Jurisdiction and Borders
A key theme of my research, although not always foregrounded, has been what difference international borders make to the protection of nature, ecological processes, and in turn local human communities. This is reflected in the fact that the vast majority of my work has focused on borderlands, whether this is the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park across what is today the the South African-Mozambican borderlands or Blackfeet Territory and the Glacier Waterton International Peace Park across what is today the Canada-U.S. borderlands. If there is a single lesson here, the work shows that while ‘nature may know no boundaries,’ in practice borders severely transform both ‘nature’ and the communities who depend on it. But nature or connection to the more-than-human world provide numerous opportunities to heal from the spatial and political fractures caused by borders. My new work in this area is driven by a keen interest in the concept and application of jurisdiction, a parsing of space and governance that is hidden in plain sight. Starting by asking the seemingly simple question of ‘what is jurisdiction anyway,’ the work attempts to answer this and examine jurisdiction’s profound implications for humans, wildlife, nature as kin, and our broader connections with the natural world.
LIBBY LUNSTRUM 