Litigating for legality: Nature conservation, commercial fisheries and disputed territoriality in Ukraine's Danube Delta

Between 2014 and 2016, Ukraine's Danube Biosphere Reserve (DBR) administrators devoted extensive time to lawsuits in which they defended the legality of commercial fisheries reserve territory. Two cases are discussed order examine what impact litigation had why pursued when dominant accounts law Ukraine suggest that avoiding courts might be a more likely response. It analyzes court documents interviews gathered during anthropological research about nature conservation Delta by combining insights from political ecology, agrarian studies, socio-legal scholarship on Ukraine. Even though lost their rezone reserve, engaging helped them defend fishing commons against further enclosure environmentalists, state officials, business people, minimize predatory behavior could exclude delta residents. This demonstrates litigation's important but often overlooked role challenging outcomes natural resource-related internal territorialization.