Customer Reviews

Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I work in conservation in Uganda. This book should be read by everyone who works in (or donates to) conservation anywhere in the world, as it is always important to examine the work we do and think about how we can do it better. This book exposes some of the worst aspects of conservation, particularly some questionable practices that the Big 5 (TNC, CI, WWF, WCS and AWF) engage in to maintain their massive budgets.

There are some holes in the book, however, and I was disappointed to find that he gives no viable alternative approaches to conservation. The success stories he cites are primarily forest-based, indigenous cultures that are still practicing their traditional methods of survival through care of their primary resource, the forest. He does not talk about the very different reality of communities that are heterogenous due to immigration, resettlement, etc, and who have no common historical practices to rely on to preserve their environment. The forest communities he talks about are also not dealing with the massive population pressures of the savanna areas in East Africa, and they are not agricultural to the extent that some other areas are, which causes encroachment on forests and other landscapes.

This book could be the basis for an incredible graduate seminar about global conservation, both for what it does bring to the table and for what it doesn't bring. Definitely read this book, but read it with a critical eye. Thanks to Mark Dowie for fearless reporting.

This is an iconoclastic expose' of the American concept of wilderness and the place of humans in it--or in truth, the exclusion of humans from it. The victims of this romantic conceit have been the indigenous peoples who, beginning with our common ancestors in Africa, have always inhabited and enriched wild nature. The world-wide conservation organizations inspired by the American notion of wilderness may be doing more harm than good, when human welfare is factored in with animal welfare in the evaluation of their activities.

Book Review from my blog: Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples by Mark Dowie

The push to save the wilderness, wildlife and rivers, whether on the North American Continent or in the Amazon, or in Burma, seems such a worthy goal. It underlies much of the work of conservation groups and activist such as Green Peace Rainforest Networks. Sierra Club has a great leadership role in this regard and many conservations and environmentalist have contributed to or supported such efforts. It is a rude awakening to discover in reading Dowie's book that what was thought to be a `good deed' was not the whole story. His book, The Conservation Refugees, reports on how these efforts were consistently and intentionally, in many cases, undermining and even destroying native cultures and whole populations in the name of saving nature. Dowie reports how the National Park system was created on the backs of such tribal destruction.

Dowie tells a startling story, with extensive references, of the creation of Yosemite National Park. It was widely held that the wilderness was uninhabited, wild so to speak. The few natives that were thought to be living there were seen as in the way of the conservation of nature and the wild. The National Park Service was ordered to forcibly remove them from the new designated boundaries. They were driven out several times based on a belief that they were uninvolved in the health of the wilderness. The tribes crept back in repeatedly to tend to what hey considered a sacred duty to manage their role in the forest health. It was decades before it was clear the significant management practices they had for creating healthy forest eco-systems.

The local people had what Dowie calls "traditional ecological knowledge" (TEK) which was utilized to engage in fostering healthy ecosystems. Such practices included controlled burning to regenerate the forest, managing streams to increase healthy fisheries and transporting and transplanting species based on an understanding of companion species that promoted vitality of the forests. The Miwok tribes who lived in Yosemite for over two hundred years, having inhabited the forests that are now Yosemite, had no word for "wilderness" in their language. They had for generations been involved in managing the forest eco-system, long before European settlers arrived. What Europeans saw as wilderness were well managed forests and ecosystems.

Dowie reports that the Yosemite model of removing Native Peoples who had the TEK, became a Global model, in fact, it is called the Yosemite Model. It has now spread around the world as part of the conservation movement and has undermined the health of ecosystems by removing the very people who hold the TEK in managing for real sustainability, long term viability or forests and robust living ecosystems that support life for all of us. Businesses who are supporting conservation and eco-sustainability may want to check out Dowie's work. It extensively documented with information and stories not seen elsewhere, with the exception of Kat Anderson in Tending the Wild. But Dowie's book points to the Global systematic adoption of a model that destroys Native People cultures and lives and by doing so undermines the very intention of the conservation movement. What are you supporting with you business practices in philanthropy, building and supply decisions?

Q&A with a tribal elder to follow. [...] Author of:
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Corporate-Responsibility-Reimagining-Sustainability/dp/0470648686/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284255061&sr=8-11

"Conservation Refugees" is a book by journalist Mark Dowie on a subject little known to the general public in the Western nations: the conflicts between conservationists and native peoples in the "Third World". Even I found the book both shocking and revealing, and yet I knew about the problem already as a kid (yes, really).

I was a member of a Swedish environmentalist group for youth and children which refused to support the activities of the WWF because of their ties to big business and their support for some national park in apartheid South Africa where the government had displaced the local population to make room for the animals. Weirdly, this particular environmentalist youth group was connected to a very "respectable" Swedish conservationist organization! Naturally, the unruly youngsters were roundly denounced as pinkos in a Conservative daily paper. Maybe we were pinkos, who knows?

Still, not even yours truly knew that ethnic cleansing was virtually standard practice in conservation efforts, almost from day one. And while Dowie, who is some kind of Green himself, casts his book as a "good guy vs. good guy story", many readers will probably feel that the conservationist groups are the bad guys. Indeed, it's difficult not to use pinko terms such as "imperialist", "colonialist" and even "fascist" when describing the antics of the WWF, CI and assorted others!

The standard scenario all over the world is eerily similar: conservationist groups, which are often funded by big business, convince some Third World government to create a national park to save "charismatic megafauna" (the old argument) or "biodiversity" (the new argument). The national parks are supposedly pristine wilderness...except that, of course, they are not. The local population, who have lived in the area for hundreds or even thousands of years, are evicted in what amounts to ethnic cleansing operations. Their settlements might be destroyed, they might be tricked into leaving, or "allowed to stay"...on impossible conditions, thereby making them leave "voluntarily". Later, the national parks are opened up to Western eco-tourists, who pay large amounts of money to see exotic wildlife, in effect turning the parks into "Whites only" areas. Most of the money from eco-tourism never reaches the local communities. Since the conservationist groups are funded by multinationals, these often get concessions immediately bordering the national parks. Meanwhile, the former natives are forced to live in resettlement camps, where unemployment, alcoholism and prostitution are rampant. This basic scenario has repeated itself in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Botswana, Thailand, India... The total number of conservation refugees might be numbered in millions!

The very idea of "pristine wilderness", with its Edenic implications, seems to be a modern, Western, colonialist construct. There's virtually *no* pristine wilderness anywhere in the world: even Yosemite and Yellowstone used to be inhabited by American Indians, there were thriving city-states in the Amazon basin before European conquest, the "pristine" savannahs in East Africa have been roamed by pastoralists for thousands of years, etc. Dowie points out that while some indigenous peoples have indeed destroyed their environment, many others have lived on the land in a sustainable fashion for generations - otherwise they wouldn't have survived to the present day! Yet, according to the ideal known as "fortress conservation", all human impact on nature is almost by definition negative, making it imperative to remove the local populations. The real reason behind this kind of conservation is more sinister: national park artificially creates a fake Eden for the enjoyment of rich, prosperous eco-tourists looking for aesthetic or quasi-religious kicks (or even to hunt big game, in sustainable fashion, of course). National parks are big bucks, pun intended. A few national parks are close to artificial: a privately-managed park in Ethiopia actually imported rhinos from South Africa, while displacing the local people.

Dowie mentions a couple of deep ecologist/Neo-Malthusian writers, and easily exposes their misanthropy. The seemingly "radical" and "anti-establishment" notions of the deep ecologists actually fit, hand in glove, with the visions of powerful national and transnational elites. When stripped of its bizarrely utopian rhetoric, deep ecology is simply a fig leaf (pun intended again!) for the most recent colonialist agenda, thereby exposing its pretensions to be a socially neutral, supra-human philosophy. As a side point, Dowie points out the incredible hypocrisy among these people, who admit that predators are a necessary part of the web of life - herbivores need to be culled, after all - but deny that *humans* can and have played this role. Apparently, it just has to be a tiger! (A man-eating tiger?)

Dowie further questions the idea that biodiversity is necessarily incompatible with a human presence. In fact, human activities, such as cattle grazing and even swidden agriculture, might enhance biodiversity. A particularly ironic example is the Keoladeo National Park in India, where the prohibition of cattle grazing made thick grass grow out of control, choking the local wetlands and depriving waterfowl of their nesting grounds. Only the illegal (!) re-introduction of cattle improved the situation... Studies in Africa show that the grazing cattle of the Maasai prevent thorny scrubs and woodland plants from overgrowing, making it easier to graze for wild mammals such as antelope and zebra. What this suggests, of course, is that the "pristine" wilderness of the East African savannahs is really a man-made, cultural landscape.

The author also points out that in the long run, it might actually be counter-productive for conservationists to start conflicts with the indigenous peoples. Many displaced persons drift back to their original homelands inside the national parks as poachers, to steal wood, etc. After having lived in a sustainable fashion for millennia, the indigenous peoples are suddenly turned into threats against nature...by the national parks themselves. More originally, the Maasai have sometimes responded to threats of eviction by killing "charismatic megafauna" en masse, dumping the carcasses near tourist trails to make their point. There are also cases where displaced people eek out a meagre living at the outskirts of national parks, only to have their plots destroyed by marauding elephants and antelope who sneak out of the parks on a semi-regular basis. However, the displaced indigenes are not allowed to defend themselves against the animals, even outside the national park perimeters! What this might do to the future relationship between animal and human is easy to surmise.

"Conservation Refugees" isn't the most graceful read around. The book could have needed a better editor, and has a tendency to jump back and forth from subject to subject. Still, it's a good and disturbing introduction to what's really going on in the world of conservation. It also gives an entirely new and decidedly sinister meaning to John Muir's famous quip about siding with the beasts in a war between humans and animals.

In sharp contrast to Muir, I'd side with Homo sapiens anytime.