Conflict’s Emergence and Escalation in Participatory Protected Areas Management in Benin

Abstract

This paper investigated factors that explain the emergence and escalation of conflict in participatory management of protected areas in Benin. It is based on evidences from three case-studies of conflict emergence and escalation in the implementation of participatory natural resources management in Benin supported with discussion from the literature. The study shows that conflicts in participatory management of protected areas emerge when parties involved co-construct opposing instead of same or at least overlapping frames in interaction. They often escalate when the negotiation fails to stimulate the parties to bring to the fore and address the opposing frames expressed only in “we-groups” of same stakeholders due to their strategic framing in interaction. We conclude that we cannot control the strategic framing of the parties in conflict but we should only be prepared to discover changes in discourse that contribute to the divergence in framing and thus influence them. For that, both formal and informal interactional contexts should be continuously checked during the negotiation process.