Edited to add the updates on ABW.<\/p>\n
Internets? I am so fucking angry right now. Why? I saw this two days ago: Thanks to GM, People Are Being Displaced So Their Forests Can Become Offsets for SUVs<\/a>. and I’m thinking what the everloving fuck????? Then I am meandering about on Daily Kos and I see a book review for Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples<\/a> (AMazon has it cheaper and then there are used books and the library, of course.<\/p>\n Since 1900, more than 108,000 officially protected conservation areas have been established worldwide, largely at the urging of five international conservation organizations. About half of these areas were occupied or regularly used by indigenous peoples. Millions who had been living sustainably on their land for generations were displaced in the interests of conservation. In Conservation Refugees, Mark Dowie tells this story.<\/p>\n This is a “good guy vs. good guy” story, Dowie writes; the indigenous peoples\u2019 movement and conservation organizations have a vital common goal\u2014to protect biological diversity\u2014and could work effectively and powerfully together to protect the planet and preserve species and ecosystem diversity. Yet for more than a hundred years, these two forces have been at odds. The result: thousands of unmanageable protected areas and native peoples reduced to poaching and trespassing on their ancestral lands or “assimilated” but permanently indentured on the lowest rungs of the economy.<\/p>\n Dowie begins with the story of Yosemite National Park, which by the turn of the twentieth century established a template for bitter encounters between native peoples and conservation. He then describes the experiences of other groups, ranging from the Ogiek and Maasai of eastern Africa and the Pygmies of Central Africa to the Karen of Thailand and the Adevasis of India. He also discusses such issues as differing definitions of “nature” and “wilderness,” the influence of the “BINGOs” (Big International NGOs, including the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy), the need for Western scientists to respect and honor traditional lifeways, and the need for native peoples to blend their traditional knowledge with the knowledge of modern ecology. When conservationists and native peoples acknowledge the interdependence of biodiversity conservation and cultural survival, Dowie writes, they can together create a new and much more effective paradigm for conservation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Indeed. It appears that the book recced in my earlier post<\/a> did not but scratch the surface of what appears to be widespread fuckery on behalf of white western environmental organizations, who seem to have this quaint notion that the best way to fix their society’s poisoning of the earth and sea, by practicing environmental neo-colonialism.<\/p>\n Radio Interview (with Partial Transcript) with Mark Dowie, author of Conservation Refugees<\/a><\/p>\n CLARK: I don\u2019t want to ignore what\u2019s happened here in the United States where when it comes to land conservation, we\u2019ve had our stories of not treating native people so well either and I\u2019m just thinking we\u2019re talking on the heels of the Ken Burns\u2019 TV documentary on the National Parks where Burns hit on the tension between preservation and use, but didn\u2019t actually come down on one side of the issue or the other. Talk a little bit about what happened in this country.<\/p>\n DOWIE: He does acknowledge that native people have been evicted from American national parks. This whole model of conservation began here in Yosemite in the middle of the 19th Century, which was at the time occupied by Lewach [PH] Indians. And John Muir and the other people who were inspired to create a national park where Yosemite is, were not impressed with the Indians. In fact, Muir was revolted by them, and asked that they be removed from the Park and they were. That happened again in Yellowstone and several other American parks around the country. That became known as the Yosemite model of conservation, and was exported by the organizations that now dominate global conservation, all of which are American organizations.CLARK: You describe your book as a \u201cgood guy versus good guy story.\u201d So is there anybody in particular to blame for how this seemingly good idea has gone wrong?<\/p>\n DOWIE: It is a good guy versus good guy story.<\/i> MORE<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n (I thoroughly disagree with this description of good guy vs good guy, by the way. In fact, I’d go so far as to call it Bullshit. “Good guy”, is not how I would describe the enviro orgs who push this shit. You are by no means good when your actions fuck up people on this scale, and they have a fucking HISTORY of this bullshit, arrogant, paternalistic, onetrack minded, and racist approach to citizens of the world whose skin ain’t white)<\/p>\n Naturally, the people being kicked off their lands are PISSED.<\/p>\n Article based on the book:Conservation Refugees: When protecting nature means kicking people out<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s no secret that millions of native peoples around the world have been pushed off their land to make room for big oil, big metal, big timber, and big agriculture. But few people realize that the same thing has happened for a much nobler cause: land and wildlife conservation. Today the list of culture-wrecking institutions put forth by tribal leaders on almost every continent includes not only Shell, Texaco, Freeport, and Bechtel, but also more surprising names like Conservation International (CI), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Even the more culturally sensitive World Conservation Union (IUCN) might get a mention.<\/p>\n …<\/p>\n In early 2004 a United Nations meeting was convened in New York for the ninth year in a row to push for passage of a resolution protecting the territorial and human rights of indigenous peoples. The UN draft declaration states: “Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned During the meeting an indigenous delegate who did not identify herself rose to state that while extractive industries were still a serious threat to their welfare and cultural integrity, their new and biggest enemy was “conservation.”<\/p>\n Later that spring, at a Vancouver, British Columbia, meeting of the International Forum on Indigenous Mapping, all two hundred delegates signed a declaration stating that the “activities of conservation organizations now represent the single biggest threat to the integrity of indigenous lands.” These rhetorical jabs have shaken the international conservation community, as have a subsequent spate of critical articles and studies, two of them conducted by the Ford Foundation, calling big conservation to task for its historical mistreatment of indigenous peoples.<\/p>\n “We are enemies of conservation,” declared Maasai leader Martin Saning’o, standing before a session of the November 2004 World Conservation Congress sponsored by IUCN in Bangkok, Thailand. The nomadic Maasai, who have over the past thirty years lost most of their grazing range to conservation projects throughout eastern Africa, hadn’t always felt that way. In fact, Saning’o reminded his audience, “…we were the original conservationists.” The room was hushed as he quietly explained how pastoral and nomadic cattlemen have traditionally protected their range: “Our ways of farming pollinated diverse seed species and maintained corridors between ecosystems.” <\/strong>Then he tried to fathom the strange version of land conservation that has impoverished his people, more than one hundred thousand of whom have been displaced from southern Kenya and the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania. Like the Batwa, the Maasai have not been fairly compensated. Their culture is dissolving and they live in poverty.<\/p>\n “We don’t want to be like you,” Saning’o told a room of shocked white faces. “We want you to be like us. We are here to change your minds. You cannot accomplish conservation without us.”<\/strong> Fucking MARVELOUS. Western corporations fuck up the planet, western environmentalists march in an persuade, sometimes by economic might, governments that in order to fix it, the citizens of the fucked up places must give up their land. WHAT KIND OF FUCKED UP BULLSHIT REASONING IS THIS SHIT GODDAMMIT?!?!?!?!?!?!? I am so SICK of this everlasting insistence that Westerners know better and to hell with studying the local set up to see WHAT it is and WHY it has worked the way it has, no. We must import Western ideas wholesale and impose them on every damn place, completely ignoring the fuckery they bring into other people’s lives until said other people have suffered\/hurt\/died, in the case of Africa; according to PDF From Refuge to Refugee: The African Case<\/a> MILLIONS of people; and god knows how many in Asia; and have had to raise holy hell before we back off!<\/p>\n (As an aside, what makes the reporter think that Saning’o might not have realized that other people were suffering the same BS as he is?)<\/p>\n Native Solutions to Conservation Refugees’s (NSCoR) mission is to respond to Indigenous and local communities’ wishes when conservation and environmental factors threaten to displace them. NSCoR is committed to the local communities providing the solutions, when possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He links three more articles thoroughly explaining the phenomenom of conservation refugees: Mr. Hurd told his story in 2008 Burlington man helps Mursi tribe of Ethiopia retain its land and way of life<\/a><\/p>\n The struggle as he saw it was over land rights for the Mursi, a tribal people he had befriended in southwestern Ethiopia, and the most he hoped for as he began his campaign on their behalf, was to help them shore up their negotiating position.<\/p>\n What he wanted was to forestall a worst-case scenario: the Mursis’ being driven from their ancestral territory or, as he puts it, “disallowed from growing crops or grazing their cattle on their land, endangering their survival” — all to make way for a conservation park teeming with wildlife and beckoning tourists.<\/p>\n As the contest began about three years ago, it was a huge mismatch.<\/p>\n On one side was Hurd, a soft-spoken, unassuming 1995 Burlington High School graduate. He trimmed trees to support himself. He did two years at the University of Vermont. He never studied anthropology but developed a keen interest in the ways of indigenous peoples, starting with American Indians and deepening with a trip to Ethiopia in 2001.<\/p>\n On the other side was the African Parks Foundation (now called African Parks Network), a private, Netherlands-based organization in the business of managing conservation reserves. It was overseer of seven “protected areas” covering about 9,600 square miles in five countries. It has financial supporters including the late Paul Fentener van Vlissingen, a Dutch executive (whose contributions to African Parks exceeded $25 million), Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands ($1 million), and from the United States, Rob Walton and the Walton Family Foundation ($5 million).<\/p>\n At issue was the fate of the Omo National Park in southwest Ethiopia, about 1,560 square miles of savanna seasonally used for grazing, farming and hunting by about 40,000 people comprising seven ethnic groups, including the Mursi. When African Parks signed an agreement with Ethiopian government officials to manage Omo several years ago, Hurd feared this could lead to the Mursis’ eviction. He knew that dislocation had been the experience of two other ethnic groups in Nech Sar, another park in southwestern Ethiopia that African Parks had taken over.<\/p>\n It was during Hurd’s second visit to Mursi territory, in 2004-05, that he learned African Parks was coming to Omo. Hurd stayed on for five months, living in the Mursi villages, learning their language, traveling everywhere on foot. When he came back to Burlington, he knew he wanted to help them, but wasn’t sure the best way to go about that.<\/p>\n He created an organization to advocate for “conservation refugees” — people forced off their lands for the creation of nature preserves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here are the relevant links from his website: The organization responsible: Information on African Parks Foundation and its funders<\/a><\/p>\n Relevant international laws and guidelines<\/a><\/p>\n Government and other maps<\/a><\/p>\n But its wasn’t only the Omo National Park that menaced tribes. The African Park Foundation assholes wanted to manage a Park called Nech Sar National Park. Here’s what happened to the Kore and the Guji-Oromo<\/a> Scrolling down the front page gives even more info on the atrocities committed against the seven tribes who had the misfortune to be in the way of the rich corporate and aristocratic pestilences who has decided that teh remnant of diversity still left in Africa needed to be preserved. Luckily, for these tribes, the story has a happy ending. Read the press statement that African Park Foundation put out<\/a>. Note the passive aggressiveness. All those hostile natives daring to raise hell about their being kicked out of their homes! The NERVE of some people! Sniff!!!!<\/p>\n The above example, however, is quite rare in that there was a happy ending. This is the more normal result: The Ogiek tribe in Kenya<\/a><\/p>\n One of the reasons why this type of environmentalism is being practised is a result of the REDD protocol. What is that? I’m glad you asked. From REDD Monitor<\/a><\/p>\n REDD, or reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, is one of the most controversial new issues in the climate change debate. The basic concept is simple: governments, companies or forest owners in the South should be rewarded for keeping their forests instead of cutting them down. The devil, as always, is in the details.<\/p>\n The idea of making payments to discourage deforestation and forest degradation was discussed in the negotiations leading to the Kyoto Protocol, but it was ultimately rejected. REDD developed from a proposal in 2005 by a group of countries calling themselves the Coalition of Rainforest Nations. Two years later, the proposal was taken up at the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Bali (COP-13). An agreement on REDD is planned to be made at COP-15 which will take place in Copenhagen.<\/p>\n costa_rica<\/p>\n The \u201cBali Action Plan\u201d calls for:<\/p>\n \u201cPolicy approaches and positive incentives on issues relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries; and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries\u201d.<\/p>\n The above paragraph (paragraph 1b(iii)) is referred to as \u201cREDD-plus\u201d. It is worth reading closely, because so far it is the only agreed text we have on REDD. \u201cREDD-plus\u201d includes activities with potentially extremely serious implications for indigenous people, local communities and forests:<\/p>\n 1.\u201cconservation\u201d sounds good, but the history of the establishment of national parks includes large scale evictions and loss of rights for indigenous peoples and local communities.
\nand after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option to return.”
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nAlthough he might not have realized it, Saning’o was speaking for a growing worldwide movement of indigenous peoples who think of themselves as conservation refugees. MORE<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nSome people have seen the light. Take for instance William Hurd, proprietor of Native Solutions to Conservation Refugees<\/a> The website describes itself as follows:<\/p>\n
\nEviction for Conservation:A Global Overview<\/a> PDF, A Challenge to Conservationists<\/a> and Poverty Risks<\/a> and then gives us a case study.<\/p>\n
\nThe Five Local Groups in and around what was to be the Omo National Park: Mursi, Nyangatom Suri, Dizi and Me’en<\/a><\/p>\n
\n 2.\u201csustainable management of forests\u201d could include subsidies to commercial logging operations in old-growth forests, indigenous peoples\u2019 territory or in villagers\u2019 community forests.
\n 3.\u201cenhancement of forest carbon stocks\u201d could result in conversion of land (including forests) to industrial tree plantations, with serious implications for biodiversity, forests and local communities. MORE<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n