Environmental Narratives on Protection and Production: Nature-based Conflicts in Río San Juan, Nicaragua

This article focuses on local processes and global forces in the struggle over the fate of forests and over the contested claims of protection and production in a protected area buffer zone of Río San Juan, Nicaragua. The struggle over control of local natural resources is seen as a multifaceted process of development and power involving diverse social actors, from agrarian politicians and development agents to a heterogeneous group of local settlers, absentee cattle raisers, timber dealers, transnational corporations, and nongovernmental organizations. The initial interest is in the local resourcerelated discourses and actions; the analysis then broadens to include the larger politicaleconomic processes and environmentdevelopment discourses that affect the local systems of production and systems of signification. The article underlines environmental resource conflicts as one of the major challenges in subjecting structures of social power to critical analysis.