Harm done to people in the name of protecting nature, from eviction and fencing to armed enforcement, which its scholars treat as built into conservation itself.
Extended definition
The term comes from critical political ecology. The edited volume The Violence of Conservation in Africa (Ramutsindela, Matose and Mushonga 2022) is described by its publisher as explaining “why violence is a permanent feature of conservation in Africa,” and names four drivers: the dehumanization of black people and indigenous groups, the insertion of global green agendas onto the continent, a lack of resource sovereignty, and neoliberal conservation. In a 2022 interview the editors described conservation as an ideology that “separates people from their biophysical and cultural milieus, leading to conservation violence authorized by states against their citizens.”
The wiki uses the term in the field’s core sense: coercive removal of people from land or water to protect it. The Ogiek evictions from Kenya’s Mau Forest, which the African Court ruled unlawful in 2017, are the documented case on the wiki. Michael Haupt’s proposition extends the term to exclusion from the benefits of catchment finance; that extension is his, it is a working hypothesis, and Exclusion from Water Finance sets out how far the record supports it.
Contrast with adjacent terms
- Fortress conservation. A model of conservation. Conservation violence names the harm, whichever model produces it.
- Structural violence. Harm with no identifiable actor. Conservation violence, as its scholars use it, centers on harm a state or agency carries out.
- Green grabbing. Appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends. It describes a transfer; conservation violence describes the force or harm that may accompany it.
Related terms
- Fortress Conservation
- Structural Violence
- Green Grabbing
- Finance Exclusion
- Exclusion from Water Finance
Sources
- Ramutsindela, M., Matose, F. and Mushonga, T. (eds.) (2022). The Violence of Conservation in Africa
- African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (2017). ACHPR v. Kenya (Merits)
Provenance
Created 25 October 2026 from the evidence brief behind Exclusion from Water Finance. The definition follows the cited author’s published wording; the paragraph on the wiki’s use is the wiki’s own reading.