SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
rainforests
Stop Green Genocide in Cameroon
Fortress conservation has pushed the Baka people from the rainforests of the Congo Basin into villages bordering the national parks of southern Cameroon, while the logging that truly threatens the forest continues.
Jul 16, 2024
Clouds of red dust rise into the sky and hang in the air as the truck roars past. It's impossible to breathe as the dust gathers in the folds of villagers' clothes, settles on rooftops, and coats the forest's green leaves. The next truck goes by, and another cloud rises up in its wake. They carry massive tree trunks felled in the rainforests of the Congo Basin. The Baka people struggle to breathe every day, as logging companies from China, France, Italy, and Lebanon descend on the tropical forests and cut everything in their path.
The Baka have been pushed into villages bordering the national parks of southern Cameroon. Amid the din of passing trucks, they tell me they have been barred from their forest—they can no longer hunt for food, access their sacred sites, fish, or gather medicinal plants. Government authorities and "nature conservation" organizations say it's not the clear-cutting loggers destroying the forests. They blame the Baka—Indigenous hunter-gatherers who rely on the forests to live.
You're probably wondering how such a paradox can be tolerated. This is the heart of what's known as fortress conservation, driven by the erroneous belief that Indigenous people cannot look after their own land.
The Baka are fighting for their own survival, for their way of life, and for the forest they love. We in the West must ensure that our governments, and organizations such as WWF, finally stop supporting these atrocities.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) supports national parks, including Lobéké, Nki, and Boumba Bek parks. The organization funds heavily armed rangers who prevent the Baka from entering their forest by arresting, beating, and torturing them. The Baka are forced to live in small roadside villages—without access to their own lands. Logging companies' concessions surround the parks. And it's not hard to see that it's their activities—not the Baka—threatening the Congo Basin forest, especially as most of the timber is destined for export to industrialized countries.
The companies sometimes operate within the parks. But WWF and other major conservation NGOs look the other way. Instead, they create partnerships with the companies for "sustainable forest management." But let's be honest: For WWF, it has more to do with the money they receive from the companies than actual conservation. WWF and the companies set up "anti-poaching units," with yet more guards attacking the Baka—all while the trucks keep roaring by. The certification labels on the timber say "sustainable"—so does the companies' advertising. But, watching the trunks trundle past before me, and seeing the destruction of the forest, that is laughable. There's no such thing as sustainable destruction.
National parks are not—as the conservation industry would have us believe—rare islands of unspoiled nature that mitigate the surrounding destruction. Instead, they are an integral part of a strategy designed to maximize profit from the environment and its resources while pointing the finger of blame at local communities—the people who are least responsible for the destruction.
Michel is chief of a Baka village on the edge of Lobéké National Park. He explains: "Our grandparents used the forest at Lobéké, before WWF arrived. Since they came, we don't go there anymore. If you go there, in the park, you won't be able to go home without problems. They're not protecting anything—they just want to kick us out."
For the Baka, the loss of their forest takes all of that away. It's not just losing a place to live or access to food; it's losing their identity. So, it's not just a matter of material hardship, it's also the destruction of a people.
Baka children no longer learn about the forest plants: It's too dangerous to take them into the forest to teach them. The Baka say that for them the forest is absolutely everything. It sustains them and it provides everything that gives meaning to their lives. Without access to their forest, the Baka's future is in jeopardy.
Tragic as it may seem, the situation was much worse just a few years ago. WWF-funded guards waged a veritable war against the Baka. They harassed people, invading their homes, beating and torturing anyone they found—including the elderly who weren't quick enough to flee. Many Baka had to abandon their villages to escape. Some fled to neighboring Congo.
Thanks in large part to the work of Survival International, which catalyzed international support and investigations, the once-extreme level of violence has radically diminished. But the guards still beat Baka people if they try to enter the forest, and the severe trauma of the extreme physical violence of previous years remains. Célestin, a young Baka man in his mid-20s says: "We always think about violence. We go to sleep without having eaten, and we think about it. All the time."
The big conservation organizations are responsible for this chaos and pain. Once they've forced the Baka out of the forest, they offer "alternative livelihood projects" to draw them further away from their ancestral territory and way of life. Though they claim the projects compensate for the loss of the forest, it's just a less obvious way to go about destroying the Baka's lives and their bonds with their forest.
"They want to turn us into villagers," say the Baka. "We stay in the village all day, but we were born to be in the forest." WWF set up a mushroom-growing project in a Baka village. It provided equipment and training and built a warehouse. The Baka followed the instructions to grow and dry the mushrooms. But a year later, no one came to buy them, and WWF never returned. That's just one example among many. NGOs promise people chickens, sheep, ponds for fish farming, saying they'll have a "better" life. But for the Baka, the best life is one at peace in the forest, and the promises never materialize. "So far, we've had nothing. The people to whom these promises were made are dead now," testify the Baka.
The loss of their forest, as described by village chief Michel, leads to a disintegration of the social fabric, and loss of the foundations of the Baka identity and way of life. It is simply the destruction of them as a people: it's a green genocide. Nothing could compensate the Baka for the loss of their forest. The Baka survive by working in neighboring communities' fields, in conditions akin to slavery, paid tiny sums of money or just given alcohol. But it's dependent on the goodwill of those who "employ" them. (There is a big problem now with alcohol dependency among the Baka, not unlike the historical problems of other peoples who were dispossessed of their land, such as those in North America and Australia.)
"We are suffering. Those who make us work in the fields don't consider us human, they want to kill us. They give us so much to do, and if you refuse to work in the fields, they hit you," says Michel.
Michel, Célestin, and the rest of the Baka are fighting for their own survival, for their way of life, and for the forest they love. We in the West must ensure that our governments, and organizations such as WWF, finally stop supporting these atrocities. It's not too late to prevent the conservation industry suffocating an entire people, just as the red dust suffocates everyone in its path. Let's stop this green genocide.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Africa’s Carbon Deals Must Serve Those Most Vulnerable to the Climate Crisis
Several mega-transactions negotiated recently in tropical forested countries in sub-Saharan Africa place a spotlight on who is missing from these market opportunities—the Indigenous Peoples and local communities that have, against all odds, kept the forests intact.
Mar 08, 2024
Carbon markets have all the allure of a new investment option—mainly, that they have not failed yet. The idea of paying for conservation activities to offset polluting industrial activities, and then trading credits for those activities, sounds like a win-win solution to the climate crisis. But, in practice today, it looks like fool’s gold. That may be why the European Union included “carbon offsets” in new regulations that limit the use of sustainability buzzwords in promotional activities.
Several mega-transactions negotiated recently in tropical forested countries in sub-Saharan Africa place a spotlight on who is missing from these market opportunities—the Indigenous Peoples and local communities that have, against all odds, kept the forests intact. Although these carbon credit deals were announced last year, they have yet to be finalized and, instead, their grassroots opposition has gained traction.
The deals in question exemplify the 95 agreements announced since 2021, according to the consulting firm MSCI. They involve the governments of five countries, which agreed to hand over the development rights to sizable portions of their lands to a single international investment firm, UAE-based Blue Carbon—despite protests from those living on the lands in question.
For carbon markets to work, companies must first respect the tenure rights of all Indigenous and local communities.
These transactions would cover 20% of the land in Zimbabwe, 10% of Liberia and Zambia, 8% of Tanzania, and an undisclosed amount of land in Kenya. Blue Carbon would effectively gain control over the carbon stored in the soils and forests of these lands, which in effect surrenders control over the development rights to these lands.
Blue Carbon also started negotiations to acquire carbon rights with governments in the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest tropical forest, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo.
In the short term, everyone—except for the Indigenous, pastoralist, and local communities who live on and claim these lands—can be expected to profit from these investments. In the long term, however, all will bear their costs.
For generations, these communities have sustainably managed their land and forests and hold primary responsibility for the carbon-rich ecosystems that make up the lion’s share of transactions in the carbon markets. But despite their contributions, they have limited means of ensuring that their rights will not be superseded by foreign investors claiming ownership of the carbon stored in their lands.
In eastern Kenya, for example, the Ogiek people have long faced threats of eviction and expulsion from their territories in the Mau forest—the largest high-altitude forest in East Africa. Recent evictions, with forest rangers destroying villages, have been connected to potential carbon rights transactions. This is despite national laws recognizing communities’ ownership to more than two thirds of this land.
In Liberia, communities worked tirelessly to pass one of the strongest laws protecting community land rights worldwide in 2018. At the time, we estimated that 40% of Liberia’s land had already been handed over in natural resource deals—for industrial palm oil plantations, mining, and timber extraction. The Blue Carbon deal would take an additional 10% from what is left—shrugging off the 2018 law’s protections.
A growing body of research directly connects strong Indigenous and communities’ land rights with lower rates of deforestation and forest degradation, which are significant contributors to global carbon emissions. The United Nations’ most recent report on climate change emphasizes community rights as a bulwark in climate change mitigation and adaptation. And the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework emphasizes the importance of respecting these rights in efforts to stave off rapid biodiversity loss.
In a world where tropical deforestation has yet to be tamed— we lost 50% more tropical forest in 2022 than we did 20 years ago—we cannot ignore the potential of carbon markets to improve conservation outcomes. But their benefits must reach the communities who are the primary custodians of these lands.
These carbon deals have been negotiated without meaningful community participation. And the lack of transparency on the terms and conditions of the contracts hides the implications for people and nature.
For carbon markets to work, companies must first respect the tenure rights of all Indigenous and local communities. They need to ensure access to objective, complete, transparent, and locally adapted information about the transactions and the lands they cover. The communities’ rights to free, prior, and informed consent must be upheld, and their effective and meaningful participation in the design, implementation, and monitoring of all transactions should be mandatory. Importantly, those who are impacted by these deals should have access to effective remedy.
These conditions should apply to carbon credit deals just as they apply to all natural resource concessions. Carbon markets must serve the interests of those who are most vulnerable to climate change, not those who created the crisis to begin with.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'This Land Is Our Life': Indigenous Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo People Defend Forest From Illegal Destruction in Peru
More than 300 community members participate in La Guardia Indigena, protecting around 8 million hectares of one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth from logging, fishing, and coca growing.
May 05, 2023
The Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo people of the Peruvian Amazon are organizing themselves to protect their ancestral forests and waters from illegal fishing, logging, and coca growing amidst conservation and development efforts from both the government and international nonprofits that they say are ineffective at best and actively harmful to Indigenous ways of life at worst.
More than 300 members of the community participate in La Guardia Indigena—or the Indigenous Guard—that works from around 25 bases in the Ucayali region of Peru to protect around 8 million hectares.
"We've been resisting, and we continue to resist generation after generation because this land is our life," Lizardo Cauper Pezo, president of the Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo Council, told reporters at the virtual Peasant and Indigenous Press Forum April 27.
"Without the forest, the world would be chaos."
The Peruvian Amazon is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, but, like much of the rest of the rainforest, it is under threat. Beyond outright tree clearing, one threat is the illegal growing of coca that leads to both deforestation for planting and air pollution when it is burned during processing. Another is illegal fishing from bodies of water like Lake Imiría. Fifteen percent of more than 20,000 hectares of forest in the Flor de Ucayali community has been either cut or burned down.
To counter this threat, the guard patrols the area carrying their ancestral weapons.
"That's what represents our strength, our spirit, and it also represents our ancestors," Indigenous Guard president Marco Tulio told reporters.
However, the guard does not threaten or seek to harm fishers, loggers, or drug traffickers. Instead, they attempt to speak with them and explain that the land belongs to the Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo people. If fishers return for a second time, the guard may destroy their equipment. In total, the guard has confronted fishers 45 times.
Sometimes, the fishers or loggers are themselves armed and threaten the Indigenous Guard. The guard will act in self-defense and also explain to authorities their right to do so.
"We don't threaten, we only need to care for the forest, because the forest is for everyone," Tulio said. "Without the forest, the world would be chaos."
This work—like land defense everywhere—is not without significant risk. The most recent annual Global Witness report found that two environmental defenders were killed every two days of the last 10 years. During 2021, 40% of the murders targeted Indigenous activists, despite the fact that they make up only 5% of the global population.
Tulio told reporters that a week before speaking at the forum he received a death threat telling him he only had days left to live.
The violence comes despite the fact that the area is technically protected as the Lake Imiría regional conservation area, or ACR, and has been since 2010. In fact, many Indigenous people oppose the ACR, which they say was established without full community consent, according to an investigation published by Grist last month.
The Shipibo Konibo-Xetebo claim that the government allows poachers, coca growers, and loggers to enter the area while focusing its enforcement efforts on Indigenous people catching and selling fish to survive.
"What kind of protection and conservation are we talking about?" Pezo asked rhetorically at the press forum.
For example, a Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo woman named Sorayda Cruz Vesada was arrested and fined the equivalent of $400 in 2016 for attempting to sell a large Amazonian fish called the paiche in order to pay for her daughter's school supplies, Grist reported.
Things came to a head in 2020, when the Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo community learned of plans between the ACR, the Ucayali Department of Fisheries, and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to open Lake Imiría to commercial fishing. It was this news that prompted the Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo to reform their Indigenous Guard, as well as to occupy a park guard post in Junín Pablo in July 2022. That occupation was formalized in August as the community waits to hear from Peru's national government on a proposal to have their lands excluded from the park for them to manage themselves.
Tulio said the people wanted to live and work freely without the government harming their forest or inserting itself into their way of life.
"The forests, the rivers, the waters, they are our market," he told the forum.
The occupation in July succeeded in ousting the USAID-backed company Pro Bosques from the area, but the threat of the project lingers, and the status of the protected area remains uncertain. Tulio believes the regional government—or its supporters—is behind the death threats against him. The president of the Autonomous Government of the Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo People shared the community's concerns with the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York on April 19.
The Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo's struggle comes at a crucial time for both conservation and Indigenous rights. As world leaders pledged in Montreal last December to protect 30% of land and water by 2030, there is growing recognition in the scientific and international community that Indigenous people are the best protectors of their lands. Their 5% of the population protects 80% of Earth's remaining biodiversity, and a 2022 study found that protecting Indigenous lands could help four Latin American countries—including Peru—meet their climate goals.
Yet the growing business of carbon offsetting is raising new concerns about conservation strategies that work by excluding these very communities from their forests, as a January exposé of top carbon credit standard Verra reported happened in Alto Mayo, Peru.
It remains to be seen if the 30% goal will be met by acknowledging the rights and role of Indigenous communities or repeating the colonial fortress conservation mindset of the past. While the agreement states that Indigenous rights must be considered in its implementation, it does not allow Indigenous territories to count toward the target, as Survival International pointed out at the time.
"What we saw in Montreal is evidence that we can't trust the conservation industry, business, and powerful countries to do the right thing," Survival research and advocacy Officer Fiore Longo said in a statement. "We will keep fighting for the respect and recognition of Indigenous land rights. Whoever cares about biodiversity should be doing the same thing."
Meanwhile, the Shipibo Konibo Xetebo have a message for the people and nonprofits of the U.S.
"You need to stop supporting the things that exploit our rights, or that support these different activities and projects that trample on our rights and ways of living as Indigenous people," Pezo said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular