Investigating the Global and Local in Wangchuck Centennial National Park: A Case for the Bhutanese Conservation Actors In-Between

Bhutan is world famous for its approach to both environmental conservation and development, despite being classified as “least developed” by the World Bank as recently as 2016. As Bhutan continues to develop, it has increasingly encountered the colloquially known, but statistically unproven phenomena: that development standards and conservation goals are often in conflict with the needs of rural communities. In the case of such ideological, cultural and economic clashes, this article argues for the necessity of “middle-actors” such as native Bhutanese civil servants, as they are able to navigate the cultural and economic zone “in-between” the international and the local in ways that others cannot. Author’s Note This article was produced from a larger research project done in Bhutan during the spring of 2017. I came to Bhutan during the last semester of my last year at Columbia University, after years of studying anthropology and sociology (with an environmental focus). My desire to come to Bhutan was split twofold, the first being my desire to tread away from theory and towards immersing myself in more tangible field research experience. The second was because it was Bhutan, widely known to be one of the most closed countries in the world, and I just wanted to learn more about terms that I had heard for years, ‘GNH’ and ‘net-carbon-sink’ among them. While my research project that spring was ultimately an analysis of the mobility of civil servants in Wangchuck Centennial National Park (the largest protected area in the country) and beyond, combing through the data has revealed other conclusions that I believe are of particular value for sustainable development. Those in the development sphere, especially large-scale organizations, tend to be criticized for their lack of attention to the specificities of the cultures they work with. Of course, larger international organizations deal with bigger problems that require solutions of equal measure. However, I also observed that there is very little attention paid to the actualizers of such programs, the middle actors that appeared to have