MikeHurran

Hi Empigee,

Good questions! That hasn't happened yet. The abuses that big conservation organizations are making possible – evictions, torture, sometimes even murder – need exposing, even if that is by people hostile to conservation.

We don't think conservationists can achieve their objectives if they're exempt from criticism and if they don't work in partnership with tribal people.

In response to your second question: many Mbendjele hunter-gatherers in Congo who I've met don't actually distinguish between conservation and loggers on their land – both kick people off their land and stop them from hunting, and Mbendjele are witnessing environmental destruction across all of their lands, even inside protected areas.

It's standard operating procedure in many areas for conservationists to partner with commercial interests – e.g. WWF with various logging companies in Cameroon – and the two end up reinforcing one another.

It’s really hard to think of conservation projects on tribal land that are genuinely successful – and believe me we’ve tried! Here’s an example: the Indian government says that tiger numbers are increasing in its newly created tiger reserves from which the tribal communities have been “voluntarily” relocated – but in practice the relocations are anything but voluntary. Very often huge pressure is brought to bear on the people to move out. And despite promises of compensation, they’re nearly always left in dire poverty, unable even to feed themselves.

But as this example shows, if they only allowed the tribal people to remain on their land, both they and the tiger can thrive. And in South America, there’s now abundant evidence from satellite photos to show that indigenous lands are a much better barrier to deforestation than conservation zones.

Thanks for reading it! I think a lot of people are inclined to believe the best of big conservation organizations – this allows some of them to get away with terrible abuse and often pretty lousy conservation. If it can't be criticized, how will conservation ever improve?

That said, we've actually got a lot of support from conservationists, often those working in areas where abuse is rife and who are tired of not seeing any change from the big conservation organizations. Many well-known environmentalists, like Greenpeace, Nnimmo Bassey and others, have signed up to our declaration for a new kind of conservation – one with tribal peoples' rights at its heart.

It's great to have you on board – have a look at the declaration and, if you agree with us, spread the word!

The main abuses – which we are trying to help put an end to – are the theft of their lands and the often extreme violence they're subjected to.

One story in particular stays with me. A band of park guards arrived one day in a Baka village in Cameroon, looking for information about hunting. All the people I spoke to had their own stories of suffering: some of the guards threw away an unwell elderly man's medicines and his food. He tried to run away but kept falling down. His daughter looked on in tears, afraid that he was dying. As his elderly wife got ready to defend herself she was pepper-sprayed by a guard, and still had trouble seeing when I met her. Others, including a mother nursing a baby, were rounded up and forced to stare into the blazing sun. And three men were tied up and beaten for two days before being left for dead on the side of the road. One of these men died a few months later, after telling his son that he couldn't go on living.

In many Baka communities people will tell you about loved ones they have lost in the name of "conservation." And yet today their lands are being destroyed faster than ever. So that's our message: only when their rights are upheld will their lands be protected.

We’ve repeatedly tried to engage WWF, sending them letters and informing them of our concerns as soon as the issues in places like Cameroon have come to our attention – over the past decade or more! They’ve made vague promises they haven’t kept, or pledges they haven’t stuck to, while simultaneously trying to discredit our claims or shut us up. Rather than acknowledging that there have been serious errors in their approach to conservation in places and amending their policies, they’ve basically treated this as a PR issue and tried to protect their reputation.

We’ve no desire to start lengthy arguments with other NGOs who are doing important work in other fields. But when another organization starts violating tribal peoples’ human rights, we have to step in to criticize what they’re doing. If WWF are willing to genuinely respect indigenous land rights we’d be very happy to co-operate with them.