Weekly Seminar: Conservation and Security: The Political Ecologies of Tackling Wildlife Trafficking, Dr. Rosaleen Duffy

Join us for our weekly seminar this Thursday, November 3rd from 3:45-5pm in River Road RM 325 or via Zoom! Professor Rosaleen Duffy from the University of Sheffield will be presenting "Conservation and Security: the political ecologies of tackling wildlife trafficking."

Abstract: Why is there a global shift in policies to tackle the illegal wildlife trade which is characterized by a turn towards security-oriented approaches? Why is there a focus on enhanced law enforcement, militarization, surveillance and intelligence gathering to address poaching and wildlife trafficking? By drawing together political ecology, security studies and green criminology, in this paper I use a framework of a political ecology of security to understand how and why these shifts occurred. Since the rises in poaching since 2008 there has been a renewed sense of urgency about saving iconic species like elephants, rhinos and tigers from extinction; this was magnified by COVID-19 because wildlife markets were identified as a possible source of the pandemic. As a result millions of dollars have poured in from donors, governments, philanthropists and corporations to support conservation. Several conservation NGOs are the beneficiaries of these new sources of funding, but so are a raft of new entrants to the conservation scene: private military companies, intelligence services, risk analysts, surveillance technology developers, and drone manufacturers. will focus on understanding how conservation and security are now shaping each other in complex ways. 

Bio: Rosaleen Duffy is Professor of International Politics at the University of Sheffield. She is a political ecologist, and her research focuses on the politics of biodiversity conservation, especially wildlife trafficking. She is author of Security and Conservation: The Politics of the Illegal Wildlife Trade. Yale University Press, 2022) and Nature Crime (Yale University Press, 2010). From 2016-2020 she was holder of a EUR 1.8 million European Research Council Advanced award for the BIOSEC Project which focused on wildlife crime and security; she currently runs the £1 million ESRC funded Beastly Business Project on green collar crime and the illegal trade in European wildlife.

Zoom Meeting Info: Please email ellexu@umd.edu for Zoom details.