Managing biodiversity & divinities: Case study of one twenty-year humanitarian forest restoration project in Benin

World Development 126 (2020) 104707

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Managing biodiversity & divinities: Case study of one twenty-year humanitarian forest restoration project in Benin Julia Bello-Bravo Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Anthony Hall, 474 S. Shaw Ln., Rm. 3370, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Accepted 8 October 2019

Keywords: Sustainability Collaboration Benin Edges Indigenous knowledge

a b s t r a c t Humanitarian assistance around the world frequently represents an immense and well-intentioned impulse to redress the suffering of others. And yet, cross-cultural misunderstandings and conflicts of differing value-systems—as knowledge mismatches between those offering help and those targeted for help—will often risk neutralizing or rendering ineffective the assistance offered. Given the critical need for humanitarian assistance successes worldwide, research to mitigate this risk has a particular urgency. Understanding ‘‘use” as any activity that transforms a world, this case study analyzes the complexities of multi-actor resource use at a successful, 20-year rain forest restoration and preservation project in Benin. Findings from this case study supply examples for how ‘‘edges”—as a type of co-operative space—enabled effective rain-forest biodiversity restoration delivery despite unresolved, and at times unresolvable, knowledge mismatches between the actors in the case. Limited to a single case, the study nonetheless offers ‘edges’ as a promising analytic and strategic means for (1) anticipating and neutralizing the frustrating delivery effects of cross-cultural knowledge mismatches, (2) better securing more effective shorter-term outcomes and less harmful longer-term impacts from humanitarian assistance efforts generally, and (3) directions for future, more widely ranging research into other assistancedelivery contexts, as well as literature on collaboration generally. Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction While humanitarian intervention around the world exhibits an immense and long-studied complexity, cross-cultural misunderstandings between humanitarians and those targeted for help (as well as collisions or differences of value) can often occur that neutralize, or render ineffective, the assistance offered. In this paper, we identify and explore the successful local humanitarian practices at one 20-year-old forest restoration project, which at times mitigated, or even bypassed, these cross-cultural risks and effects due to misunderstanding and value-differences. By ‘‘humanitarian” in this usage, however, we broadly intend (1) any non-military (peaceful) cross-cultural activity by one actor toward another (2) where such activity has a mission or goal to ameliorate or address a conflict, (3) defined as a socially undesirable or harmful state of affairs affecting the receiving actor. And while the most familiar image of humanitarian activity likely involves national or international governmental and nongovernmental organizations seeking to intervene into large-scale situations of famine, disease, natural disasters, or the consequences of wars (e.g., refugee crises), this does not exclude from E-mail address: [email protected] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104707 0305-750X/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

the category of humanitarian assistance any smaller-scale, often less formally organized cross-cultural efforts to assist others. To date, much research has promoted, analyzed, and critiqued the activity, sometimes even the premises, of humanitarian assistance. Scholars have directly invoked legal frameworks to justify or question intervention into globally wide-scale conflicts involving war, genocide, famine, crimes against humanity, and simply suffering in general (Bellamy, 2017; Chesterman, 2001; Finnemore, 1996; Grillo & Pupcenoks, 2017; Holzgrefe, 2003; Wheeler, 2000). Others more indirectly have proposed and critiqued developmental, human capital, moral, and even simply affective—hopefully helpful—frameworks as ways to alleviate conflict and suffering (Desai, 2017; Duffield, 2010; Khaleel & Abdullah, 2016; Krause, 2014; Ribot & Peluso, 2003). Krause (2014), for instance, specifically describes NGO humanitarianism as a node or throughput for connecting a prevailing discourse of suffering in the world to all manner of interests and resource streams interested in intervening into that suffering (whether positively, negatively, exploitatively, or productively). In the present paper, we would focus less on the scale (large or small) of any humanitarian assistance and more on the specifically cross-cultural (international) aspect of any such assistance. By cross-cultural, we mean any movement from one ethos or domain

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of practice to another that is dissimilar, whether national or linguistic, ethnic or gendered, or across disciplinary or professional boundaries. In general, this implies a situation where the same action in different domains can have a different or dissimilar meaning or implication. This cross-cultural dissimilarity introduces the risk of potential misunderstandings between actors. For cases of humanitarian assistance, these misunderstandings can raise questions about the purpose or intention of the offered help, even whether the intervention is desired by those to be helped. While scholars acknowledge these risks and have proposed techniques for negotiating or mitigating them (Williams, 2015), even the very process of attempting to do so can at times become a conflict itself (Cooke & Kothari, 2001; Hickey & Mohan, 2004; Lund & Saito-Jensen, 2013; Penderis, 2012; Ribot & Peluso, 2003). Besides large-scale conflicts and misunderstandings, these also can manifest at a much smaller, perhaps more ubiquitous, scale around the everyday ‘‘use” of local resources and land. ‘‘Use” in this context means any activity that has a manifest effect in the world, whether physical, psychological, or socioeconomic. This echoes Ribot and Peluso (2003), who focus on access, rather than use rights, and define access as the ‘‘ability to benefit from things—including material objects, persons, institutions, and symbols” (p. 153). This makes access a ‘‘bundle of powers”—as distinct from property as a ‘‘bundle of rights” (Ribot & Peluso, 2003, p. 154). Moreover, it underscores how any contested use of a resource ultimately less involves questions of sharp borders and clear demarcation (i.e., ‘‘land” or ‘‘property”) but rather the power or ability to use it; more precisely, ‘‘property” itself is an argument (of power) that attempts to manage ‘‘use”. It remains critical to recognize, however, that under any regime of power, designations of resources for ‘‘non-use” still constitute another form of use (Bendix, 2000). Bracketing out a resource as protected, prohibited, legally interdicted or spiritually taboo thus meets our definition of use, as constituting an activity that has a manifest effect in the world. While rationales for such non-use may variously invoke personal or national property to justify it, may ascribe a status as sacred (inviolable) or profane (taboo), or may cite a humanitarian and/or scientifically observational research purpose (Beissinger, Ackerly, Doremus, & Machlis, 2017; Singh, Youssouf, Malik, & Bussmann, 2017), all of these ‘‘nonuses” nevertheless constitute a use of a resource under a given regime of power. Many present conflicts between a will to selfdetermination by (indigenous) people in the developing world and ecological and climate-change activism in the developed world turn sharply on conflicts about the use or non-use of resources, especially land and its products. For this paper specifically, the ‘‘non-use” of the forest for the sake of biodiversity comes into direct conflict with the traditional ‘‘use” of the forest for the support of local lives, well-being, and livelihood. 1.1. Analytical framework Focusing narrowly on a particular conflict around forest resource use and non-use, this paper offers a framework for navigating the complexities that can emerge in conflicts between cross-cultural humanitarian and human/nonhuman activity. At times, these complexities of competing interests around resource use can be framed as so intractable that multilateralism in humanitarian intervention may seem ‘‘often a recipe for doing nothing” (Recchia, 2017, p. 50); this paper shares Recchia’s skepticism that this must be so. One key to making this complexity tractable involves re-understanding the notion of boundary less in its more abstract and legalistic sense—as a hard and fast, strictly delimiting border—and more in its immanent, ubiquitous, and thus more realist

actual-world sense as an overlapping region. As an analytic framework, we use the term ‘‘edge” (adapted from permaculture theory) to designate such overlapping regions. Resembling the intersecting portion of a Venn diagram, an edge in this sense is not simply a buffer. Rather, an edge denotes an overlapping space of domains that creatively generates possibilities of behavior (including lifeforms) not otherwise possible in either domain alone. Empirically, an edge is a space where intersecting systems are typically their most creative (LeVasseur, 2014). Mollison (1991) originally formulated the notion of an edge as a (sustainable) design tool that borrows from the intersection of physical domains in Nature. A shore for example—as an edge formed by the overlapping domains of the sea and the land—not only (1) creatively generates a variety of flora and fauna (often amphibious) not otherwise possible in either domain alone, but also (2) does so across mutually exclusive, unintelligible, or even incommensurable domains. While this is the creativity LeVasseur (2014) refers to, edges can also refer (both figuratively and literally) to the intersection of any two domains: e.g., adolescence as the edge between child and adult, or a porch as an edge between the private domain (of a house) and the public domain outside. Nonetheless, even in these overlapping social zones of an edge, a variety of social behavior becomes possible that is otherwise impossible or much less likely in either domain in isolation (Ferguson & Lovell, 2014; Holmgren, 2002; Roux-Rosier, Azambuja, & Islam, 2018; Vanni Accarigi, Crosby, & Lorber-Kasunic, 2014; Vitari & David, 2017). For this reason, in cases where mutually exclusive, unintelligible, or even incommensurable ‘‘western” and ‘‘indigenous” crosscultural knowledge domains come into contact or interact, thinking through those interactions in terms of an edge discloses (1) that those disparate domains can interact despite their mutual unintelligibility and (2) that the edge will generate a variety of cultural behaviors not characteristic (or possible) for either domain in isolation. For instance, a stranger who travels to a foreign land and does not speak the local dialect can, by a combination of uncharacteristic pantomimes, still navigate his/her way to food, shelter, and the like. In the present paper, we analyze an interaction of cross-cultural western and indigenous knowledge domain-frameworks. This situation involved the long-term negotiations between a (western) knowledge insistence on the ‘‘non-use” of forest resources for the sake of the forest’s biodiversity and an (indigenous) local knowledge insistence on the traditional ‘‘use” of the forest for the support of local people’s livelihoods. Part of the background to this conflict in Benin also included national legislation on sacred groves passed in 2012 that formalized a hybrid ‘‘non-use” of portions of forest (as sacred) along with allowances and buffers for traditional ‘‘use” as well. While scholars rightly often highlight and critique an assumed superiority or default of western views and values in crosscultural humanitarian interactions between the ‘‘developed” and the ‘‘developing” worlds (Desai, 2017; Gaillard, 1994; Ribot & Peluso, 2003), in our study case from its outset, local (indigenous) value-frameworks and understandings had greater social power and motive force than the western (biodiversity) framework. We analyze what has since socio-culturally emerged from this interactive conflict: namely, an overlapping domain of still incommensurable and largely mutually unintelligible (western and indigenous) knowledge domains that nonetheless generated a variety of otherwise non-characteristic (or impossible) behaviors in actors. These behavioral changes have served to support the local sustainability of a restored forest and its surrounding village. 1.2. Background: forests in Benin Forests in Benin, as elsewhere, are a major eco-cultural resource. With a total land area of 11,276,000 ha in Benin,

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4,311,000 ha (38.2%) comprise forest (FAOSTAT, 2015), ranking the country in the second third (89th) of 228 countries with collected data (FAOSTAT, 2015). Also as elsewhere, forests in Benin are in a state of decline and threat. From 2001 to 2015, while arable land increased only 250,000 ha (10.2%) from 2,450,000 ha to 2,700,000 ha, forest areas decreased 700,000 ha (13.1%) from 5,011,000 ha to 4,311,000 ha (FAOSTAT, 2015). This suggests that conversion to farmland is not the only source of this loss; Tola (2010) cites population increases and the harvesting of wood for use as household charcoal. Nonetheless, the government of Benin has demonstrated consistent concern for its national forest resources and designated approximately 24% of such land as reserved or protected (Rombolli, 2008); also as elsewhere, enforcement of these protections remains challenging (Siebert & Elwert, 2004). Overall, ‘‘Benin has 20,000 ha of teak forest, more than 400,000 ha of private palm plantations, and 2940 sacred forests” (Rombolli, 2008, p. 13). From the 1940s to the 1980s, efforts were made to protect these sacred forests and to sequester their resources; however, an externally led coup attempt prompted increased opposition to traditional belief systems in Benin and set back this trend (ADF, 2005). In February 1989, Benin began what would prove to be a very slow process of decentralization (Mongbo, 1995)—meaning, the transfer of control of resources from the central government to other actors and institutions (Agrawal & Ribot, 1999). As with decentralization generally (Agrawal & Gupta, 2005; Ribot, 2008), the government of Benin intended to cede authority over forest resources to local communities—a devolution that would allow local people a more active role in decision-making around conservation and natural resources management (Shackleton, Campbell, Wollenberg, & Edmunds, 2002). Mixed outcomes from these decentralization efforts have generally been attributed to an inadequate relinquishment of State control over forest resources (Cronkleton, Pulhin, & Saigal, 2012; Djogbenou, Glèlè Kakaï, Arouna, & Sinsin, 2011). At present, while a majority of Benin’s sacred forests are remnants located mostly along the country’s southern coast (Rombolli, 2008), national (government-level) commitments aim to restore existing forests or to convert some forested areas to protected/sacred status (ADBG, 2017). This national effort particularly follows from the 2012 passage of Arrêté Interministériel No. 0121 (AI-121) ‘‘Setting the Conditions for the Sustainable Management of Sacred Forests in the Republic of Benin.” This law specifically created a structure, identified, and set aside sacred forests as ‘‘any forest home to several gods worshipped by the local population. It can be a hunting reserve, a forest of the ancestors, a burial forest, a forest of the gods or spirits, or a forest of secret societies” (Government of Benin, 2012, p. 2). These different area-types of sacred forest are not figures of speech; each has their own legal definition under AI-0121. The law also establishes a perimeter for local activities otherwise prohibited in sacred forests, including bush clearing, farming, charcoal production, and debarking. These distinctions of use and non-use of spaces—along with an empowered, decentralized structure to manage them—fit exactly into our analytical framework of edges, use, and bundles of power (Ribot & Peluso, 2003). 1.3. Methodology While our original research question sought to explore the broad social and behavioral factors that supported or challenged a sacred grove restoration project in Benin, political volatility in the area precluded our access to all of the actors in the area. In fact, we were warned that interviewing local villagers could place them at risk for reprisals, even violence. Subsequent attempts to solicit permission for access to interview local villagers were similarly

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rebuffed. Consequently, we changed our focus and research question to ask, ‘‘What factors contributed to, or inhibited, the project managers’ efforts to restore and maintain a forest in Benin at rain-forest levels of biodiversity?” As such, our interview sample captures the two insider perspectives provided by the project overseers: the original purchaser of the land (OP), who has been a firsthand observer of the project for its entire 20+ years, and a representative from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), which currently owns the forest land, and who also has firsthand observational knowledge of the project. We acknowledge that this necessarily limits the generalizability of findings in this study. Nonetheless, such insider perspectives not only can afford case study invaluable insights but also sometimes comprise the only access available (Pink, 2000); such is the case here. Moreover, the interview data collected bears immediately and directly on the research question, which centers on contributing and inhibiting factors involved in the project managers’ efforts to restore the forest. Interviews consisted of three onsite, approximately 60 min, indepth interviews with long-standing, firsthand observers of the project. Several follow-up queries were subsequently collected via email to clarify, expand, or add points covered in the interviews. Topics within the interviews extensively covered the full history of the forest restoration process from its beginnings, with the original purchaser of the land having had the most extensive, even daily, interaction with the widest range of actors in the study area. The interviews were transcribed, member-checked for accuracy, and triangulated to enhance data validity (Creswell, 2013; Olsen, 2004). In particular, triangulation between interviewees (Olsen, 2004) helped to confirm the historical progression of events aimed at restoring and maintaining a sacred grove in Benin at rainforest levels of biodiversity, which is the central phenomenon of this study. We also drew on documentary data—including the Beninese sacred forest legislation, Arrêté Interministériel no. 0121 (AI-121) of 2012, and documentation related to the transfer of forest ownership to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)—to further supplement, contextualize and triangulate the interviews to enhance their validity (Olsen, 2004). As one additional means for further contextualizing and/or mitigating any interpretative bias in the data, we also applied researcher reflexivity on our own and the insider’s categories of analysis used on the case study (Berger, 2015).

2. Case study: complexity and conflict around forest use and non-use in Benin In 1995, a yovo (a white man) privately purchased 2.5 ha of land in a remote rural area in Benin (30 km from a large, nearby city) with the intention of restoring the forest’s biodiversity to rainforest levels. This plot gradually increased in size to 14 ha by 2005 and remains demarked simply by a flimsy barbed wire fence. Over the years, the original purchaser (OP) introduced or reintroduced a large number of plant species, many from unprotected or highly endangered areas in the region, ultimately yielding a very high level of biodiversity (Neuenschwander & Adomou, 2017). This biodiversity included a population of critically endangered redbellied monkey (Cercopithecus erythrogaster erythrogaster). In 2014, the OP transferred legal ownership of the plot to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), while staying on as the plot’s manager (Interview, IITA Representative, 2017). Compared to other rain-forest type areas in Benin, this restored plot is quite large. Available forest statistics for Benin primarily tabulate as savannah forests those populated by much more widespread and common species. In contrast, the type of dense, humid

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forests modeled in this case’s project are not specified in African forest atlases due to their small size (<1 ha) (Interview, OP, 2017). Mostly restricted to research stations or specifically designated sacred areas, this type of forest accounts for well below 1% of the country’s surface but harbors 64% of all endangered plants (Interview, OP, 2017). As such, the total 14 ha of the IITA’s forest is roughly equivalent to twenty sacred forests (Interview, IITA Representative, 2017). From the outset, several key values motivated this project, including a generally recognized moral imperative for such work, the indigenous importance of forests for medicine, sacred practice, and other resources, and the critical role given to (genetic) biodiversity for long-term ecological and agriculture sustainability (Mäder et al., 2002; Neuenschwander et al., 2003; Pimentel et al., 1995). Nonetheless, several incidents of local resistance to this forest restoration intervention occurred. The most recurrent variety of local resistance involved impacts on restored or introduced species. While the OP initially left access open to local people, the uprooting of medicinal or restored plants (particularly for male potency), the ringing of trees for timber, and hunting impacts on animals had a disparate effect on restoration efforts. To ensure that local access to the forest would happen more sustainably, the OP and local people eventually agreed that he would supervise and approve any resource extraction. That the transplanted red-bellied monkeys, otherwise highly valued for meat, could recover in this forest signals a measure of the success of this arrangement. One dramatic incident, however, involved the felling of 65 trees after a local bokonon (seer) identified the forest as home to an evil spirit responsible for a murder in a nearby village. Additionally, hunters from beyond the immediate environs of the forest began poaching animal life as well. In response to this, and in consultation with the local elders, the OP arranged to pay $30 monthly to guard against further intruders—an arrangement that lasted only two years, because the elders did not receive a share of this income. A subsequent arrangement paid the same amount of money, but to an all-male committee composed of the OP, elders, middle-aged men (those responsible for digging the graves for deceased villagers, who are usually buried within their houses), and young men. All of these men were initiates of the local zangbeto sect (literally, ‘hunters of the night,’ a sect traditionally charged with guarding the village, but not the forest specifically). Money paid was kept in a metal box, guarded by one of the elders, with its key guarded by a middle-aged man. Committee meetings were held in the OP’s house—within the forest—and expenses could only be made by decision of the entire committee. The exclusion of women from these processes is characteristic (Interview, IITA Representative, 2017). Currently, guards or villagers conduct only occasional forays into the forest to supervise it. If somebody is found stealing wood or lianas, or is caught digging out squirrels or placing a trap, the offender is brought before the assembled zan-gbeto community, which imposes fines that can—in case of repeated transgressions—correspond to several months’ income, i.e., $100– $200. In the past twenty years, however, only some half dozen such incidents have occurred (Interview, OP, 2017), almost all with intruders caught by the OP and his employees, and none involving hunting with a rifle. Neuenschwander and Adomou (2017) emphasize that the flimsy fence around the forest perimeter exerts less of an authoritative barrier than the local vodun adogba traditions (the name for the local system of spiritual beliefs). Importantly, the fact that the OP has been initiated into three of these local sects has played a critical role not only in making the arrangement for guarding the forest described above possible but also for the success of the reforestation project in general. This initiation afforded the OP a

culturally competent and comprehensible warrant as a gatekeeper for forest resource access; that is, he attained local legal standing as a result. This standing has entailed also that many local people approach the OP for money to pay, for instance, for school fees, medical bills, or apprenticeships. ‘‘Few people in the village outside the small circle of immediate friends would tolerate the forest if it were not for this assistance” (Neuenschwander, Bown, Hèdégbètan, & Adomou, 2015, p. 35). This assistance also represents a traditional expectation of those charged with the protection and management of forests (Interview, IITA Representative, 2017). Lastly, the uniquely visible presence of red-bellied monkeys in the forest has gradually become a point of some local pride. The monkey’s presence also may ultimately provide some (limited) ecotourism income to the village (Interview, IITA Representative, 2017). As the only forest known in world where this critically endangered and otherwise extremely shy monkey can be observed and studied, it has become a focus for research that has attracted students, observers, and, increasingly, school classes as well (Interview, IITA Representative, 2017). Recently, some local villagers also founded an association that includes an elected executive charged with addressing environmental concerns and empowered to link up with NGOs or other organizations for information campaigns and organizing visits (Interview, IITA Representative, 2017). Given that the authority of vodun beliefs is weakening, this kind of outreach helps the forest to remain socially feasible (Interview, OP, 2017). Nonetheless, many local people complain that these kinds of forests make them look primitive or backward (Interview, OP, 2017). They insist that the forest throws them back to poverty, ‘‘even if they often cannot provide substantive evidence how” (Interview, OP, 2017). Newcomers to the area, in contrast, increasingly report enjoying the benefit of clear air, quiet, and the ‘nature’ of the forest and are more grateful for it, so long as its leaves and dead branches do not affect their metal roofs (Interview, OP, 2017). ‘‘The welcome, even in the best of cases, is very guarded!” (Interview, OP, 2017). Very recently, IITA formally introduced the forest project to the local authorities of the district and commune, including the powerful mayor of a larger nearby town (Interview, IITA Representative, 2017). While generally well-received, the OP noted, ‘‘As often in nature conservation, urban circles far away from a reserve are more positive towards its conservation than the concerned population around it,” (Interview, OP, 2017). Although large for a protected forest, its ‘‘footprint” on the surrounding area remains comparatively very small—for instance, ‘‘wood lots for forest products now take up more space than the forest” itself (Interview, OP, 2017). Nevertheless, from the beginning, local actors made clear that any damages incurred from the presence of the forest would be liable for compensation. As such, each year the OP pays approximately $100–200 for demonstrated damage on maize crops by forest monkeys—mostly the indigenous green monkeys, which have since taken up the forest as their home in abundance. The OP also pays two hunters for scaring monkeys out of maize fields. Nonetheless, claims for damage compensation are typically fraught with disagreements about the extent of damage—real, imagined, or otherwise—and ‘‘leave much to be desired in terms of ensuring that all parties are satisfied by the outcome” (Interview, OP, 2017). Lastly, while AI-0121 provides a legal procedure for designating local forests as sacred, in the present case, a similar outcome was achieved through a second private land sale. A local family that until recently had owned and traditionally managed a sacred grove split along religious lines, with one part remaining traditionally vodun and the other taking up an aggressive evangelical Christianity now present in the area. In a lawsuit over ownership of the grove, the courts awarded the grove to the Christian half of the family, who then intended to sell it. Elders from the vodun half

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of family approached the OP and asked him to buy the grove in order to save it. He did so and subsequently gifted the forest back to the vodun half of the family, who in turn initiated him into their familial religious sect. He has since served as the grove’s manager and opens it up every 10th of January for yearly festivities and, in between, on demand (Interview, OP, 2017). Here, an ideological newcomer (a particularly aggressive evangelical Christianity) appears on the scene to exert its local pressure. In this instance, the actor of the local population itself splits into two camps, such that the ‘‘traditional” actors feel prompted to call upon the OP to serve as an intermediary for stewarding the land away from a sale that might well lead to its destruction. The OP stresses that his purchase price for this land equaled what an urban developer would have paid; ‘‘This is quite different from the many projects where foreigners aim at conserving and managing (for biodiversity conservation) local forests that belong to the community” (Interview, OP, 2017). Specifically, out of his long experience in the area with the project, he states: one of the major points that permit forest conservation is the fact that the owner of the land must be active in this conservation and does not ’delegate’ this to someone else. More pointedly, I think one cannot sustainably protect a forest for somebody else (Interview, OP, 2017).

This point of view echoes local tradition, given that those charged with stewardship of different areas of forest, whether sacred or not, are most often directly involved in its management. Here again, the notion of an immediate steward of land (in contrast to a distant or mediate owner of property) not only suggests a private/public edge markedly different from the definition of property—as the ‘‘sole and despotic dominion . . . over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe” (ctd. in Rose, 1986, p. 1, fn 1)—but also points toward a more sustainable form of land management. In general, over the past two decades, while actors have practiced a collaborative ‘talking with people’ (Sodeik, 1998, p. 5) approach to make the forest project both successful and sustainable, they have done so from widely disparate perspectives. The traditional (local) perspective views forest land as explicitly intended for use in farming, hunting, and other resource extraction. This conflicts directly with a conservationist or biodiversity (humanitarian) perspective that argues for the non-use of some (or all of certain kinds of) forest resources. Despite these mutually unintelligible frameworks, however, Neuenschwander and Adomou (2017) can note, ‘‘At present, the protection of the forest is good, i.e., no trees are debarked or felled, few lianas cut, no fire is laid, and no hunting is observed, except for some digging-out of ground squirrels or Gambian rats” (p. 66).

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as its manager. Any effects from the transfer would seem deferred until such time as the OP ceases acting in his current role. 3.1. New interactive dynamics Central to the cross-cultural humanitarian agenda to restore, protect, and preserve a forest in this project is biodiversity. Here, the argument for biodiversity addresses both agricultural and nonagricultural benefits, including increased ecological resilience, genetic resources, aesthetic beauty, and wider habitation for nonhuman species (Alroy, 2017; Dunnett, 2006; Moonen & Barberi, 2008; Oliver et al., 2015; Xu, Lippke, & Perez-Garcia, 2003). For the government of Benin, a core value of the national agenda to restore, protect, and preserve forests in general is respect for divinities. Article 2 of Arrêté Interministériel no. 0121 (AI-0121) states this explicitly, ‘‘Subject to these rules [for sacred forests] are any spaces considered as habitats of several gods worshipped by the people and which have followed the procedure for legal recognition or the procedure for integration into the commune’s forest area” (Government of Benin, 2012). This respect for divinities also reflects the traditional local use of (sacred) forests for the support and livelihood of local people. As rationales for undertaking restorative or protectionist forest management, biodiversity and respect for divinities are radically dissimilar. In fact, they rest on incommensurable, mutually unintelligible ontologies. Nonetheless, the edges formed by the interaction of these incommensurable value-systems and knowledge frameworks allowed a range of interactions between dissimilar actors in support of the forest that were otherwise impossible. For instance, pressure by outside intruders (hunters) from a nearby larger city dynamically transformed the traditional role of the zan-gbeto men. Rather than serving only as protectors of the village, they became protectors of the forest as well and were paid cash to do so. As such, their motivation to protect red-bellied monkeys from hunting was not for the sake of biodiversity. Similarly, other (nonhuman) outsiders—above all, the redbellied monkey themselves, but also the other restored animal and plant species in the forest—enjoyed the OP’s protection from hunting and foraging by local actors. Without the legal standing conferred on the OP by his initiation into various local sects (including the zan-gbeto), other local actors would not have perceived or accepted him as a duly authorized manager of the forest (Neuenschwander et al., 2015). This standing as the forest’s manager also brought with it a liability for the ‘‘behavior” of the forest (e.g., damages incurred to local crops by monkeys living within it) along with a duty of financial largesse toward local people in need. While these behaviors by the OP were for the sake of biodiversity— or, more exactly, for the sake of assuring biodiversity by making the sustainability of the forest itself feasible—the motivations of those actors (human and nonhuman alike) that he interacted with through those behavior were not for the sake of biodiversity.

3. Case analysis 3.2. Extending existing edges Results of our data analysis produced three main themes: (1) negotiations around use or non-use of the forest, (2) widening or extension of existing edges, and (3) responses to emergent pressures on the forest. While we specifically address these below in light of our research question (‘‘What attitudes, behaviors, perceptions, and/or shared values by actors interacting with the forest promoted or inhibited forest restoration and maintenance?”), initially we must note that the factor of ‘shared values’ had an unexpectedly indirect, and sometimes no, relationship to the question. Similarly, secondary data analysis of documentation around the transfer of ownership to IITA and/or the present relationship of IITA to the forest revealed no critical themes. That is, while IITA formally owns the land, the OP continues to live in the forest and acts

Major points of contention between actors in this project arose precisely at those places and times that the project managers’ restorative/preservationist goal of biodiversity required a non-use of certain restored species by villagers that the local taboos did not already prohibit. Most visibly, this conflict involved the OP’s request that local people not hunt the (endangered) red-bellied monkey for food. This ability to make such a request only became possible, the OP insisted, due to his initiations into local sects (Interview, OP, 2017). In this way, negotiating successes in these conflicted situations involved the extension (or emergence) of edges and the consequent dynamic changes to human and nonhuman actor behavior within them.

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Two specifically local examples of these extended edges include: (1) the OP’s overlapping, hybrid role as a traditional (but European) forest manager (an identity-edge), and (2) the new function of the local zan-gbeto sect members as guardians of both the village and the forest (an institution-edge). Both of these edges generated patterns of behavior and interaction locally not previously seen. Relatedly, AI-021 and the legal documentation for IITA’s ownership of the forest formally define and support a buffer or use-perimeter (an edge-space) around the forest. This buffer affords, but also limits, the traditional behavior-uses of hunting, farming, and plant foraging to that area only. Additionally, the forest now also ecologically affords a safe haven for the otherwise hunted red-bellied monkey and generates a possible source of eco-tourism locally for the village. Taken together, these three edges comprise a part of an overarching process or goalsoutcome edge (a collective mission, as described in the Discussion below). Fig. 1 visually captures these various edges. The dramatic events around 65 trees being cut down at the entryway to the village (Neuenschwander & Adomou, 2017) also vividly illustrates an edge. Ostensibly, the attackers sought to counteract the activity of a murderous evil spirit living within the forest. But the attack was also motivated by a group of local actors in the village who wanted to get rid of the entire forest (Interview, IITA Representative, 2017); they felt that the forest entryway made the village look backward (Interview, OP, 2017). While Neuenschwander et al. (2015) suggested that this incident ‘‘demonstrated the possible negative effects of local beliefs” (p. 34), we cannot reduce these local beliefs simply to ‘‘superstitions” about evil spirits or ‘‘backroom politicking” by a few village elite for the sake of increasing local real estate values. We can see the outcome of this event as an edge and collision between (supposedly backward) ‘‘traditional” values and (supposedly progressive) ‘‘anti-traditional” values about land as real

estate. In fact, this specific, concrete, and actual event only became locally possible, and took the form that it did, because of the edge between them. Here, an entire network of ideas and affects about forests as a sign of ‘‘backwardness” overlaps across the notions of ‘‘traditional values as superstition” and ‘‘economic self-interest of land as real estate,” but with unexpected results. The OP reports: I have meanwhile replaced those rather worthless [sixty-five] trees with selected, interesting, and rare trees, among which some have now grown to about 15 m. Soon this botanical garden will be a nice forest again. And nobody complains anymore (Interview, OP, 2017). This points to the complexity of themes at play in the outcome of the attack. Whether we construe this ‘‘removal of an evil spirit” in overtly traditional (literal) terms or as covertly obfuscating a hidden motive of creative destruction for the sake of local real estate values (Harvey, 2007; Schumpeter, 1943), the event cleared a way, literally, for a strengthening of the forest project, both in its own terms and in the eyes even of disaffected local actors. As such, the edge formed in this case by ‘‘backward superstition” and ‘‘antitraditional land speculation” generated an ‘‘upgraded restoration of forest biodiversity” as an outcome rather than some ‘‘conventional developmental, or real estate, improvement.” Considerable human ingenuity and proactivity were involved as well in this outcome, but the edge itself opened a space where that ingenuity and proactivity could behave in unprecedented ways. Another instance involved intrusions by (non-local) hunters from a nearby large city that extended the existing edges of the forest in its defense. Here, the local legal standing of the OP enabled an otherwise unlikely series of negotiations by local actors to protect the forest: first, to hire paid (zan-gbeto) guards to also protect the forest and, later—under pressure from local elites who decided they should have a cut in this arrangement—the establishment of a

Fig. 1. Three edges of space, identity, and process/goal outcomes supporting the successful restoration of rain-forest biodiversity levels in Benin. *Note that the use-perimeter indicated above is established by law through Benin’s sacred forest legislation Arrêté Interministériel No. 0121 (AI-121) ‘‘Setting the Conditions for the Sustainable Management of Sacred Forests in the Republic of Benin.”

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more permanent, institutional committee and procedure that functioned, at least in part, to protect the forest. As the spirit attack on the 65 trees generated a new entryway, the intruding (non-local) hunters generated the emergence of a new management institution; both enhanced the feasibility and sustainability of the forest. Moreover, the OP’s obligation to pay for damages incurred by the forest against its surroundings had two major consequences. It (1) created a judicial space for real, imagined, and fabricated grievances against the forest by local actors, and (2) provided a means for the new committee members to further enhance their local authority and prestige. Recalling that Krause (2014) describes NGO humanitarianism as a node or throughput for connecting a prevailing discourse of suffering in the world to all manner of interests and resource streams that desire to intervene into that suffering, this new institutional committee similarly acts as the intermediary node or throughput for connecting grievances ‘‘caused” by the forest to resource streams tasked with redressing them. However, for the OP, the purpose of the guards and the committee is for the sake of biodiversity; the motivations and goals of the zan-gbeto hunters and committee members alike, while complex, do not include biodiversity in their calculations. 3.3. Encountering pressure from newcomers Two significant instances of pressures from newcomers inform this case as well: (1) the introduction of endangered, red-bellied monkeys into the forest and (2) the incursion of new landholders from the nearby large city. For the red-bellied monkeys, an absolute prohibition on hunting them conflicted directly with the absence of any local taboo for hunting such monkeys for food. In this case, the ‘talking to people’ approach (Sodeik, 1998) was indispensable. Initially, the OP’s attainment of local legal standing in the community’s eyes empowered him to impose or propose no ‘‘resource extraction” of this particular forest inhabitant. Later, he further argued to the local population that the red-bellied monkey was an attractive local asset, providing both a source of pride for the village and possible income from ecotourism. Thus, the OP first imposed a non-use on a prior use, and then culturally re-valued (or attempted to argue for a re-valuation) of that non-use as advantageous. AI-0121 similarly supplies a protocol for imposing a non-use on land previously used for other activities; a key part of this protocol, importantly, involves stipulating an edge (a buffer, as an alternative area) where such traditional activity may continue. The OP’s arrangement to protect red-bellied monkeys in the forest represents an analogous instance of this edge. As AI-0121 redirects activity from one (prohibited) area to another (permitted) one, the OP similarly redirected local hunting from the endangered red-bellied monkey to the non-endangered green monkey that had also taken up abundant habitation in the forest. Moreover, as AI-0121 proposes a change of value or meaning to the non-used land (now seen as sacred), the OP similarly revalued the non-use of red-bellied monkeys as a source of local pride and possible ecotourism for the village. That green monkeys afford an edge for the safe status of redbellied monkeys in the forest represents a key point for the successes of this project. Further successes are signaled more broadly by the many other nonhuman (plant and animal) newcomers restored or introduced but now safely maintained in the forest (Neuenschwander et al., 2015). However, just as the revaluation proposed by AI-1021 is not always honored in local settings, the revaluation of red-bellied monkeys (and the forest in general) can be tenuous as well; ‘‘the welcome, even in the best of cases, is very guarded!” (Interview, OP, 2017). As such, while the OP and other local actors may cooperate on some non-uses of the for-

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est, there is not necessarily any agreement or shared value with respect to the goal(s) of that work. With the incursion of new landholders from a nearby large city into the village, this placed even more complex pressures on the forest. For financial reasons, a majority of local villagers have had to sell their land, frequently to people from the nearby large city who intend someday to build houses on that land. Most of these new landowners, however, are absentee owners at present. Consequently, the villagers continue to farm their former land but have long since spent the proceeds of the land sale, effectively becoming landless (Interview, OP, 2017). The result is a mix of mostly very modest houses on 500 square meter lots, with lots that are under fallow, and some that are so heavily farmed that the soil is exhausted and only covered by Imperata [a local variety of] grass, which is good for nothing and prevents any further planting (Interview, OP, 2017). In a few land-plots closer to the city, larger houses occupy the entire plot and are separated from their neighbors only by the width of the air conditioners sticking out. ‘‘Interestingly, many old villagers seem to prefer this scenario to the forest they now have adjacent to their backyard, [the forest being too] much like when they were youngsters growing up in a ‘primitive’ village” (Interview, OP, 2017). In contrast, the newcomers to the area— whether they have moved there or have yet to build a house—tend to have a less negative view of the forest. This broadly suggests two sets of actors: (1) those (often longstanding inhabitants of the village) who view the forest as a primitive—or even embarrassing— remnant of past backwardness, and (2) those (often new arrivals or new landholders in the village) who view the forest as an aesthetic, even historical, reservoir of cultural heritage. Bendix (2000) has trenchantly described how the banner and politics of ‘heritage’ can serve not only to paper over or mute a historically contested, vastly unequal power dynamics by actors in an area but also exposes how possession, preservation, and even the value of ‘heritage’ itself becomes a curiously compulsive habit of the petite bourgeoisie. The prototypical example of this is the containment of indigenous American populations to reservations where they can practice (perhaps even are expected to exclusively practice) their heritage, while newcomers occupy their dispossessed land. At our case site, the unsustainable quality of local agriculture by the now dispossessed and landless farmers seems likely only to dispossess them further. This, in parallel with an aspirational, although perhaps never-to-be-realized, goal of home ownership by new landholders from the nearby city indeed seems to recapitulate the sense of ‘heritage’ that Bendix (2000) identifies. In this way, an edge begins to form between a (local) old-timers’ anti-‘heritage’ attitude that conflicts with a (non-local) newcomer, pro-‘heritage’ attitude. At this juncture, histories around race, colonialism, and neoliberal globalization all become key both in the background and foreground for the actors involved (Baldwin, 2009; Mongbo, 2008; Von Hellermann & Usuanlele, 2009; Zimmerer, 2006). For local actors, in any case, dispossession is still dispossession, whether in the name of conservation, preservation, biodiversity, or what the rest of this paper, following Bendix (2000), will generally refer to as ‘heritage’. On this view, heritage risks transforming the forest into a static diorama, a museum-like display that one can look at but not touch or use (Bendix, 2000; Benjaminsen & Bryceson, 2012; Hall, 2013; Li, 2010; Massé & Lunstrum, 2016; Neves & Igoe, 2012). These wide-ranging and large conceptual abstractions notwithstanding, it is also here where the most concrete and specific manifestations of local harm in the name of heritage can occur— moments, for example, when a local person is told they cannot feed their family, or is reduced to begging, despite a ready source of

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food in the forest nearby. To raise this point does not impugn the goals or the better impulses of heritage and humanitarian assistance in general but simply acknowledges the rationalities of local resistances to such help. It also, more importantly, highlights the clear need for an edge called for by that resistance. Once the situation devolves, implicitly or explicitly, to ‘‘I know your family is poor and hungry, but you simply cannot kill that red-bellied monkey to eat in the name of biodiversity,” this discloses the high stakes involved and suggests that lines are being too sharply drawn between use/non-use alternatives. More complexly still, however, multiple standpoints might also reasonably argue for the rights of the red-bellied and green monkeys—if not the forest overall, as a living, even sovereign, being—as not properly being subject to human consumption at all (Benton, 1996; Kaoma, 2017; Kimmerer, 2013; LaDuke, 2017; Singer, 1973; Wilson, 2017). Even here still, however, a toodecisive sharpness of the virgule across the human/nonhuman divide (Kalof, 2017) argues again for the need for an edge, for more negotiation and wiggle room, for more alternatives and space to act. Kelly (2011) emphasizes the importance of not conflating the differing goals of (indigenous) accumulation and (western) conservation; specifically, ‘‘Though primitive accumulation generally involves the enclosure of a commons in favor of private property, protected areas generally create public, not private property. Protected areas that limit extraction are not being commodified, but are being taken out of the market” (p. 683). This helps to understand instances where use is converted to non-use and vice versa, but it also shows the need to frame public holdings as manageable bundles of power as access (Ribot & Peluso, 2003). In the case of this study, that green monkeys were available as an alternative to hunting red-bellied monkeys afforded an edge—some wiggle room and space for negotiation between human actors—where the (human) goals of biodiversity and local sustenance could coincide, albeit at the expense of the green monkey. The successful outcome of red-bellied monkey restoration and protection at this forest project despite different (incommensurable) human motives at play points to what we call a collective mission (see below). It illustrates that an edge does not necessarily require (and may not be able to achieve) consensus about the framework for understanding use-activity within the space of that edge. Here—as in much of the co-operation by the actors at this forest project, especially at the beginning—activities proceeded without a clear understanding of each other’s rationale. More exactly, actors managed to co-operate at the forest despite an active (and confident) misunderstanding about each other’s rationales.

4. Discussion At present, the successful physical restoration of a portion of Beninese forest to rain-forest biodiversity levels has been matched as well by a socially sustainable presence of that forest in its local context. Tensions remain, however, around the shift of public opinion from traditional forest use towards biodiversity; more precisely, the edge of ‘‘biodiversity” and ‘‘tradition” at the forest has generated a range of successful (local) sociocultural changes that will continue to change going into the future. As such, while some local people can still perceive the forest as a (historically fraught) symbol of backwardness, it also continues to support traditional use, albeit in a differently managed way. Institutional shifts have occurred as well, both in the role of the zan-gbeto (men’s) sect and the committee formed to address grievances with the forest. Meanwhile, potentials for new income from ecotourism, local pride over saving a rare and endangered species of monkey, and land speculation by absentee owners from the larger city nearby remain as latent, not-yet-fully realized local changes.

In general, the case’s situational dynamics, its shifting overlaps of edges, and its responses to pressures from various newcomers disclosed four key aspects integral to the project’s successes to date: (1) sustainability, (2) indigenous knowledge-practices, (3) the emergence of a collective mission, and (4) more dignified qualities of life. 4.1. Sustainability The actors committed either to biodiversity or to supporting their livelihoods using forest resources both share a desire for the forest to persist indefinitely into the future. For some local actors, this means traditional stewardship/management of the forest; for the OP, this means managing and protecting restored and rare species specifically. This sense of indefinite management points to sustainability as a goal (or an end) of the forest generally, although actors differ markedly about the means (e.g., hunting or not hunting the red-bellied monkey, preserving or converting land-values for newcomers eventually moving into the village from the nearby large city). Other actors, however, are not committed to this indefinite management. Local people can see the forest as making the village look backward. Others (like the newly Christian family, who sold their forest) see traditional management as demonic or simply a financial opportunity, like others who view the forest as convertible to more valuable assets (i.e., houses and real estate). A majority view the forest as the main (or only) resource available to support their livelihoods, endangered species or not, biodiversity or not. For local non-elites in particular, the precarity of their economic situation is generally threatened with worsening from deforestation factors like population increases, agricultural expansion, resource extraction, or land-grabbing (Brosius, 1997; Bryant et al., 1997; Maruyama & Morioka, 1998). Locally, the eventual appearance of absentee landowners may result in local farmer evictions. In general, social stability and food security remain a basic need. Scholars have noted a relationship between poverty and endangered forests that results in considerable and more disparate poverty effects in rural settings (Bird & Shepherd, 2003; Hulme & Shepherd, 2003; McKay & Lawson, 2003). Sunderlin et al. (2005) writes specifically that severe rural poverty and remaining stands of forests share an ‘‘overlapping space” (p. 1384). Nonetheless, local people’s interactions with the forest involve more than economics. The rural poor, for instance, derive a larger proportion of income from forests compared to other groups (Vedeld, Angelsen, Bojö, Sjaastad, & Berg, 2007). This points to the greater cultural wealth (not just income) that forests afford the rural poor (Sunderlin et al., 2005). For this reason, any effort to transition forests to other uses (like farming) that degrade, rather than developmentally improve, an area can have especially devastating consequences (Mather, Fairbairn, & Needle, 1999; Rudel & Horowitz, 1993). As Corntassel (2008) observed, ‘‘Unfortunately, what is considered sustainable practice by states comes at a high price for indigenous communities, often leading to the further degradation of their homelands and natural resources” (p. 108). The replacement of sixty-five ‘‘worthless” trees at the village entrance with ‘‘interesting, and rare trees” illustrates a contrasting, more sustainable conversion of forest land. Sustainability optimizes not only economic parameters, but also social and environmental parameters as well (United Nations, 2015). While the ‘‘real estate deal” of the original attack on the trees might have had a goal of local economic development, the subsequent restoration of the forest not only increased the forest’s biodiversity (environmentally) and made the village seem less backwards to some local actors (socially), but also potentially increased opportunities for ecotourism and land values (economically).

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4.2. Indigenous Knowledge-Practices (IKP) At particular risk in this overlapping space of rural poverty and forests is the value of indigenous knowledge and practices, signaled on the one hand by the local distaste for being perceived as backward and, on the other, by non-local idealizations of indigenous knowledge-practices (IKP) under the guise of ‘‘heritage” (Bendix, 2000). While IKP was historically suppressed or prohibited by colonial powers across Africa (Quan-Baffour, 2017), now, during the afterlife of colonialism, this can forge links to a stigma of backwardness for all things traditional. This stigma is exacerbated in Benin by the previous anti-witchcraft campaigns by the government and the relatively recent rise of an especially aggressive evangelical Christianity that frames IKP as ungodly or demonic (Falen, 2007; Kohnert, 1996; Tall, 2014). To the extent that indigenous agro-ecological practices can better effect more sustainable agricultural and landscape management outcomes (McNeely & Schroth, 2006; Nair, Viswanath, & Lubina, 2017), the stigmatization of traditional IKP represents an especially damaging problem. Traditional knowledge-practices, however, are not limited only to agro-ecological practices but also inform the total moral life of a community. Philosophically, this moral life includes the kinds of lived African realities suggested by Ubuntu, ukama, uMunthu, and similar concepts (Bidwell, 2010; Gathogo, 2008; Le Grange, 2012; Ngunjiri, 2016; Sharra, 2010; Tutu, 1999). Socially, this invokes not only the interconnected mutual obligations between people general but also, more fundamentally, the ontologically co-embedded ground of the person and community (Achebe, 1980; Elliott, 1998; Freire, 1970; Mangena, 2013; Olson & Li, 2015; Thomas, 2007)—that is, the overlapping edge of an ‘‘us” that arises from the co-presence of two or more people together. Precisely because this involves the total moral life of the community, neither any idealizations or denunciations of IKP, nor delays while IKP is ‘scientized’ to the satisfaction of nonindigenous epistemologies and powers (Agrawal, 1995) will meet local actors’ needs and desires for contemporary (not backward) and relevant (not ineffective) means for supporting their livelihoods in the here and now. As such, this suggests an edge between ‘‘indigenous knowledge” (as traditional or ‘‘heritage”) and ‘‘local knowledge” (as contemporary or ‘‘modern”)—and thus a social space where the indigenous and the local intersect to generate a variety of behavior that neither category alone affords. We see this, for instance, in how the indigenous zan-gbeto hunters of the night, who traditionally protected only the village, were hired and paid by the OP to protect the forest as well. This was not simply a canny and cost-effective use of local social structures by the OP to secure protection of the forest in the absence of other feasible alternatives. Rather, it represented a genuine transformation of (traditional) indigenous knowledge practiced by co-operating local actors that collectively re-valued those practices as relevant to (contemporary) local needs of people here and now. Similarly, the very restoration of the forest itself to more primordial levels of rain-forest biodiversity brings a ‘‘pre-human” indigeneity up-to-date within a (much more recent) ‘‘local” human use-setting. Indigeneity and locality themselves being already shifting and mobile categories, if we would preserve IKP without turning it into a static and unchanging museum piece of heritage (Bendix, 2000), then it must necessarily be framed and adapted (just as local people have been framing and adapting it since time immemorial) to effective local uses in the here and now. 4.3. Collective missions Considerable literature identifies a variety of elements, aspects, functions, processes, and/or techniques that can enhance a collaboration’s chances of success (Williams, 2015). Among these,

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researchers highlight mutual understanding between collaborators as essential. Suter et al. (2009), for instance, refers to mutual understanding as a core competency, while Child (2001) positions it as a prerequisite condition for trust. These benefits of mutual understanding notwithstanding, circumstances can sometimes preclude it; Cramton (2001), for instance, identifies the challenge of trying to manage, share, or maintain a mutual understanding across dispersed networks of collaboration. In contrast, we use the term ‘‘collective missions” to designate those types of behaviors where more than two actors simultaneously work toward a goal without necessarily interpreting or understanding the behaviors of other actors through a shared or common framework. As our findings suggest, these frameworks can be mutually unintelligible without precluding success. For example, when local hunters took up the OP’s request not to hunt a huntable animal in the forest, this compromise or deferral to the legal standing of the OP (as the forest’s steward) did not necessarily take the conservationist framework as relevant or convincing. Per Child (2001), trust plays an enormous role here, but it arises from the legal standing of the OP in the eyes of the wider community and thus other behavioral compromises or deferrals of action on both sides as part of a collective mission. Mismatches between incommensurable value-systems can often completely rule out mutual understanding. For instance, science-based ‘‘biodiversity” may simply overlook the ‘‘irrationality” of the Beninese government’s intention to ‘‘respect the gods” as part of its forest preservation work. As such, a biodiversity framework can describe the felling of sixty-five trees at the forest’s entrance as demonstrating ‘‘the possible negative effects of local beliefs” (Neuenschwander et al., 2015, p. 34). Alternatively, one could also frame the attack as demonstrating a local judgment on the irrationality of (western) beliefs about some supposed need for biodiversity, if not a neocolonial desire to keep Africans in a perceived condition of backwardness. The conflict of values here vividly illustrates the misunderstanding, if not the sheer incommensurability or mutual unintelligibility, of the knowledge frameworks in play. Despite this, the general success of the forest restoration project overall demonstrates that successes are achievable across such gaps. To put this more strongly, successes can be achieved even with quite active mutual misunderstanding. Again, we speak of a collective mission to capture this kind of situation. Under a collective mission, furthermore, we would highlight the co-managerial behavior of dissimilar actors within the forest. This behavior operates within the overlap of otherwise non-aligned worldviews and interpretive frameworks—specifically an edge, where ‘‘biodiversity,” as a (western) forest ‘‘non-use,” and ‘‘respect for divinities” (or simply ‘‘everyday life”) as an (indigenous/local) traditional forest ‘‘use” intersect and generate a variety of behaviors not otherwise possible. At the case site, this situation resulted in compromises or modifications to behavior by actors that often emerged not out of any shared understanding with respect to the use of the forest but became possible and practicable through the space of an edge. Some of these behaviors, strictly speaking, were not in the direct interests of either party as they understood them. For instance, local people gradually refrained from hunting the (huntable) red-bellied monkey for meat, and the OP gradually took on the role of not only selecting which, if any, of the restored plants that local foragers could take but also at times disbursing funds to local people for tuition, medical emergencies, and the like. In this way, local people acted like protectors of biodiversity, and the OP acted like a traditional forest manager, without either side necessarily assuming or agreeing to the framework or the terms required for acting like that. This deferral of direct interests by an actor on behalf of a larger group goal or interest, but which nevertheless provides some

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advantage to the actor, characterizes most cooperative efforts in general (Williams, 2015). While such deferral is visible in our case, its distinguishing feature as a collective mission is how a mutual misunderstanding between actors did not preclude successful collaboration. It was enough that both sides could perceive in the other a behavior like what they understood through their own frameworks; this helped to foster mutual trust in one another (Gambetta, 1988). 4.4. Dignified quality of life Lastly, for all actors, the value of a dignified quality of life suggests another edge at the forest project. To inspire pride of place for all involved may further help to manage the space more sustainably. Part of this would be not simply to collect and preserve vanishing indigenous knowledge-practices from among elders and other knowledge experts in the area, but to reframe the present cultural practices by local actors as indigenous knowledge. More precisely, an edge specifically of ‘‘local” knowledge could represent the overlap of the traditional and the contemporary, the indigenous and the western. Only under a repressive regime of ‘heritage’ does indigenous knowledge become a museum piece from the distant past that must not change (Bendix, 2000); indigenous knowledge, rather, has always been something practiced in the here and now. Moreover, (short-term) outcomes from local interventions that disrupt fewer of the prevailing cultural norms will achieve more desirable (long-term) impacts and therefore exhibit greater sustainability. Desai (2017), for instance, highlights the problematic shifts of social identity and self-identification required by entrepreneurial personality under globalizing neoliberalism. More generally, under pressures to transform and assimilate change, people (especially immigrants) and organizations alike best succeed when they can mediate and blend the prior and old with the present and new (Audretsch, Obschonka, Gosling, & Potter, 2017; Patvardhan, Gioia, & Hamilton, 2015; Szabo & Ward, 2015). In the present case, the aesthetic refurbishment of the forest entryway (after the destruction of 65 trees) lessened the local sense of an undignified backwardness of village life while also improving the land-value for the village as a whole, not just for select individuals.

ical lenses to further analyze this (and other) cases. We believe— not unlike the affordances of an edge itself—that such multiple, overlapping analyses would in fact creatively generate and disclose further insights into such cases not otherwise visible to any one framework itself. While an edge can be deployed quickly, it may also sometimes take considerable time for the generative creativity of an edge to emerge. Just as amphibious life did not appear overnight in the edge of the shore formed by the intersection of the land and the sea, the opportunity for the OP’s transformation from a (European) outsider to a recognized (traditional forest manager) insider emerged only gradually out of his local practice of identity and the local people’s recognition and extension of legal standing to him. While future research could more deeply explore how this generative creativity of edges works and brings about changes in concrete social situations, not all humanitarian interventions have the luxury of time. Situations of crisis can often demand action much sooner than later, but even in such fast-moving situations, the use of edges may still be possible—future research remains to determine this. Relatedly, situations where cross-cultural domains interact or abut may incidentally generate an edge and with it accidental or unforeseen consequences (positive, neutral, or negative). As such, to plan proactively against any negative long-term impacts locally from various positive short-term goals or outcomes not only would better support the goal of sustainability in general but also could be supported by recognizing any structural and/or conceptual presences of edges. The findings of this study also suggest that collective missions afford a unique opportunity for avoiding or mitigating some of the more problematic or self-defeating conflicts that can arise during cross-cultural humanitarian assistance. For instance, actors need not agree on—much less force a consensus about, or demand a conformance to—some (western or indigenous) truth in advance or limit collaborative participation only to those willing and able to do so. As a less disruptive process, collective missions are potentially not only more sustainable but also better able to generate within their edges the conditions for the emergence of the shared or needed behavioral ethic among actors that would support the future life of a project. Future research to identify and study the affordances and effects of collective missions is needed. 5.1. Limitations

5. Conclusion & recommendations The successes at this restoration project in Benin are the fruits of much human labor and effort over a twenty-year and still ongoing period. During those two decades, the space of the forest and its environs hosted a considerable number of slow (gradual) transformations to individuals, institutions, identities, and the forest itself that involved advances and setbacks, promotion and resistance, misunderstandings and improvisations, and long-term aspirations for the sustainable and indefinite persistence of the forest. Although slow in its progression, this pace agrees also with the slow pace of plant growth, animal reproductive cycles, and the unavoidable yearly cycling of the seasons. This relatively slow pace also affords ample time for talking to people (Sodeik, 1998), as a necessary step toward developing trust and a common vocabulary of behaviors for using (and not using) the forest. To what extent this vocabulary or repertoire of behaviors has ever translated, fully and clearly, into a common framework of understanding by the many actors involved remains an open question; such a common understanding was, in any case, not prerequisite to the present case’s successes. Insofar as this finding may contradict the commonplace that calls for mutual understanding as necessary for achieving collaborative success, the findings from this study invite future research using other theoret-

Important limitations constrain the generalizability of findings from this study. First, as for all qualitative research, the findings are constrained by the specificities of the time and the place of the research. It would remain to be seen, as a topic of future research, to what extent this study connects to, supports, or challenges other general areas of research devoted to forest restoration: whether in Africa or elsewhere, in terms of biodiversity or for the sake of establishing carbon reservoirs, in terms of managing or leveraging funds of knowledge (indigenous or scientific) to achieve restoration goals, and the role of perceptions or attitudes (by scientists, local people, or politicians setting national forest policies) on the successes and challenges facing forest restoration efforts most broadly. Beyond identifying the apples and apples to measure and link these findings to other research, the other key limitation involves our indirect access to local voices. Although the two data sources (the original land purchaser and IITA representative) have both been observers of the project over its entire 20+ year history—indeed, one has been initiated into three of the local men’s sects— it is unfortunate that political volatility in the area precluded direct access to local villagers. Nonetheless, while the indirect perceptions of the project managers with respect to villagers’ motivations, understandings, and actions undeniably play a central role

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in how the managers strategized and imagined their situation when attempting to move forward with the forest restoration project, we applied triangulation and researcher reflexivity to help enhance the project managers’ interview data and reduce bias. Future research could specifically compare perceptions and attitudes (by project managers, local villagers, and policy setters alike) in order to still more deeply explore the interactive ethics that support forest restoration, even when the actors involved do not share frameworks of belief. Additional research could also affirm or further contextualize any successful or lasting effects that edges affect with respect to the forest project (and/or forest restoration projects more broadly). Certainly Benin’s Arrêté Interministériel No. 0121, as a national law and policy, explicitly delineates a literal edge (a use-perimeter) around otherwise protected forests that not only recognizes local people’s desires but also affords them a space to practice traditional hunting, farming, and foraging activities. Funding This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Declaration of Competing Interest The author declares that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. References Achebe, C. (1980). Interview. In P. Egejuru (Ed.), Towards African literary independence: a dialogue with contemporary African writers (pp. 122–123). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ADBG (2017). Benin community forest management support project – phase II (PAGEFCOM-II) appraisal report. Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire: African Development Bank Group. ADF (2005). Republic of Benin communal forests management support Project (Pagefcom) appraisal report. Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire: African Development Bank Group. Agrawal, A. (1995). Dismantling the divide between indigenous and scientific knowledge. Development and Change, 26, 413–439. Agrawal, A., & Gupta, K. (2005). Decentralization and participation: The governance of common pool resources in Nepal’s Terai. World Development, 33, 1101–1114. Agrawal, A., & Ribot, J. (1999). Accountability in decentralization: A framework with South Asian and West African cases. The Journal of Developing Areas, 33, 473–502. Alroy, J. (2017). Effects of habitat disturbance on tropical forest biodiversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, 6056–6061. Audretsch, D. B., Obschonka, M., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2017). A new perspective on entrepreneurial regions: Linking cultural identity with latent and manifest entrepreneurship. Small Business Economics, 48, 681–697. Baldwin, A. (2009). Carbon nullius and racial rule: Race, nature and the cultural politics of forest carbon in Canada. Antipode, 41, 231–255. Beissinger, S. R., Ackerly, D. D., Doremus, H., & Machlis, G. E. (2017). Science, conservation, and national parks. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Bellamy, A. J. (2017). Humanitarian intervention. In M. Dunn Cavelty & V. Mauer (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of security studies (pp. 428–438). New York, NY: Routledge. Bendix, R. (2000). Heredity, Hybridity and heritage from one Fin de Siecle to the next. In P. J. Antonnen, A.-. L. Siikala, S. R. Mathisen, & L. Magnusson (Eds.), Folklore, heritage politics, and ethnic diversity: A Festschrift for Barbro Klein (pp. 37–54). Botkyrka, Sweden: Multicultural Centre. Benjaminsen, T. A., & Bryceson, I. (2012). Conservation, green/blue grabbing and accumulation by dispossession in Tanzania. Journal of Peasant Studies, 39, 335–355. Benton, T. (1996). Animal rights: An eco-socialist view. In R. Garner (Ed.), Animal rights: The changing debate (pp. 19–41). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don’t: Researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qualitative Research, 15, 219–234. Bidwell, N. (2010). Ubuntu in the network: Humanness in social capital in rural Africa. Interactions, 17, 68–71. Bird, K., & Shepherd, A. (2003). Livelihoods and chronic poverty in semi-arid Zimbabwe. World Development, 31, 591–610. Brosius, J. P. (1997). Endangered forest, endangered people: Environmentalist representations of indigenous knowledge. Human Ecology, 25, 47–69. Bryant, D., Nielsen, D., Tangley, L., Sizer, N., Miranda, M., Brown, P., ... Miller, K. (1997). The last frontier forests: Ecosystems and economies on the edge. What is the

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