Conservation Industrial Complex
30X30
"Nature-Based" Solutions
"... This term "Nature-Based Solutions" is rapidly moving center stage, not only in the climate discussions and the summits that are coming up in November but also in biodiversity negotiations globally. And it's being posed as a partial solution to both of those problems.
It's based on the simple and apparently benign idea that nature and natural ecosystems can help fight climate change by sucking our planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it where it can do no harm. We know that trees store a lot of carbon in their branches and their trunks, and some soils- peat bogs, for example- can also do likewise.
This idea has been seized on by polluting industries, and especially oil companies, and by some governments because it offers an alternative to rapidly reducing fossil fuel consumption in order to prevent climate change. Many oil companies are now claiming that they're becoming carbon neutral by offsetting their emissions by planting trees. Shell even claims that you can drive carbon neutral by using their petrol, whose emissions are offset by planting trees.[1]
... It turns out though that in order to have that significant an impact and reduce that amount of carbon in the atmosphere, you'd have to plant something like seven to eight hundred million hectares of new forest. That's roughly the size of Australia. Of course, we can't cover the whole of Australia in trees and indeed there's nowhere else on Earth where such a large unused area of land could be found. It can only in fact be found by planting on existing farmland: land that people are using and are dependent on. The global scientific body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that this could result in up to three hundred million people becoming malnourished, with the price of food globally increasing by up to 80 percent. So that is the significance that this kind of action could have.
In order to capture carbon quickly-- because remember, this all has to be done by 2030, according to the claims-- these new forests would need to not be nice, slow-growing native species like oak and so on. They'd have to be vast monocultures of very fast-growing alien trees like eucalyptus, such as we see on huge plantations in Brazil. They'd also have to be managed in this way as well, because it's probably only the private sector, the big forestry companies, that have the resources to plant them and then manage them subsequently. And these places, we have to understand, are an absolute disaster for wildlife, and they can replace important ecosystems like savannahs.[2]
Fortress Conservation
Fortress conservation is destroying the land and lives of Indigenous Peoples. But this model is embraced by Western conservation NGOs, and this is where most of the Western funding for nature protection is going. Why? Because the myths that sustain this model of conservation are reproduced in school texts, media, wildlife documentaries, NGO adverts, etc. The images we have seen since childhood about "nature," and the words we use to describe it, shape our way of thinking, our policies, and our actions. We tend to assume these words and images are the reality, as if they were neutral, objective, or "scientific." But they are not. Conservation is rooted in racism, colonialism, white supremacy, social injustice, land theft, extractivism, and violence. Contributors to this section show the role that the Global North plays in perpetuating these injustices by funding conservation that violates Indigenous Peoples rights. These projects lack transparency and accountability and don't tackle the real causes of the environmental crises.[3]
Salonga National Park
Is a park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is known as an 'emblematic Protected Area. "It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's the the biggest rain forest reserve in Africa and one of the biggest in the world. It also has funding from the United States, from Germany, and from the European Commission, among many other donors. What we found with our local partners was pretty shocking. In just eleven communities out of six hundred bordering the park, there were several cases of extrajudicial killings and multiple rapes by so-called eco-guards. And out of 250 people that were interviewed, sixty-three reported cases of physical abuse and torture of the local population.[4]
It's important to note that all of these funding organizations have preexisting human rights policies and due diligence processes. Go on their websites and you'll see plenty of documentation about how they integrate human rights principles into their programs. I think what our research showed is that too often this doesn't actually manifest on the ground. And by and large what it brings into focus are severe problems with the current Protected Area funding model that we see in central Africa. There's a huge lack of transparency and accountability: it turns out that many of these human rights abuses were known about, particularly by the WWF, who co-manages the park. When these human rights abuses surfaced there was very little understanding of who was responsible for what and who communities could go to for redress. It very much laid bare the inadequacy of international funding institutions' safeguards, procedures, and standards. And ultimately what it shows is that, as we've heard pretty much throughout the sessions today, it's based on a very fundamentally flawed "wilderness" model of conservation[5]
We went on a tour of the major international conservation organizations and funding agencies such as the US, Germany, and the European Commission to present the results from the study. Much of the initial reaction I liken to the different stages of grief. First of all, there was anger that we should be questioning policies. Second, there was denial-- there must be problems with our methodology, they said. Third, there was deflection: it wasn't ultimately their responsibility, they said, but rather that of the governments in these countries. I would say it wasn't until the Buzzfeed exposes... that this campaign really took off and we gained traction. All of a sudden, this issue couldn't be pushed under the carpet. It was a political issue now. And there followed an avalanche of reports, media exposes, and investigations by the various government agencies. ...[6]
The author continues, explaining how little conservation spending goes to Indigenous communities: "Our sister organization Rainforest Foundation Norway recently published a study that found that only 0.1 percent of climate funding goes towards Indigenous and local community land rights. Let that sink in: 0.1 percent. And this is when Indigenous Peoples and other local communities are said to manage 80 percent of the world's biodiversity.[7]
Sources
- ↑ "Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-determination, Land, and a World in Common, Edited by Ashley Dawson, Fiore Longo, and Survival International; Page, 91.
- ↑ "Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-determination, Land, and a World in Common, Edited by Ashley Dawson, Fiore Longo, and Survival International; Page, 92-93.
- ↑ Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-determination, Land, and a World in Common, Edited by Ashley Dawson, Fiore Longo, and Survival International; Page, 119.
- ↑ Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-determination, Land, and a World in Common, Edited by Ashley Dawson, Fiore Longo, and Survival International; Page, 122.
- ↑ Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-determination, Land, and a World in Common, Edited by Ashley Dawson, Fiore Longo, and Survival International; Page, 122.
- ↑ Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-determination, Land, and a World in Common, Edited by Ashley Dawson, Fiore Longo, and Survival International; Page, 122-123.
- ↑ "Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-determination, Land, and a World in Common, Edited by Ashley Dawson, Fiore Longo, and Survival International; Page, 124.