Exploring Biodiversity Conflict as a Result of Conservation Practices and Private Property on Local and Indigenous Communities’ Land Tenure Rights

Structural inequalities in land tenure rights persist today alongside, and in competition with, private ownership and public interest concerns that seek to protect vested economic interests like infrastructure development, agricultural expansion, conservation, and tourism. The conservation of biodiversity ecosystems is essential for ecological integrity and sustainable development. Yet, biodiversity conflicts can cause conservation goals to fail, if social justice interests like the informal land tenure rights of local and indigenous communities are disregarded. This article critically discusses the biodiversity conflict between conservation interests and the informal land tenure rights of local communities and indigenous peoples, focusing on their continued access to and benefit from natural resources. It examines how overlapping private property laws and socioeconomic imperatives for equitable resource use and secure land tenure, contribute to conflicts in South Africa’s protected areas. The article highlights the historical origins of biodiversity conflicts that are rooted in colonial-apartheid laws that orchestrated the dispossession of land tenure rights and structural exclusion of previously disadvantaged persons from participation in, and benefit from, economic opportunities derived from their land. We use the Berg River Estuary to contextualise the interdisciplinary and intersecting rights-based party interests that give rise to biodiversity conflicts. We argue in favour of the recognition of informal land tenure rights, the participation of diverse stakeholders in conservation and resource management, and the distribution of power towards local and indigenous peoples’ interests. We caution that not doing so can result in a secondary dispossession of local and indigenous peoples’ right to security of tenure.