Gretchen Walters

The Congo Basin has an impressive cultural diversity resulting from millennia of contact, networking, intermarriage, and other types of interethnic mingling and pairing. The region has been inhabited for at least 650,000 years. Hunter-gatherer communities probably preceded the others, but Bantu, Ubangi, and Central Sudanic–speaking communities arrived over the last 4 to 5 millennia. Until the colonial period, mobility was the norm; small, local movements and large, regional shifts were frequent. Climatic changes, the search for natural resources and economic opportunities, conflict avoidance, flight from disease, and social traditional beliefs triggered mobility. During the colonial era (c. 1880–c.1960), traditional patterns of mobility were interrupted. To extract timber, oil, and minerals; to produce palm oil and kernels, cocoa, and cotton; and to secure export markets for metropolitan companies, villages were frequently forcibly relocated to sites where displaced people worked on plantations, logging concessions, mining sites, or infrastructural projects. After World War II, colonial settlements evolved into large urban centers. Urbanization is one of the recent changes in the Congo Basin. From 1960 to 1968, the Congo Basin countries gained independence; one-party regimes were installed, and repression and economic deterioration followed. Since the 1990s, political regimes have been challenged, and conflicts have broken out in many parts of the Congo Basin, leading to regional and cross-border migrations. Current challenges include high population growth, a youthful demographic, gender disparities, and the marginalization of minority groups. Urbanization, urban expansion, the urban need for natural resources, conflict-induced migrations, and forestry and mining concessions threaten the high cultural and biological diversities.

Exclusive conservation has developed over thousands of years through protected area creation. Today, in order to achieve global conservation targets it is recognised that exclusive conservation can no longer be used. Rather, inclusive conservation has now become a rallying cry, and has been integrated into the Global Biodiversity Framework and the policies of various conservation NGOs. However, shrugging off thousands of years of baggage is hard. While there is the intent of including local communities in management systems in conservation, it lacks the recognition of their common property institutions by which they have been managing local common-pool resources (forests, wildlife, fisheries, etc) and which are more than just natural resources to be managed or protected but their territories of life and cultural landscape. Therefore, is apparent both at the global and local levels, the baggage linked to conservation acts like an anchor, resulting in the implementation of inclusive conservation not always being straight forward as the case of Batéké in southeastern Gabon show. Using the example of protected area expansion on their commons, this action-paper shows how the good intent to carry out inclusive conservation is fraught with difficulties, with historical, cultural and educational baggage even impeding the Free, Prior and Informed Consent process. This paper concludes with recommendations, that had previously been given to the various actors and communities implicated in the park expansion, by recognising their commons and the way of relatedness to their territories of life.

Global conservation maps often overlook community lands, impacting decision-making and reducing local agency. We focus on the high-profile and regionally important case of Massaha’s ancestral territory (Ibola Dja Bana Ba Massaha). In Gabon, the forest is largely gazetted into logging concessions and described as an Eden-like wilderness despite long-term human presence. We compare Massaha’s biocultural maps to global, colonial, and post-colonial maps, in a community peer review process. While these maps show Ibola Dja Bana Ba Massaha as devoid of logging and settlement, Massaha’s maps show long-term settlement, sacred areas and industrial logging. Massaha used their maps to request the government to protect their forest from logging and update the forestry code to enable community conserved areas, prompting a national debate on the legal recognition of “territories of life”, while revitalising ancestral practices. We show that “big data” conservation mapping must account for biocultural knowledge if it is to be effective in guiding conservation decisions.

Lack of recognition lays at the root of many of the current challenges for commons and ICCAs—Territories of Life despite the wide range of ongoing, collective action initiatives in Europe acknowledging and fighting this gap. In this paper, using a mixed methods approach, we analyze twelve years of three bottom-up initiatives based on the commons and ICCA—Territory of Life concept, implemented in Spain from 2012 to 2025. The aim of this research is to assess and understand the degree of success of the initiatives, based on an analysis of the source of recognition and the type of goals achieved. In general terms, the three recognition initiatives were successful, especially at the levels of self-, peer, and international recognition. However, all failed to substantially improve public awareness and national and sub-national governmental recognition, especially when addressing policy change and implementation. We conclude that, in the European context, despite these challenges, the concepts of “commons” and “ICCA-Territory of Life” are powerful tools to achieve some level of recognition and are a strategic priority for facing Europe’s challenges fostering solutions that reinforce the role, capacity, responsibility, and rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.

Successful adaptation often involves changes to the decision context to enable new ways of thinking and acting on climate change. Using 16 adaptation initiatives the authors were engaged with, we analysed how and why decision contexts changed to identify ways to improve adaptation as a process of collective deliberation and social learning. We used the scope of the adaptation issue and governance arrangements to classify initiatives into four types and scored changes in the decision context using three frameworks: (1) the values, rules and knowledge (VRK) perspective to identify changes to adaptation decision‐making; (2) the five dimensions of futures consciousness to identify the building of adaptation capabilities and (3) the social learning cycle to reveal evidence of reflexive learning. Initiatives using novel governance arrangements for discrete problems (‘problem governance’) or complex, systemic issues (‘systems governance’) scored highest for influences of VRK, futures consciousness and the social learning cycle on the decision context. Initiatives using existing management for discrete problems (‘problem management’) scored moderately for change in the decision context, while those using existing management for systemic issues (‘systems management’) scored low because change was often impeded by existing rules. All three frameworks influenced decision contexts in systems governance initiatives. Problem governance initiatives revealed interactions of VRK and futures consciousness but limited influence of VRK on the social learning cycle. Scope and governance arrangements differ with the adaptation issue and initiatives adapt over time: some small‐scale ones became more systemic, developed novel governance arrangements and changed the decision context. Our findings do not show that some adaptation initiatives are better or more transformative than others; just that their scope and appropriate governance arrangements are different. This questions the notion that successful adaptation requires building generic transformative adaptation approaches and capabilities. There is a diversity of arrangements that work. What is important is to align the approach to the adaptation problem. We suggest two directions for improving adaptation initiatives: first, by influencing how they can shift between problem and systems focus and between standard management and novel governance, and secondly, by using methods to diagnose and direct change in the decision context. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Adaptation to climate change is a social–ecological process: it is not solely a result of natural processes or human decisions but emerges from multiple relations within social systems, within ecological systems and between them. We propose a novel analytical framework to evaluate social–ecological relations in nature-based adaptation, encompassing social (people–people), ecological (nature–nature) and social–ecological (people–nature) relations. Applying this framework to 25 case studies, we analyse the associations among these relations and identify archetypes of social–ecological adaptation. Our findings revealed that adaptation actions with more people–nature relations mobilize more social and ecological relations. We identified four archetypes, with distinct modes of adaptation along a gradient of people–nature interaction scores, summarized as: (i) nature control; (ii) biodiversity-based; (iii) ecosystem services-based; and (iv) integrated approaches. This study contributes to a nuanced understanding of nature-based adaptation, highlighting the importance of integrating diverse relations across social and ecological systems. Our findings offer valuable insights for informing the design and implementation of adaptation strategies and policies. This article is part of the discussion meeting issue ‘Bending the curve towards nature recovery: building on Georgina Mace's legacy for a biodiverse future’.

What was Switzerland's role in colonization? If you have ever wondered about this, Rossinelli's historical account can provide a rich and detailed interpretation of a lesser-known part of the story: the role of Swiss geographic societies and Swiss participation in Belgian King Leopold II's project to colonize a vast part of central Africa (today's Democratic Republic of Congo). Rossinelli's conclusion shows how political the discipline and practice of geography is, bringing geography beyond a technical exercise, showing how expansionist politics by Swiss geography associations were part of a broader dynamic typical of other European geography associations at the time. What makes the Swiss endeavour different is that although Switzerland never formally colonized another country, it supported the efforts of others, benefitting economically from these efforts, while also identifying new places, such as Brazil, for Switzerland's economic migrants. 1 Swiss imperialism, as skilfully demonstrated by Rossinelli, was presented publicly under the guise of a "civilizing" mission of African peoples along with anti-slavery campaigns, led by the Swiss bourgeoisie. But as Rossinelli

Background and aims– Old-growth savannas in Africa are impacted by fire, have endemic and geoxylic suffrutices, and are understudied. This paper explores the Parc National des Plateaux Batéké (PNPB) in Gabon and the impact of fire on its flora to understand if it is an old-growth savanna. It presents 1) a vascular plant checklist, including endemic species and geoxylic suffrutices and 2) an analysis of the impact of fire on the savanna herbaceous flora, followed by recommendations for fire management to promote plant diversity.Material and methods– 1,914 botanical collections from 2001–2019 collected by the authors and others were extracted from two herbaria databases in 2021 to create the checklist. The impact of fire was explored through a three season plot-based inventory of plant species (notably forbs and geoxylic suffrutices) in five annually, dry-season burned study areas located at 600 m in elevation. A two-factor ANOVA was conducted across two burn treatments and three season treatments.Key results– The area has a vascular flora of 615 taxa. Seven species are endemic to the Plateaux Batéké forest-savanna mosaic. Seventeen species are fire-dependent geoxylic suffrutices, attesting to the ancient origins of these savannas. Burning promotes fire-dependent species.Conclusion– The PNPB aims to create a culturally-adapted fire management plan. The combination of customary fire and fire-adapted species in the savanna creates a unique ancient forest-savanna mosaic in Central Africa that merits protection while recognising the role that the Batéké-Alima people have in shaping and governing this landscape.

This contribution challenges representations of landscapes and communities within zoos in Europe that may amplify colonial narratives of local people through a racialised and often static lens. Instead of a holistic portrayal of the relationship between humans and nature that the EAZA (European Association of Zoos and Aquaria) stipulates within its guidelines, some European zoos continue to perpetuate a narrow view of foreign landscapes within their exhibits. Utilising the concept of representation, this short article argues that Zoo Zürich reinforces colonial narratives through its new Lewa exhibit, an exhibit based on a Kenyan conservancy. This piece is based on an improvised visit to the zoo to see the new African exhibit. It highlights discrepancies between the Lewa exhibit, guidelines of the EAZA and the Lewa Conservancy in Kenya. In this light, we propose recommendations for European zoos to decolonise their institutions and exhibits based on an understanding that is not only scientific, but also historical, critically reflective, and inclusive of non-Western perspectives.