Indigenous tribes around the globe are increasingly being expelled from lands where they have lived in harmony with nature for centuries or millennia

Green Conservation’s Victims of Land Grabbing

The biggest threat to many indigenous peoples today is being expelled from their lands in the name of green conservation.

What’s the biggest threat to the world’s indigenous peoples today? It isn’t logging, mining, or oil drilling claims Mark Dowie, its conservation. He writes, “From the Maasi nomads of East Africa to the Hmong Hill people of southeast Asia to Mayan villagers in Mexico, indigenous tribes around the globe are increasingly being expelled from lands where they have lived in harmony with nature for centuries or millennia . (1)

The unintended consequences of the global conservation movement’s success has been a mass dislocation. Worldwide estimates of the number of people displaced by conservation activities range from five million to tens of millions. The total area of land now under conservation protection worldwide has doubled since 1990, with over 12 percent of all land, a total area of 11.75 million square miles, now protected. That’s an area greater than the entire land mass of Africa.  And if you aren’t aware of how massive Africa is—it is larger than the USA, China, India, Japan and all of Europe …combined! (2)

Across the world, the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances where ‘green’ credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel—as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for ‘more efficient farming’ or ‘food security,’ but also to ‘alleviate pressure on forests.’ In other cases, however, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs—whether linked to biodiversity conservation, eco-tourism or ‘offsets’ related to any and all of these. In some cases these involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects, reports James Fairhead and colleagues. (3)

Some examples of green grabs:

• Conservation agencies, ecotourism companies and the military in Guatemala are ‘protecting’ the Guatemalan Maya Biosphere Reserve as a ‘Maya-themed vacationland,’ violently excluding local people. (4)
• In Eastern and Southern Africa, businesses are revaluing soil systems and framing practices for ‘biochar’, disposing farmers and pastoralists from land and resources important for their livelihoods. (4)
• In the spring of 2003 the Adivasi of India were pushed out of their farmlands and relocated to extremely cramped villages in order to import six Asiatic lions. (5)
• Stimulated by generous financial offerings from the Global Environment Facility, the Thai government has been creating national parks as fast as the Royal Forest Department can map them. Fifteen years ago there was barely a park to be found in Thailand, and because those few that existed were unmarked ‘paper parks,’ few Thais even knew they existed. Now there are 114 land parks and 24 marine parks on the map. Almost twenty-five thousand square kilometers, most of which are occupied by hill and fishing tribes, are now managed by the forest department as protected areas. (6) Also, the Thai government has developed a formula where already financially poor farmers are being fined crippling amounts of money for causing global warming. The fines are not only for the current generation of farmers, but also for the environmental impact their ancestors caused by cutting down trees and farming the land hundreds of years ago. (7)
• During the 1990s, the African nation of Chad increased its protected area from 1 to 9.1 percent of its national land. All of that land had been occupied by what is now estimated at six hundred thousand displaced people. In February of 2008, The New York Times reported that Chad had become a temporary home to nearly a quarter of a million refugees from the conflict in the Sudanese region of Darfur, and tens of thousands more refugees from the Central African Republic. Beyond that, almost 200,000 Chadians had been displaced by fighting, much of which had spilled into the country from Darfur, making a vast pool of desperate people who depend heavily on international aid. (8) Chad is number four on the list of The Failed States Index published in 2012. So, in a place with all the problems Chad has, relocating an additional 1 out of every 15 persons in the name of conservation makes one wonder.

So, what about the United States? In Brian Sussman’s recently published book, Eco-Tyranny, he reports that he became aware of a secret draft document procured by the Obama Department of the Interior detailing a twenty-five year plan to provide corridors and connectivity to enormous swaths of land. The document specifically denotes 140 million acres of land, administered by the Bureau of Land Management that the government considers ‘treasured.’ According to the discussion paper, ‘these landscapes captured the pioneer spirit and cultivated America’s romantic ideals of the wild west.’ A closer read reveals these 140 million acres (collectively about the size of Colorado or Wyoming) are not just in the West, but scattered across the country and composed of various-sized parcels, often surrounded by private property. The discussion paper addresses plans to purchase whenever possible, or take over whenever necessary, all of the land in between the government-owned parcels.  Sussman adds, “The internal draft actually implies that we humans will not be welcome in the wished-for federal land. Treasured landscapes will exist without the trappings of visitor centers and other man-made improvements.”(9)

So, perhaps we might see some ‘conservation refugees’ in our own country.

Concluding remarks

In a critique of the global literature on the conservation refugee problem, Harrison Awuh notes, “Often conservation organizations are more sensitive to the protection of flora and fauna than the well-being of the area’s inhabitants. One thing we have learned is that protected areas across the world operate much more successfully when they are managed with or by indigenous peoples themselves.” (10)

Mark Dowie adds, “It is a strange paradox that a movement that exhorts the harmonious coexistence of people and nature, and worries about the continued survival of nature (particularly loss of habitat problems), somehow forgets about the natural survival of humans, especially those who have lost their habitats or food sources. If this trend continues, a vital piece of the web of survival will be missing.” (12)

References

1. Mark Dowie, Conservation Refugees, (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 2009), x
2. Peter H. Diamindis and Steven Kotler, Abundance, (New York, Free Press, 2012), 273
3. James Fairhead, Melissa Leach & Ian Scoones, “Green grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?”, Journal of Peasant Studies, 39, 237, 2012
4. “Green grabs: the dark side of the green economy,” June 15, 2012
5. “Conservation Refugee,” Wikipedia, March 16, 2012
6. Mark Dowie, “Conservation refugees: when conservation means kicking people out,” Seedling, January 25, 2006
7. Tory Aardvark, “Thailand-a country where eco-facism has gone mad,”  Jul 16, 2012
8. Lydia Polgreen and Nick Cumming-Bruce, The New York Times, February 5, 2008
9. Brain Sussman, Eco-Tyranny, (Washington, DC, WND Books, 2012), 214-217
10. Harrison Esam Awuh, “A critique of the global literature on the conservation refugee problem,” Victoria University of Wellington, October 7, 2011
11. Mark Dowie, Losing Ground, (Cambridge, MA,  The MIT Press, 1007), 126

Jack Dini, Livermore, CA, writes a monthly column on science and environmental issues for Plating & Surface Finishing and also writes for other publications. He is the author of Challenging Environmental Mythology (2003). Jack can be reached at:  .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)