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

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 assistance-delivery contexts, as well as literature on collaboration generally. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.