Conservation Refugees:
Conservation
refugees are people, frequently indigenous people, who are displaced from their lands to create
conservation areas -- national parks or biodiversity reserves.
Conservation refugees exist on every continent, except Antarctica. By
some reports there are 14 million conservation refugees on the African
continent alone. Conservation rivals resource extraction, as the
greatest force displacing indigenous people.
The issue of conservation refugees has been overshadowed by the rush to
preserve biodiversity and the western publics' love of biodiversity
conservation. However, biodiversity is now suffering
from the loss of indigenous people, who have managed these lands for centuries
or milennia.
Here are four great articles on conservation refugees:
"It
should be no surprise, then, that tribal peoples regard
conservationists as just another colonizer—an extension of the
deadening forces of economic and cultural hegemony. "
-Conservation Refugees, Mark Dowie
Read Conservation Refugees
"As corporate
and government money flow into the three big international
organizations that dominate the world’s conservation agenda,
their programs have been marked by growing conflicts of
interest—and by a disturbing neglect of the indigenous peoples
whose land they are in business to protect."
-A Challenge to Conservationists, Mac Chapin
Read A Challenge to Conservationists
"The growing unpopularity of protected areas has come as an unwelcome shock for many conservationists."
-Eviction for Conservation: A Global Overview, Dan Brockington and Jim Igoe (Under Review with Conservation and Society)
Read Eviction for Conservation
"The
responsibility, in our view, rests now—upon major international
NGOs concerned with conservation, such as IUCN, WWF, WCS, CI, and
others, to genuinely distance themselves from displacement operations
that impoverish people, to formally adopt transparent social safeguards
regarding involuntary displacement, ..."
Poverty Risks and National Parks: Policy Issues in Conservation and Resettlement, Michael Cernea and Kia Schmidt-Soltau
Read Poverty Risks
