TY - CHAP
T1 - An Uncomfortable Fit?: Transfrontier Parks as MegaProjects
AU - Lunstrum, Elizabeth
N1 - Elizabeth Lunstrum The latest type of megaproject reshaping sub-Saharan African landscapes is transfrontier parks (TFPs); these are parks that span or meet one another at (mostly) unfenced international borders, providing large expanses for wildlife and tourist consumption.
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - Megadevelopment projects are no stranger to Sub-Saharan Africa. The colonial period was marked by massive projects ranging from those aimed at the extraction of natural resources, to large scale agricultural schemes and megadams. With the fall of colonial rule, independent governments took over and expanded many of these projects and invested in other large scale development initiatives to help move beyond colonial legacies of exploitation, to build modern nation-states and economies, and to display to their citizens and the world their power as the newly independent states behind these projects. Today many African governments, routinely backed by international donors, have continued to "think big" as a way of promoting economic development and ensuring that African economies do not fall further behind in the world economy. The largest of these new megadevelopment projects in terms of geographical size is not the megamining projects like Botswana's Jwaneng diamond mine, nor the megadams like Kariba, Cahora Bassa, or Congo's Inga project, set to produce twice as much energy as China's Three Gorges Dam. Rather, it is the continent's national parks and protected areas. And given recent trends in global conservation toward conservation projects that span international borders, these spaces are growing ever larger as many existing national parks, reserves, and other protected areas are united with one another and with newly created conservation spaces to form transfrontier parks, that is cross-border megaparks.
AB - Megadevelopment projects are no stranger to Sub-Saharan Africa. The colonial period was marked by massive projects ranging from those aimed at the extraction of natural resources, to large scale agricultural schemes and megadams. With the fall of colonial rule, independent governments took over and expanded many of these projects and invested in other large scale development initiatives to help move beyond colonial legacies of exploitation, to build modern nation-states and economies, and to display to their citizens and the world their power as the newly independent states behind these projects. Today many African governments, routinely backed by international donors, have continued to "think big" as a way of promoting economic development and ensuring that African economies do not fall further behind in the world economy. The largest of these new megadevelopment projects in terms of geographical size is not the megamining projects like Botswana's Jwaneng diamond mine, nor the megadams like Kariba, Cahora Bassa, or Congo's Inga project, set to produce twice as much energy as China's Three Gorges Dam. Rather, it is the continent's national parks and protected areas. And given recent trends in global conservation toward conservation projects that span international borders, these spaces are growing ever larger as many existing national parks, reserves, and other protected areas are united with one another and with newly created conservation spaces to form transfrontier parks, that is cross-border megaparks.
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9920-4_68
U2 - 10.1007/978-90-481-9920-4_68
DO - 10.1007/978-90-481-9920-4_68
M3 - Chapter
BT - Engineering Earth: The Impacts of Megaengineering Projects
ER -