people’s allegiance’ (Jasanoff 2020: 30) is being achieved as conservation initiatives have moved beyond the initial mandate to protect nature and wildlife, have acknowledged the critical role of local communities and have emphasized the essential role conservation may play in their social and economic development. However, these new dreamscapes of modernity (Jasanoff and Kim 2015) are not only inspired by positive ideas and aspirations such as community conservation, empowerment, and conviviality, but also by processes such as green militarization, increasing technification of the monitoring of conservation areas and individual wildlife through conservation sciences, and the parastatal funding of conservation areas through INGOs and NGOs. Technology thus plays an integral part in monitoring schemes and controlling conservation achievements. The latter is increasingly quantifiable through the compilation of a wide variety of data, such as GPS tracking, remote sensing to assess spatial changes (de Klerk and Buchanan 2017), real-time tracking to monitor wildlife and livestock movements (Wall et al. 2014, Schieltz et al. 2017), or the provision of weapons for rangers to engage in conservation conflicts. The technological solutions being developed are not always the same.
A novelty of the 21st century is probably that the future conservation vision – which was previously driven by a few, mainly Western actors – is now open to multivocality and a growing relevance of African perspectives. A prominent example is the debate on trophy hunting in southern Africa and its contribution to a conservation strategy that combines wildlife conservation with economic gains. Contemporary visions of conservation combine that (a) emerging value chains (particularly in tourism) unleash energies, foresight, and preparedness for sustainable action, (b) assets need to be safeguarded reliably and if necessary with recourse to violence, and (c) non-state actors can facilitate both previous goals more efficiently and reliably than state actors, who are relegated. These visions are strongly based on the assumption that non-action (i.e. a neglect of conservation) will ultimately result in rapid ecological demise and increasing vulnerability of rural populations.