by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 31, 2014 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
By Survival International
Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, has uncovered serious abuses of Baka “Pygmies” in southeast Cameroon, at the hands of anti-poaching squads supported and funded by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The Baka are being illegally forced from their ancestral homelands in the name of “conservation” because much of their land has been turned into “protected areas” – including safari-hunting zones.
Rather than target the powerful individuals behind organized poaching, wildlife officers and soldiers pursue Baka who hunt only to feed their families.
Watch Baka recount the abuse they suffer at the hands of anti-poaching squads supported by WWF:
The Baka and their neighbors accused of “poaching” face arrest, beatings and torture. Many Baka claim that friends and relatives have died as a result of the beatings.
Cameroon’s Ministry of Forests and Fauna, which employs the wildlife officers, is funded by WWF. WWF also provides officers with technical, logistical and material assistance. Without this support the anti-poaching squads could not function.
UN standards require WWF to prevent or mitigate “adverse human rights impacts directly linked to its operations” even if it has not contributed to them, but the giant of the conservation industry appears reluctant to acknowledge this. Despite the evidence that the anti-poaching squads have grossly abused the rights of the Baka, WWF continues to provide its crucial support.
As a result of the loss of their land and its resources, many Baka have reported a serious decline in their health and a rise in diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. And they fear going into the forest that has provided them with everything they need for countless generations.
A Baka man told Survival, “The forest used to be for the Baka but not anymore. We would walk in the forest according to the seasons but now we’re afraid. How can they forbid us from going into the forest? We don’t know how to live otherwise. They beat us, kill us and force us to flee to Congo.”
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “Tribal peoples are the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world. They know more about their lands and what happens on them than anyone else. If conservation is to work, organizations like WWF need to stick to international law, uphold tribal peoples’ land rights, ask them what help they need in protecting their land, listen to them, and then be prepared to back them up as much as they can. A major change in thinking about conservation is urgently required.”
Notes to editors:
– “Pygmy” is an umbrella term commonly used to refer to the hunter-gatherer peoples of the Congo Basin and elsewhere in Central Africa. The word is considered pejorative and avoided by some tribespeople, but used by others as a convenient and easily recognized way of describing themselves. Read more.
– Survival has submitted a request to the Cameroonian National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms asking it to investigate these abuses.
– Many Baka (such as the woman speaking in the video) refer to anti-poaching squads as “dobi-dobi” (WWF) since they do not distinguish between WWF and Cameroon’s Ministry of Forests and Fauna.
– Visit Survival’s Parks Need People page for other examples of tribal peoples evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of “conservation”.
From Survival International: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10456
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 25, 2013 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
Industrial oil palm plantations are spreading from Malaysia and Indonesia to the Congo raising fears about deforestation and social conflict.
A new report by The Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK), dramatically entitled The Seeds of Destruction, announces that new palm oil plantations in the Congo rainforest will soon increase fivefold to half a million hectares, an area nearly the size of Delaware. But conservationists warn that by ignoring the lessons of palm oil in Southeast Asia, this trend could be disastrous for the region’s forests, wildlife, and people.
“Governments of Congo Basin countries have handed out vast tracts of rainforest for the development of palm oil with apparently little or no attention to the likely impacts on the environment or on people dependent on the forest,” Simon Counsell, Executive Director of the Rainforest Foundation UK, said.
The palm tree used to produce palm oil originated in Africa, so production in the Congo Basin isn’t new. But industrial palm oil production involving massive plantations is a recent development for the region. The approach, modeled after operations in Southeast Asia, raises concerns among environmentalists who argue that palm oil has been a disaster for the forests of Malaysia and Indonesia. Indeed, scientific research has found that between 1990 and 2000, 86 percent of all deforestation in Malaysia was for palm oil.
The largest palm oil developer in the Congo Basin is currently Malaysian-owned Atama Plantations SARL, which is working to establish a 180,000-hectare (450,000-acre) plantation in the Republic of Congo. But the entire enterprise is masked by a complete lack of transparency, says the report.
“No publicly available maps of the concession are available, but evidence suggests that the forests designated for clearance mostly appear to be virgin rainforest that is habitat for numerous endangered species, including chimpanzees and gorillas. The area borders, and some of it may fall inside, a planned National Park and Ramsar site,” according to the RFUK report, which notes that logging has already begun on the concession.
The RFUK report further questions whether the plantation development is simply an excuse to log what it calls “primary forests with significant timber stocks.”
Another controversial concession, this time in Cameroon, has received considerable pushback from international NGOs as well as local groups. U.S.-based Herakles Farms is working to develop a 60,000 hectare palm oil plantation in forest bordering four protected areas, but the company’s reputation has been tarnished by local protests, as well as condemnation from international groups such as Greenpeace. Last year, 11 top tropical biologists sent an open letter to Herakles condemning the project.
But Herakles and other companies say they are bringing economic development to a notoriously poor part of the world.
The RFUK report notes that in many cases governments appear unwilling even to take advantage of the economic benefits of palm oil plantations, by overly-sweetening deals to foreign corporations.
“The contracts signed between governments and oil palm developers are being kept secret, reducing transparency and democratic accountability. Those contracts that have come to light show that governments have already signed away some of the potential economic benefits, by granting developers extremely generous tax breaks of 10 to 16 years and land for ‘free’ or at highly discounted rates,” the report reads.
In addition, the palm oil plantations are sparking local conflict with traditional landowners, much as they have done in Malaysia and Indonesia. Locals often have little input on the project and in some cases leases are extraordinarily long, for example Herakles Farms’ lease is 99 years.
“New large-scale oil palm developments are a major threat for communities, livelihoods and biodiversity in the Congo Basin,” Samuel Nguiffo, Director of the Center for Environment and Development (CED), Cameroon, said. “It is absolutely not the appropriate answer to the food security and job creation challenges the countries are facing. Supporting small-scale family agriculture is a better solution.”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Sep 7, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Agence France-Presse
A large palm oil plantation project in development in Cameroon since 2010 will put livelihoods and ecosystems in peril if allowed to continue, a US-based think-tank warned Wednesday.
“With the loss of livelihoods by thousands of Cameroonians on the line and critical and unique ecosystems in peril, this project must be stopped,” the Oakland Institute said in a report Wednesday.
Authoured in collaboration with Greenpeace International, the report said the project from SG Sustainable Oils Cameroon (SGSOC) was a case of massive deforestation disguised as a sustainable development project.
In 2009, Cameroon granted SGSOC, a subsidiary of US firm Herakles Farms, over 73,000 hectares (180,000 acres) of land in the country’s southwest to develop the plantation and refinery through a 99-year land lease.
But much of the project area is in a “biodiversity hotspot” that “serves as a vital corridor between five different protected areas,” the institute said.
It added that many locals fear the plantation would “restrict their access to lands held by their ancestors for generations” or that they would “lose land for farming as well as access to critical natural resources and forest products.”
In April, “11 of the world’s top scientists issued an open letter urging the Cameroonian government to stop the project that they say will threaten some of Africa’s most important protected areas,” the think-tank said.
But Bruce Wrobel, CEO of Herakles Farms, told the institute that “our project, should it proceed, will be a big project with big impacts — environmentally and socially.”
“I couldn’t be more convinced that this will be an amazingly positive story for the people within our impact area,” he was quoted saying in the report.
From Agence France-Presse:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 15, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
Eleven top scientists have slammed a proposed palm oil plantation in a Cameroonian rainforest surrounded by five protected areas. In an open letter, the researchers allege that Herakles Farm, which proposes the 70,000 hectare plantation in southwest Cameroon, has misled the government about the state of the forest to be cleared and has violated rules set by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), of which it’s a member. The scientists, many of whom are considered leaders in their field, argue that the plantation will destroy rich forests, imperil endangered species, and sow conflict with local people.
“You can’t just cut the heart out of this area and then expect everything to be fine,” says signatory Thomas Struhsaker, an expert on African primates and rainforest ecology at Duke University. “If this project proceeds the parks will become islands, surrounded by a hostile sea of oil palm.”
The scientists say they are not against palm oil plantations in principle. While the oilseed is the world’s most productive, it has come with a considerable ecological cost in Southeast Asia due to its link to deforestation in the region. Recently, the expansion has spread to Latin America and West Africa.
“We do not dispute that when oil palm plantations are established on previously deforested or abandoned lands and do not degrade nearby biologically rich areas, their environmental costs can be acceptable,” the letter reads. “The project proponents, however, have located their concession in the midst of a biodiversity hotspot on land that buffers and provides vital support functions to Korup and Bakossi National Parks, Rumpi Hills Forest Reserve, and Banyang Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary.”
Korup National Park alone is home to over 600 species of trees, nearly 200 reptiles and amphibians, around 1,000 butterflies, 400 species of birds, and 160 species of mammals, including one of the richest assemblages of primates in the world. Fourteen primates are found in the single park, including the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti), the most imperiled of the world’s chimpanzee subspecies. Forest elephants, leopards, and forest buffalo also roam the park.
Tropical ecologist and letter signatory, William Laurance of James Cook University says the region represents “some of the world’s most biologically important real estate,” adding that, “There’s no way a project like this would be allowed in most countries, because the price for biodiversity is just too high.”
A spokesperson from Herakles Farm told mongabay.com, “we certainly value the environment and biodiversity in the Southwest Region of Cameroon and laud the establishment of the protected areas around our concession,” pointing to a 28-page sustainability guide. In the guide the company describes its forest concession quite differently than Laurance, stating that it is “heavily exploited” secondary forest and therefore of “low biodiversity value.”
But in the letter, the scientists contend that Herakles Farms has misled Cameroon’s government about the state of the forest they propose to clear.
“[Herakles Farm] claims that the ‘vast majority of the concession is secondary and degraded forest’ and that the concession area was selected because it was located on ‘land that had been previously logged,'” reads the letter. But the scientists say that parts of the region have never seen logging, and, in addition, almost three-fourths of the palm oil concession currently has at least 70 percent natural tree cover, about the same as the world-renowned Korup National Park.
Read more from Mongabay: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0315-hance_herakles_letter.html
