Resisting workers’ disalienation: The making and survival of capitalist conservation in Niombato, Senegal

Article Nature and Space Resisting workers’ disalienation: The making and survival of capitalist conservation in Niombato, Senegal Roc ıo Hiraldo Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain Abstract The making and survival of capitalist conservation depends upon the creation and maintenance of contradictory class relations based on alienated labour. The literature has, however, often ignored this aspect. Looking at capital as a contradictory class relation and through the study of a tourism-oriented protected area and three reforestation payment for ecosystem service projects in Senegal, this article shows how capital’s instrumentalisation of conservation requires a constant adaption to workers’ struggles against alienation. In the case here analysed, this adaptation manifests in the avoidance, silencing and appropriation of workers’ mobilisations against forest privatisation and labour exploitation. This resistance to workers’ disalienation reinforces not only capitalist class relations but also state, neo-colonial and white people’s power. Keywords Capitalist conservation, alienated labour, disalienation, class relations, ecotourism, payments for ecosystem services, protected areas, Senegal Introduction Environmental conservation practices aimed at advancing capitalist interests have multiplied rapidly in the last two decades: tourism-oriented protected areas, profit-driven naturebased tourism and ecotourism businesses (Brockington et al., 2008; Duffy, 2015; Fletcher, 2019; Holmes, 2014; Igoe et al., 2010; Ojeda, 2012); payments to enable the depoliticisation Corresponding author: Roc ıo Hiraldo, Urban Transformations and Global Change (TURBA) Lab, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Avinguda del Tibidabo 39, Barcelona 08035, Spain. Email: [email protected] EPE: Nature and Space 0(0) 1–21 !The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/2514848620960405 journals.sagepub.com/home/ene of environmental degradation associated with capitalist production through deforestation, reforestation and biodiversity conservation projects, also known as payment for ecosystem service (PES) projects (B€ ohm et al. 2012; Felli, 2014; Jones, 2009; McAfee, 2016); and bonds for investments in environmental conservation (Sullivan 2014). According to the literature, the strategies used to put in place such capitalist conservation 1 practices are as follows: alliances between conservation NGOs, private companies, international development agencies and the state (Igoe et al., 2010); philanthropy (Holmes, 2012); instrumentalisation of Western consumers’ interests in ethical consumption (Carrier, 2010); the promotion of the idea that nature can only be ‘saved’ if it entails monetary benefits (Bu ¨scher and Igoe, 2013; Bu ¨scher et al., 2012; Sullivan, 2013); the depiction of locals as threats to biodiversity conservation (Ojeda, 2012); the channelling of development funding to these initiatives (Brockington and Scholfield, 2010); the use of media representations of African landscapes as pristine nature (Brockington et al., 2008); the creation of spectacle through the organisation of costly conferences and exclusive fundraising events which invite participation of celebrities (Brockington et al., 2008; Cavanagh and Benjaminsen, 2014); revisioning and rewriting of non-human nature in terms of banking and financial concepts (Sullivan, 2013); the production of success stories (Bu ¨scher et al., 2012; Cavanagh and Benjaminsen, 2014); and protected area creation (Brockington et al., 2008; Igoe et al., 2010). These contributions have, however, been silent regarding the role of workers 2 and the social (class) relation of oppression linking the working class and the propertied class 3 in the advancement of capitalist interests. This is surprising given the frequent use of Marx’s and Marxist concepts in these studies (Benjaminsen and Bryceson, 2012; Cavanagh and Benjaminsen, 2014; Dunlap and Sullivan, 2020; Igoe et al., 2010). For Marx, capital was not a thing, but a social relation, a contradictory class relation aimed at the generation of private wealth for the capitalist through the alienation of workers’ labour (i.e. the separation of workers from the ownership of their living labour capacity) (Marx, 1973: 461–462, 1981: 953–954). Mentions of alienated labour are scarce in the capitalist conservation literature, 4 but existing research suggests that alienated labour and its inherent class contradiction are particularly relevant in the development of nature-based tourism and forestry-related PES projects. First, the alienation of labour is central in the attainment of the objectives pursued by these practices and in workers’ experiences of, and responses to, capitalist conservation. Conservation rules and land use changes (from farming to preserved forest) are an essential element of tourism-oriented protected areas and forestry-related PES projects such as REDDþ. However, for rural people, these conservation rules and land use changes often mean expulsion from their workplace (either agricultural land or forests) (Benjaminsen and Bryceson, 2012; Beymer-Farris and Bassett, 2012; Howson, 2018; Hiraldo, 2018; Kelly, 2011; Ojeda, 2012; Rocheleau, 2015). In addition, the provision of services to customers of nature-based tourism and the reforestation objective in PES projects are based upon labour processes controlled by capital. This requires workers to put their labour at the service of capitalist interests (i.e. it requires them to alienate their labour) (Beymer-Farris and Bassett, 2012; Bird, 2016; Hiraldo, 2017). Second, it seems that these forms of labour alienation are generating opposition among workers, forcing the leaders of capitalist conservation projects to respond to such opposition in order to maintain their control over these projects (Beymer-Farris and Bassett, 2012; Devine and Ojeda, 2017; Howson, 2018; La Via Campesina 2012; Ojeda, 2012; Rocheleau, 2015). Taking this evidence into account, this article examines how alienated labour influences the strategies used for the emergence and survival of capitalist conservation. Looking at labour beyond wage labour, as the creator of use-values (Marx, 1967: 133), the article asks: how are those pursuing capitalist interests through conservation adapting to the opposition 2EPE: Nature and Space 0(0) that alienated labour generates among workers? What are the consequences of these adaptation strategies on workers’ struggles against alienated labour? To address these questions, the article explores the creation of a tourism-oriented protected area called Bamboung and the implementation of three mangrove reforestation PES projects in a group of villages in the Saloum Delta of Senegal called Niombato. More specifically, the article focuses on the following elements of these capitalist conservation practices generating labour alienation: (a) the prohibition of all natural resource extraction activities in 1800 hectares of mangroves and the subsequent conversion of this forest into a space exclusively used for nature-based tourism purposes; (b) the profit-driven exploitation of labour in nature-based tourism; and (c) the exploitation of labour during the mangrove reforestation campaigns as part of the PES project. The analysis of these questions is based upon qualitative research conducted through a six-week fieldwork period between April and October 2012 and a five-month fieldwork period between November 2013 and March 2014. The next section discusses Marx’s concept of alienated labour and its relation to the survival and destruction of capital. The fieldwork context and research methods are then introduced, followed by a section discussing the case study. The last section concludes with a reflection on the implications of this study for other accounts of capitalist conservation. Capital: a self-abolishing contradictory unity based upon alienated labour Marx’s discussion of alienated labour suggests the importance of this concept and its associated class dynamics in the strategies sustaining capitalist conservation. For Marx, alienation (or estrangement) is the government of the conditions of life by an external power. Alienated or estranged labour means labour is external to the worker (Marx, 1959: 30). Such estrangement is basic in the production and reproduction of capital. Thus, Marx defined capital as the formation of wealth that is alien to subjective living labour capacity (Marx, 1973: 461) and as the governing power over labour and its products (Marx, 1959: 11). Such power, however, separates workers from the ownership of their labour, making labour something coerced rather than voluntary. It alienates them from the object of their labour (i.e. the type of work they do and the product of their labour), in their relation to the act of production and in their relations to humans and non-humans in the labour process (Marx, 1959: 29–32). During capitalist commodity production processes, such as the production of services for ecotourists (Bianchi, 2011), workers alienate their labour through its commodification, leaving it under the control of capital. Alienation ensures the extraction of surplus value, capitalist profit and the continuation of capital accumulation, but it translates into low wages and long and intense working days (Marx, 1967: 293– 302, 1973: 451–458). This makes the labour process a mere means of subsistence, rather than an experience aimed at the development of workers’ mental and physical energy (Marx, 1959: 30–32). Similarly, in non-value generating labour processes aimed at the advancement of capitalist interests, such as reforestation PES projects (Felli, 2014), labour becomes a mere means for reproducing the worker. In addition, the labour-time and effort spent on the tasks required are defined according to capital’s preferences, rather than workers’ (Hiraldo, 2017). Land enclosures, such as capitalist appropriations of forests, alienate workers from the object of their labour through their expulsion from the land they work on (Beymer- Farris and Bassett, 2012; Bird, 2016; Hiraldo, 2018; Kelly, 2011). In addition, workers’ adaptations to enclosures translate into further alienation, and particularly, into undesired Hiraldo 3 increases in labour-time and effort dedicated to securing basic needs (Harvie, 2002; Hiraldo, 2018; World Rainforest Movement, 2016). Drawing upon the idea that capital produces poverty and dehumanisation for workers but wealth and power for capitalists, Marx (1956: 50–52) argued that capital is a selfabolishing contradictory unity composed of two opposite sides: the conservative side of alienation (the propertied class) and the destructive side of alienation (the working class). Both sides are alienated by capital, but their relation to alienation is different. Capital awakes in the propertied class what I call a class conservation instinct. That is, it pushes them to preserve the conditions sustaining alienated labour. On the other hand, capital pushes workers to disalienate, 5 that is, to challenge the undesired labour and living conditions it imposes. 6 Since capital requires alienated labour to survive, the working class cannot free itself from alienation without challenging the power of the propertied class. This class contradiction is what drives capital to its own dissolution, according to Marx. Studies of workers’ mobilisations illustrate this idea. They suggest that resistance to workers’ struggles against alienation is central in the strategies sustaining capital’s survival and expansion. This resistance materialises in various mechanisms such as exclusion of dissenting working class voices (Gilbert and Afrizal, 2019), repression and criminalisation of workers protests against expropriation (Dinerstein, 2014; Koopman, 2012), pressures to suppress labour strikes (Siu and Chan, 2015), the appropriation of workers’ protests (Dinerstein, 2014) and monopolisation of spaces for working class representation (Chen and Gallagher, 2018). Fieldwork context and research methods This research took place in Niombato, a group of 14 villages located in the south of the Saloum Delta of Senegal, 240 kilometres from Dakar and 24 kilometres from the Gambia’s northern border (see Figure 1). This is a plain area on the shores of a tributary to the Saloum river that goes southwards to the Atlantic Ocean. Niombato is located in the 76,000-hectare-long Saloum Delta National Park created in 1976 and to the Saloum UNESCO Biosphere reserve created in 1980 (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2007). Most primary data for this research were collected in the two villages closest to the limits of Bamboung protected area, hereafter Boko and Dioube 7 (see Figure 2). Boko is located on an island, 1.5 kilometres from the campement (local word for small hotels) inside this conservation site and Dioube is on terrestrial land and it is connected to Boko through a bolong (local term for mangrove channels). At the time the fieldwork research took place, it had 60 people distributed in 16 households, whereas Dioube had around 560 inhabitants distributed in 54 households. Although most of the primary data collected for this research are based upon workers’ experiences of, and responses to, capitalist conservation practices, the primary data collection process started with a mapping of institutional networks in the projects studied. This allowed the research to capture the different actors and relations conforming the conservative side of alienation, which refers here to all those promoting and defending capitalist interests in the conservation practices studied. In order to do so, during the six-week fieldwork period in 2012 I conducted 13 semi-structured interviews with the various actors involved in the management and regulation of the projects analysed. These actors included members of the rural council, 8 officers from the Ministry of Environment, the National Parks and the National Fisheries services, officers from international development agencies funding the projects studied, officers from the NGOs leading these projects and their local 4EPE: Nature and Space 0(0) partners. These interviews evidenced the existence of resistance on the part of people from two of the closest villages to the protected area: Boko, Dioube and the three villages next to it. After establishing contacts in these villages, I focused the primary data collection process on their working class inhabitants, that is, on all those adults who need to work to make a living. This included wage workers, people producing and selling commodities on their account and women doing reproductive work such as domestic labour, care work and water fetching. I started with a preliminary mapping of the local economic and political context and its relationship with the projects studied in the six-week fieldwork period in 2012. I conducted 10 interviews with fishermen and workers at the protected area. I also had informal discussions with villagers regarding their economic activities and experiences of the conservation practices studied. Finally, I conducted 60 open-ended questionnaires where villagers answered questions regarding their economic activities, their relations with institutional agents involved in the projects studied and the information provided to them regarding these projects. In the period between November 2013 and March 2014, when the main fieldwork phase took place, the research focused on processes of alienation and disalienation related to the projects studied. I started conducting 70 household interviews (all households in Boko and Dioube) aimed at exploring how the projects studied alienated working class people from their labour. The interviews also sought to locate such alienation within a broader context of Figure 1. Location of fieldwork area. !Google 2013. Hiraldo 5 capitalist expansion in the 2003–2013 period. 2003 is the year before the creation of the protected area and 2013 the year the main fieldwork phase started. The study of villagers’ labour in this year and 2013 allowed the research to map changes before and after the creation of the protected area as well as before and after the implementation of the PES projects (the first one was implemented in 2009). Interviewees were asked about their economic activities and those of other household members, changes in the conditions of their labour and responses to those changes in the period studied. In order to deepen the study of alienation and disalienation processes related to the projects studied, I conducted 30 interviews with fishermen, mollusc collectors and people working in the campement of the protected area and in the PES projects studied. Interviewees were asked to provide more information about changes in their labour and living conditions related the projects studied, their experiences of and adaptations to such changes, their mobilisations against these transformations (if any) and their relationship to institutional agents in the case of mobilisations against alienation. I complemented this information with group interviews with fishermen and mollusc collectors, informal conversations with villagers during fieldwork and participant observation during meetings related to the projects studied and during villagers’ economic activities, including fishing, mollusc collection and horticulture. Resisting disalienation: the making and survival of capitalist conservation in Niombato This section first explores the various ways in which Bamboung protected area and the three mangrove reforestation PES projects studied alienated villagers from their labour through Figure 2. Location of villages studied and protected area. !Google 2016. 6EPE: Nature and Space 0(0) forest privatisation and labour exploitation. Then, it discusses how those leading these conservation practices adapted to potential and actual attempts at disalienation by workers. Capitalist conservation as bourgeois environmentalism: classist, neo-colonial and racial Bamboung and the mangrove reforestation PES projects are examples of bourgeois environmentalism. That is, their modus operandi was clearly opposed to working class environmentalisms, which integrate production and reproduction (hence labour) in the protection of the environment (Barca, 2012; Barca and Leonardi, 2018). Rather than respecting workers’ ability to defend the conditions of their labour, these capitalist conservation practices were made possible through the alienation of working class villagers’ labour. This alienation resulted from the privatisation of 1800 hectares of mangroves and the use of workers’ labour for capitalist purposes (including profit, in the case of Bamboung, and depoliticisation of climate and environmental problems associated with capitalist production, in the case of PES projects). These forms of alienation had not only a classist character but also a racial and neo-colonial one. By this I mean that in addition to being impositions on the working class, they reinforced white Europeans’ control of African land and black people’s labour while excluding black Africans from the control of land and production (Quijano, 2000). The Bamboung protected area was the result of a project funded by the French Development Agency (AFD). It was managed by a Dakar-based conservation NGO called Oceanium, led at the time by a French man and a Senegalo-Lebanese man (both white men). 9 Oceanium leaders were those deciding the terms of conservation in the protected forests and the labour conditions in the campement (i.e. they were the owners of the commodity labour-power). They were also those appropriating the money generated through the sale of ecotourism services and those making profit in the process. On the other hand, villagers were those producing the various services provided at the campement in Bamboung protected area, those guarding the protected area and those losing access to the protected forests. As a consequence of these class relations, Bamboung protected area has relied upon and generated alienated labour through enclosure and labour exploitation. Since April 2004, the official date of this conservation site, natural resource extraction activities in the mangrove and terrestrial forests today in Bamboung have been prohibited. The protected bolong was the most productive that villagers could have access to. All households in Boko and more than a fifth in Dioube used to fish and collect molluscs there. Mollusc collection and fishing activity in the preserved bolong provided villagers with the income needed to secure subsistence (i.e. buy basic foods such as rice and oil). They also allowed them to have some savings in a context of growing commodified consumption and declining subsistenceoriented agriculture. After the creation of the protected area, villagers had to move their fishing and mollusc collection activities to a less productive bolong. To compensate the income losses due to this lower productivity, they engaged in other petty commodity production activities, experiencing an intensification of the daily labour-time needed to secure subsistence. Others abandoned these activities and engaged in wage labour. In most cases, they started working as employees in nature-based tourism businesses in the local area, among others in Bamboung protected area, where daily salaries were very low: 500 CFA (0.76 euros) for guards, 2000 CFA for cleaners (3 euros) to 2500 CFA (3.8 euros) for bartenders and men working in maintenance. Their working day was long and became more and more intense as managers started reducing the staff working at the campement through reductions in the number of days worked per month from 20 to 15. Hiraldo 7 Labour alienation was also part and parcel of the three mangrove reforestation PES projects implemented in Niombato since 2009, and the character of such alienation also had a neo-colonial and racial character. In all of them, European donors, NGOs and private companies decided on the conditions of labour, whereas Senegalese working class people were those doing the reforestation work. The first mangrove reforestation PES project was a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project part of a UNEP-led programme called CASCADE enabling French companies to offset their emissions in former French colonies in West Africa. In the case here studied, Danone’s Evian company was the beneficiary, offsetting the CO 2 emissions from the production of plastic bottles. The project was funded by the AFD and implemented locally by Oceanium and its local partner (United Nations Environmental Programme, 2012). The other two mangrove reforestation PES projects implemented in the area were not officially aimed at carbon offsetting, but also advanced capitalist interests in that they contributed to the depoliticisation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the countries funding these projects. One of them was financed by the Dutch government and implemented by Wetlands International, a Dutch multinational NGO in collaboration with the only capitalist owner in Dioube. The other PES project was funded by the AFD 10 and implemented by a local association of women from Dioube and a man from this village. Villagers working on the mangrove forest such as fishermen and mollusc collectors did not experience labour alienation through the privatisation of the use of mangrove land during the reforestation. However, this privatisation also has a neo-colonial and racial character, as it is based upon white Europeans’ control of African land (mangrove land close to Dioube and Boko). The advancement of capitalist interests in the PES projects (i.e. the payment for the depoliticisation GHG emissions) could be attained at a very low cost through poor working conditions. The collection and planting of mangrove seeds was rewarded with either 1000 CFA or 3000 CFA (either 1.5 or 4.6 euros). In addition, in two mangrove reforestation projects, workers were not paid for their labour in the first year. Moreover, project leaders’ control of production also meant that campaigns provided villagers with a maximum of five days of work, after which their labour was no longer needed as the job ended. Due to this duration and to the fact that the land occupation through reforestation did not interfere with villagers’ economic activities, the alienation of labour in PES projects was much less intense than in the case of Bamboung. Therefore, it generated fewer disalienation attempts. Taking this difference into account, the following subsections will focus on the Bamboung protected area. Organising alienation while avoiding working class participation The exclusion of rural people from decision-making has been frequent in capitalist conservation practices based upon the alienation of labour (Beymer-Farris and Bassett, 2012; La Via Campesina, 2012; Pramono and Sukiman, 2008). The Niombato case is no exception. Exclusion was central because opposition to alienation could threaten the implementation of projects based upon expropriation and labour exploitation. Thus, project leaders failed to inform working class villagers about their plans and averted their participation in decisionmaking processes. Oceanium and the leaders of PES projects first avoided disalienation and potential class conflicts by failing to provide information about and consult villagers on land expropriation and the social organisation of production. In October 2002, Oceanium leaders visited the rural council to present the project for the creation of Bamboung protected area. They proposed to preserve mangrove and terrestrial forests in the area where the protected 8EPE: Nature and Space 0(0) area is located today. They also proposed the construction of the campement arguing that it would generate revenues for people living in the 14 villages surrounding the protected area. The project was presented to the sub-prefect, the regional prefect and the presidents of several community-based organisations. The idea was well received and 20 rural councillors out of 20 voted for the creation of this new space (Communaut e Rurale de Toubacouta, 2002). Given villagers’ reliance on fishing, mollusc collection and forest products, the prohibition of natural resource extraction activities was likely to generate opposition among the local population. Oceanium leaders knew this, and avoided villagers’ opposition to alienated labour by giving them the wrong information. After the approval of the protected area by rural councillors, Oceanium leaders went to the villages next to the protected area to talk to people about an imminent conservation period. They told villagers that the conservation period would last several months (in some cases, they said three months, in others they said six months). However, in 2003, a decree signed by the Minister of the Environment was passed confirming the creation of Bamboung as a community-based protected area and a one-year ban on natural resource extraction activities within 6800 hectares, including 1800 of mangrove forest and 5000 hectares of terrestrial forest (R epublique du S en egal, 2003: Article 10). According to the decree, the decision-makers of the new conditions of access to natural resources after the one-year ban should have been the rural council, village organisations and the participatory management committee of the protected area (R epublique du S en egal, 2003: Article 5). Moreover, the decree stated that the local government, the management committee, community-based organisations and a scientific expert group should together develop an ‘integrated, community-based, participatory management plan’ for the protected area (R epublique du S en egal, 2003: Article 9). Despite these statements, after the completion of the one-year-conservation period, Oceanium decided unilaterally the continuation of the conservation rules. Villagers were not consulted and dissenting voices were excluded from the participatory management committee, presided by Oceanium’s local partner, a man from Niombato, hereafter Abdou. In one of the meetings of the management committee, two fishermen expressed their disagreement with the uncertainty about the date for ending the restrictions on natural resource extraction activities in the bolong. From then on, Abdou no longer invited these fishermen to the meetings of the committee (interview with Ansou Seidi, 3 July 2012). Oceanium ensured the continuation of this monopolisation of decision-making by not organising elections to choose a new president of the management committee. Even though the management plan of the protected area said that the campement was intended to generate revenues that would enable villagers to maintain the management of the protected area (Goepp et al., 2006), the NGO transformed the campement into an arena to accumulate capital. Oceanium did not discuss these relations of production based upon the alienation of villagers from their labour. The managers of the NGO decided on its own that villagers would be producing the goods and services provided to tourists and that they would appropriate the revenues generated through the protected area. They did not consult villagers when deciding about working hours per day at the campement, wage rates and the amount of people per village who were employed in the protected area. The NGO held the 20 million CFA francs (30,490 euros 11 ) provided by the AFD and used them to build the campement, pay salaries and, then, appropriated the value generated through the sale of ecotourism services produced by villagers’ labour-power. In addition to this, Abdou used his position as president of the management committee to advance his private interests, favouring people from his village over other ‘candidate’ workers. He chose his wife as the only Hiraldo 9 The continuation of alienation in Bamboung was also influenced by Kamara, who offered his help to the management committee, in particular, his knowledge of French (Boubacar is illiterate), the computer and his connections with various donor institutions. The presence of Kamara in the meetings of the committee became a new barrier for the disalienation of workers. A few days after the meeting at the rural council, the management committee met again, this time to discuss the management of the campement and therefore working conditions there. Kamara, who took a protagonistic role in the meeting, suggested that ‘efficiency is the end’ and that salaries and revenues (which he identified as costs and benefits, respectively) should be counted. He also argued that employees should continue working a maximum of 15 days (Oceanium’s former manager had reduced the amount of working days per month from 20 to 15) because the budget for the campement was uncertain. This fear that was generated regarding the dangers of the survival of the protected area were effective. From then on, the discussion focused on counting villagers’ salaries, not as a means of subsistence for workers, but as part of the expenses of the campement. It was concluded that, for the campement to survive and to save money for its maintenance (funding by the AFD had ended that year), workers should keep earning the 2500 CFA (3.8 euros) daily wage. It is unknown why Boubacar allowed this, but despite playing a crucial role in Oceanium’s departure, he did not oppose such proposals and workers’ conditions continued to be the same. Kamara’s appropriation of workers’ struggles was also effective in the long run. In phone calls I had with villagers in 2016, I was informed that, after the completion of Boubacar’s two-year period as president of the management committee, Boubacar returned to his job as a cart driver in Bamboung and, unsurprisingly, Kamara replaced him in the post. Kamara could then appropriate the product of workers’ labour to make profit and the forests remained a private tourism space, since conservation rules did not change. Thus, despite Oceanium’s departure and villagers’ long struggle, villagers’ mobilisations against alienation were again ignored in detriment of the protection of capitalist interests. Conclusion This research departs from the predominant silence regarding alienated labour and class relations in other accounts of expanding capitalist conservation. The mapping of mechanisms enabling this form of conservation has so far excluded the influence of workers’ opposition to expropriation and labour exploitation in this context. Nevertheless, several studies suggest that such opposition has shaped the emergence and survival of capital. Taking these studies into consideration and drawing upon Marx’s notion of capital, the research has explored the role of class relations around alienation in the development of capitalist conservation. It has demonstrated that the making and survival of mangrove reforestation projects and nature-based tourism involving forest privatisation and labour exploitation depends upon the creation and maintenance of contradictory class relations, and not only on strategies controlled by conservation actors. The development of capitalist conservation therefore requires a constant resistance to potential and actual workers’ struggles against alienated labour. Conscious of how their bourgeois environmentalism oppresses workers, those wishing to advance capitalist interests through the Bamboung protected area and the mangrove reforestation projects studied have struggled against workers’ disalienation in various ways. They have avoided, silenced and appropriated potential and actual struggles by workers against expropriation and labour exploitation. This resistance has translated into lies, occultation of information, exclusion of dissenting voices from decision-making processes, the appropriation of spaces for workers’ representation and 16 EPE: Nature and Space 0(0) the use of state repression. As a consequence of this resistance to disalienation, working class villagers have been relegated to their role of labour providers and their voices have been stifled. This has allowed project leaders to organise the expropriation and exploitation needed for the advancement of capitalist interests through conservation and maintain it over time. The dynamics around alienation and disalienation stated here expose the classist, neocolonial and racial character of profit-driven nature-based tourism and mangrove reforestation PES projects in Niombato. The powerful institutional structure resisting disalienation in the capitalist conservation practices has served to perpetuate white Europeans’ appropriation of land and labour in Africa and the exclusion of black Africans in production and environmental management (Quijano, 2000). This neo-colonial resistance to disalienation has also entailed state violence and the subsequent criminalisation of African people, especially, black African men. The use of state repression has not been simply a means for acquiring land, but more importantly, a disciplinary and representational use of violence (Devine and Ojeda, 2017). It has been a way of telling working class people that silence and submission (to the state and the leaders of these projects) are the best options for dealing with alienation. Nevertheless, as the class dynamics described here suggest, these projects will continue to face resistance on the part of workers, who refuse to live with additional difficulties. The life of capitalist conservation is therefore likely to be a continuum of struggles around alienation and disalienation. This article has also demonstrated the usefulness of Marx’s perspective of capital as a self-abolishing class contradictory whole. Such perspective has allowed the research to connect class conflict around alienated labour to the expansion of capitalist conservation. Beyond this perspective, the article suggests that realising the role of labour alienation in the development of capitalist conservation requires paying more attention to labour. This means acknowledging that forests are a workplace for many rural dwellers and that workers spend labour-time and effort in the production of nature-based tourism and in the reforestation expected in PES projects. It also means looking at workers’ experiences of, and responses to, changes in the conditions of their labour in relation to capitalist conservation practices. What is too important to be ignored are the thoughts and experiences of the working class and the fear that their disalienation generates in the bourgeoisie. Highlights •The advancement of capitalist interests through conservation requires continuous resistance to workers’ struggles against alienated labour •The making and survival of capitalist conservation entails the creation and maintenance of contradictory class relations based upon alienated labour •The advancement of capitalist interests through conservation requires continuous resistance to workers’ struggles against alienated labour •Looking at capital as a self-abolishing contradictory unity whole allows us to relate alienated labour and class conflict to the expansion of capitalist conservation •Through alienation and resistance to disalienation capitalist conservation reinforces not only class relations, but also neo-colonial, racial and state power Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Ramon Ribera Fumaz, Hug March and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and questions on earlier versions of this manuscript. Hiraldo 17 Declaration of conflicting interests The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author thanks the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, the University of East Anglia, the University of Copenhagen and the Swedish Development Agency whose financial support enabled to carry out the research for this manuscript and for its preparation. ORCID iD Roc ıo Hiraldo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2526-6206 Notes 1. I use this term instead of neoliberal conservation to highlight that not only are these practices neoliberal forms of environmental governance, they also represent capital’s instrumentalisation of environmental conservation. 2. In this article I will use the terms “workers” and “working class” to refer to those who need to work in order to subsist. This includes people who live through any kind of labour irrespective of whether this is commodified, non-commodified, productive or reproductive labour. 3. In this article I will use the terms “propertied class” and “capitalist class” interchangeably to refer to owners of capital. 4. Dunlap and Sullivan (2020) have suggested that PES, REDDþand carbon/biodiversity offsetting projects entail alienation of humans from nature, but their article is silent with regards to alienated labour and its inherent class contradiction in the context of capitalist conservation. In another article, I have discussed the connection between forest privatisation through protected area creation and labour alienation among the expropriated villagers (Hiraldo, 2018). 5. As Lefebvre (2002: 207) argued, real alienation can only be thought in terms of a possible disalienation, by which I mean challenges to capital’s control of workers labour, not a state where alienation is inexistent. 6. This is not to say that workers are determined to struggle against alienated labour due to their class situation. My interpretation of Marx’s notion of the destructive side of alienation is that the end of the class relations perpetuating the survival of capital can only come from the working class, whose lives are condemned as a result of the alienated labour capital generates. Ranci# ere (in Blechman et al., 2005: 287) makes a similar point rejecting what he qualifies as Marx’s ‘quasibiological’ proposition that ‘the proletariat is a class that entails the dissolution of all classes’. Instead, he argues that the proletariat can become an operator of declassification when workers reject the status quo and struggle to have a voice in society. 7. Villagers’ names and villages’ names have been changed in order to protect informants. 8. Senegalese term for local governments in rural areas. 9. After a conflict between these two co-leaders, the French conservationist funded his own NGO called N eb eday, also funded by the AFD. Several women whom I interviewed and had informal conversations with said they were sexually harassed by this man while working at this NGO. 10. This repeated presence of the AFD (three projects) and Oceanium (two projects) also suggests that there is a kind of territorialisation in the advancement of capitalist interests. 11. Hereafter, CFA will be converted into euros since there is a fixed exchange rate of 655 CFA for 1 euro. 12. The extent to which this was decided by Abdou on his own or in partnership with Oceanium’s members it is unknown. 18 EPE: Nature and Space 0(0) 13. Although the occupation of land for the reforestation did not alienate villagers from their labour, their exclusion here entails a refusal by project leaders to engage working class people (those providing alienated labour to capital) as decision-makers and to relegate them to the role of labour providers. 14. The interviewee did not know what was written on that piece of paper. 15. Project is the word that villagers use to refer to the institutions leading the project as often they do not remember which organisation is behind which project, especially in those villages where a lot of projects are being implemented. 16. They were only working class men in that Kamara, the only non-worker in the village, did not participate in these sessions. 17. I was invited to attend this and other meetings related to the protected area so the following information is based upon the discussions I witnessed in those meetings. 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