Conservation refugees are people (usually indigenous) who are displaced from their native lands when conservation areas, such as parks and other protected areas, are created.What is a Conservation Refugee, from Native Solutions to Conservation Refugees
Definition Many conservation refugees (such as the Great Lakes Twa) were already marginalized before a nature preserve was established on their territory, and are culturally dislocated and often living on the margins of urban areas or new settlements with few social or economic opportunities. Facing powerful state and international conservation interests, they rarely have legal recourse. Many conservation refugees are housed in refugee camps.
Role of ENGOs ENGOs (environmental non-governmental organizations) are funded by a variety of sources. Private foundations, such as the Ford and MacArthur Foundations, once provided the bulk of the funds supporting NGO conservation efforts. Funds from bilateral and multilateral sources (such as USAID and the World Bank) and corporations also support ENGOs. An increase in corporate sponsorship raises the possibility of a conflict of interest between ENGOs and the corporations which support them, leading to ethical negligence.
Although the websites of the World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International say that the groups participate with local communities, the universally-applied model of conservation (based on Western science) often clashes with traditional knowledge of the environment. The Western conservation movement may be dismissive of indigenous conservation models because they are not based on Western science, but indigenous knowledge is the result of generations of interaction with their environment. In his Orion magazine article "Conservation Refugees", Mark Dowie writes:
John Muir, a forefather of the American conservation movement, argued that 'wilderness' should be cleared of all inhabitants and set aside to satisfy the urbane human's need for recreation and spiritual renewal. It was a sentiment that became national policy with the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, which defined wilderness as a place 'where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.' One should not be surprised to find hardy residues of these sentiments among traditional conservation groups. The preference for 'virgin' wilderness has lingered on in a movement that has tended to value all nature but human nature, and refused to recognize the positive wildness in human beings.
Dowie's article assesses the globalization of conservation. With the removal of indigenous communities from protected land, a symbiosis between indigenous peoples and their environment is disrupted; this may have the unintended consequence of decreasing biodiversity, as those who formerly lived off the land are now prohibited from interacting with it. As a result of their expulsion, they are poor additions to the over-populated areas surrounding the park (Igoe 2005). Poaching may increase, and the soil may become degraded as refugees take up subsistence agriculture. By ignoring the human factor, the conservation model followed by large ENGOs can be ineffective and counterproductive.
Preserving habitats or cultures In the spring of 2003, India's Adivasi were pushed out of their farmlands and relocated to crowded villages to import six Asiatic lions. Although NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund try to conserve land and animal species while training indigenous peoples for alternate work, indigenous peoples are often removed from their land and placed in communities or villages which leave them vulnerable to poverty and starvation. Not compensated for what was lost, they have difficulty adjusting to their new lifestyle. The issue of conservation refugees across India are well reported
Christine MacDonald's Green, Inc. quotes a tribal leader that "white men" told them to leave their homes in the forest because the land was not protected; they were forced into another village (which was already occupied by another group) outside the forest, and had "no choice, because they told them that they [would] be beaten and killed". Left without food and land, they were forced to work on farms established by the villagers before them.
Eliminating culture and behavior Indigenous peoples who are forced from their land lose the portions of their culture which are embedded in resources. According to Darrell A. Posey, indigenous knowledge could significantly contribute to conservation: "What looked natural might be cultural, and thus that indigenous people should be seen as models for conservation, rather than as opposed to it and thus denied land rights".
Many residents of what have become conservation sites or national parks have cultural rituals and practices which are adapted to their local environment. Through these practices, they have been able to survive and develop a culture. Mark Dowie's Conservation Refugees describes Africa's Batwa Pygmies. After living in conservation camps under restrictions limiting centuries-old cultural practices, community member Kwokwo Barume observed that "we are heading toward extinction". The restrictions include bans on cultivation, hunting or gathering, and sacred sites and burial grounds are off-limits; all are essential to the people's daily life. Limitations such as these help lead toward the extinction of hunter-gatherer groups around the world to make way for government-sanctioned game reserves and ecotourism.
Redefining conservation Posey was an anthropologist and ethnobiologist whose writings about the Kayapo people of the Amazon rainforest influenced environmental policy; traditional societies are now viewed as helpers in conservation, and steps are being taken to aid the reconstruction of these societies (Dove & Carpenter 2008:5). Posey reiterated that indigenous people were the only ones who truly knew the forests, because they inhabited them for centuries. He also determined that biodiversity was important for indigenous peoples' lives through gardens, openings into the forest and rock outcrops; what is considered natural today may have been altered by the ancestors of the indigenous peoples, rather than naturally occurring as previously thought. Posey's work is helping to redefine conservation and what it means to societies living in conservation areas.
South American countries connect indigenous groups willing to practice conservation with technical resources from conservation groups. Instead of being expelled from their land, the Federal Environmental Conservation Act that protects their rights to remain on the land and use its natural resources; the "commonwealth minister negotiates conservation agreements with them".Alcorn, J.B. and A.G. Royo. 2007:13
Indigenous peoples The World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) held its first conference in British Columbia in 1975. It was founded by Chief George Manuel of the Shuswap Nation, who found after traveling the world that the same suffering and mistreatment felt by the North American Indians were also felt by many other indigenous peoples. Some indigenous peoples began to speak up at conservation meetings which affected them. According to Mark Dowie, "'We are enemies of conservation,' declared Maasai leader Martin Saning’o, standing before a session of the November 2004 World Conservation Congress sponsored by IUCN in Bangkok, Thailand. The nomadic Maasai, who have over the past thirty years lost most of their grazing range to conservation projects throughout eastern Africa, hadn’t always felt that way. In fact, Saning’o reminded his audience, '…we were the original conservationists.'"
Dowie also writes that Sayyaad Saltani, the elected chair of the Council of Elders of the Qashqai Confederation in Iran, gave a speech to the World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa, in October 2003. Saltani discussed the relentless pressures on his nomadic pastoral people, how their pastures and natural resources were seized by a number of agencies, and the interruption of their migratory path: "Their summer and winter pastures were consistently degraded and fragmented by outsiders, and not even their social identity was left alone".
Violence and retaliation have followed park creation due to resentment of land restriction and displacement or blocked access to resources, causing shortages. In Nepal, when the Sagarmatha National Park was founded, the Sherpa intentionally accelerated forest depletion because their rights and traditional practices had been taken away: "Local elders estimated that more forest was lost in the first four years after the park's creation than in the previous two decades". Several instances of violence have occurred in India following park creations. India has nearly five hundred protected areas, rich in resources and primarily surrounded by agricultural land and poor villages: "Inevitably they invade the reserves and come into conflict with authorities. Resentment at the wildlife authorities attempts to control the situation has exploded in violence against officials and guards". In the Naganhde National Park in South India, wildlife guards allegedly killed a poacher; the local people retaliating by burning of forest: "In India, resentment by local people to National Parks legislation and enforcement agencies has caused increasing problems".
Africa African conservation refugees (about 14 million, according to some sources) have long been displaced due to transnational efforts to preserve select biomes believed to be historically and environmentally crucial. The article "Parks and Peoples: the social impact of protected areas" reported that a protected area is a way of "seeing, understanding, and reproducing the world around us" and a place of social interaction and production.West, P., Igoe, J., & Brockington, D. (2006, June 5). Parks and People: the social impact of protected areas. Annual Review of Anthropology, pp. 251-77. Protected areas are established to preserve an area in its natural state in an increasingly-globalized world. Although the residential grounds of millions of native people have existed for hundreds of years, conservation efforts encroach on these areas to preserve the biological diversity of flora and fauna.
Wildlife, plants and other resources are protected, and native people are expelled beyond the border of the new preserved area (PA) so they do not affect the ecological preservation. Displacement and the lack of rights of displaced peoples is a main concern of environmental conservation; displaced peoples may encounter social problems (such as nationalism) in their new locations. These refugees often become a socially-isolated underclass. Another effect of displacement is the loss of jobs, hunting grounds, personal resources and freedom. The treatment of these peoples may trigger war (among themselves or with opposing groups), disease and malnutrition.