The Contemporary Paradox of Long-term Planning for Social-Ecological Change and its Effects on the Discourse-Practice Divide: Evidence from Southern Africa

The Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation Project between South Africa and Lesotho aims to bring about positive social-ecological change in and around the Maloti-Drakensberg mountain ecosystem in Southern Africa. To this effect, the project has developed a long-term 20-year planning strategy that has to coordinate all involved actors – and their actions - until 2028. Although it cannot predict the success of this planning strategy for the future, the paper describes and analyses the run-up to the strategy, which itself has lasted well over two decades. By combining critical ‘outside’ research on with practical ‘inside’ experience in the project, the paper argues that governing contemporary social-ecological change is severely challenged by two main fundamental paradoxes: first, the fuelling of short-term dynamics by neoliberal pressures on conservation/development interventions; and second, the increasing gap between discourse and practice. This is then taken as a starting point to empirically illustrate the mutual influence discourse and practice have on each other and how professionals within a large intervention deal with this in the framework of long-term conservation and development planning.