by DGR Colorado Plateau | Nov 4, 2015 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling
By Apoorva Joshi / Mongabay
This is the first in a two-part series on gold mining in Suriname. Read the second part.
- High gold prices are leading to an increase in mining activity.
- Mining activities threaten Suriname’s primary forests, some of the most-intact in South America.
- Mercury released from the mining process can be toxic, and is showing up in human population centers far downstream.
Record high gold prices over much of the past decade have triggered a massive gold rush across much of the Amazon basin, resulting in the destruction of thousands of hectares of pristine rainforest and the contamination of major rivers with toxic heavy metals. A newly released report published by the Amazon Conservation Team titled “Amazon Gold Rush: Gold Mining in Suriname” explores the rapid expansion and impacts of gold mining in Suriname through cartography and digital storytelling.
It finds that from 2000 to 2014, the extent of gold mining in the South American country increased by 893 percent.
While the Amazon rainforests of Brazil and Peru are well-known, Suriname’s vast and ancient rainforests remain one of the world’s best-kept natural secrets, according to the online report. But demand for the age-old elemental metal threatens to destroy them.
“According to our calculations, deforestation caused by gold mining has been growing steadily since the turn of the century and rapidly in the past five years,” GIS and Web Development Coordinator at the Amazon Conservation Team, Rudo Kemper told mongabay.com. The average rate of deforestation since 2000 is close to 3,000 hectares per year, but in 2014 an estimated 5,712 hectares of forest cover was lost to gold mining, he said. The REDD+ for the Guiana Shield regional collaborative study on gold mining shows similar trends, reporting a near-doubling (97 percent increase) of deforestation from 2008 to 2014 and attributing a total of 53,668 hectares of deforestation to gold mining in 2014.
Compared to many other South American countries, Suriname still holds much of its forest cover. According to Global Forest Watch, Suriname lost 0.7 percent of its tree cover from 2001 through 2014 – a small proportion compared to Brazil’s 6.9 percent. However, Suriname’s intact forest landscapes – large, continuous areas of primary forest – do show degradation since 2000.
The Guiana Shield, as Kemper puts it, is one of three cratons of the South American tectonic plate. “It is a tropical rainforest region covered with unique table-top mountains called tepuis,” he said. “It has the largest expanse of undisturbed tropical rainforest in the world, and one of the highest rates of biodiversity.” Suriname is among the most forested countries in the world, as the report highlights. In 2012, 95 percent of the country’s entire area was classified as forest. Globally surpassed only by its neighbor French Guiana, Suriname’s pristine rainforest harbors numerous unique species of fauna like the Guianan cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola rupicola), the famous blue poison dart frog (Dendrobates tinctorius), the red-faced spider monkey (Ateles paniscus), and the pale-throated sloth (Bradypus tridactylus). Jaguars, tapirs, and giant anteaters also call the region home. The mineral-rich Greenstone Belt region, where most of the gold mining in Suriname takes place, is primarily composed of the forested highlands of the Guiana Shield. Conservationists worry that deforestation caused by rapidly expanding gold mining activities is negatively impacting the habitat of many unique species.
Suriname rainforest. Photo courtesy of the Amazon Conservation Team.
Since the 1960s, development and resource extraction incursions into the country’s interior have become commonplace. These encroachments have taken the form of dam-building, logging, bauxite mining, and as of the turn of the century, small-scale and industrial gold mining, the report says. Given that it is one of the world’s smallest countries, Suriname’s annual rate of gold production might not compare to that of larger countries like South Africa, China, Russia or Peru. But relative to its land area, Suriname actually ranks tenth in global gold production.
Partially republished with permission of Mongabay. Read the full article, Gold mining explodes in Suriname, puts forests and people at risk.
by DGR Colorado Plateau | Nov 4, 2015 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
JUSTICE, CONSERVATION AND THE PROTECTED AREAS ESTABLISHMENT FRENZY
“A theory, however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue. Likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.”
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
Echoing the pleas of illegally displaced tribal peoples in a number of countries, a leading human rights NGO has called the loss of home, livelihoods, culture and customary rights in the name of conservation, “one of the most urgent and horrific humanitarian crises of our time”
[1]. Such concerns are often absent from the narratives of the international conservation establishment. When they are addressed, it tends to be at the fringes, the magnitude of the crisis not appreciated.
Instead, what we usually hear from international conservation organizations is that parks, game reserves and other kinds of protected areas are the most important conservation success story and should be extended, improved, and strengthened worldwide. Recent research that provided a preamble to the November 2014 World Parks Congress, for instance, argued similarly that “protected areas are core to the future of life on our planet”, requiring larger coverage, representation and better management and funding[2]. Such assertions require reflection.
It is true that, in many cases, protected areas are allowing critical species and ecosystems to persist, and in this way they provide a cushion of hope in our ability to preserve some of the world’s remaining natural wealth. Biodiversity is often higher inside of protected areas than outside[3]. They can provide opportunities for improving health and well-being, support human life through invaluable environmental services, and offer opportunities for new forms of economic development and financial mechanisms, including through tourism, payments for ecosystem services, offsets, and bioprospecting. Yet the strategy based on protected areas, which defines conservation success in terms of spatial control, fails to tackle the most significant challenges to preserving biodiversity.
The celebration of protected areas hides ways in which the perpetuation of exclusionary conservation in many countries does not protect against so-called “development” so much as it mirrors it, as extractive industries, agribusiness, and conservation alike encroach into community and indigenous lands, and hinder local people’s ability to manage and be sustained by their territories, and to play a role in fostering biodiversity.
The “Promise” of the World Parks Congress[4] has encouragingly identified the role and rights of aboriginal peoples within community-based systems. It also pledges to “seek to redress and remedy past and continuing injustices in accord with international agreements”. Yet, state- and privately-managed conservation pursuits undertaken within former and current aboriginal ancestral territories, exercise ever greater control over large, highly biodiverse landscapes, without the needed scrutiny and appropriate responses to rights violations. The Promise’s call “to ensure that protected areas do not regress but rather progress” demands that more attention be paid to territorial jurisdiction and stewardship by indigenous peoples and local communities.
PREDATORY AND PERILOUS CONSERVATION
The idea that state conservation agencies and large international conservation NGOs have pursued their agendas at the expense of indigenous and local communities is not new. In 2003 for instance, at the fifth World Parks Congress in Durban, issues of justice and human rights were put on the table.[5] The following year, an important paper by anthropologist Mac Chapin called the conservation establishment to account for how it had dealt with indigenous communities[6]. Since then, governments endorsed and adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and work has been underway to clarify, implement and uphold rights, including in the context of conservation standards[7].
However, what lasting effect this kind of attention to human rights issues has had on the practice of state conservation is not clear. Evidence of the negative social impact of state managed conservation continues to pile up. In 2009, Dowie’s Conservation Refugees exposed how conservation organizations have become one of the biggest threats to indigenous peoples all over the world[8]. Moreover, research efforts continue to document the trampling of community rights through the accumulation of land and resources by government conservation agencies, their international NGO partners[9], and corporate tourism. Dispossession, forced resettlement and violation of the rights of local communities in places targeted for conservation have recently been documented in India, Thailand, and Central and Eastern Africa[10].
Despite the sheer volume of cases of forced evictions and destroyed livelihoods, the prominent message from last year’s World Parks Congress was clear and simple: let there be no retreat; let every country play its part in the push to achieve protected area targets; let the park rangers have more support in their war against poachers! This trend once again compels an examination of a global conservation strategy which in many countries signifies the continuation of policies of forced resettlement in order to create, extend and strengthen state managed parks and game reserves.
Eviction attempt, Uvinje village, north of Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania (Credit: Uvinje villagers)
To appreciate the impacts of current approaches to conservation, one only needs to take a quick look at some of the most park-friendly countries, such as Tanzania whose protected areas cover no less than one-third of the country’s territory. In Tanzania, a barrage of factors frustrate conservation efforts, including climate change, a growing human population, poverty, unsustainable resource use outside of protected areas, encroachment into park lands, and most notably an overwhelming poaching crisis. The steady expansion of the protected area network together with the need to combat the unprecedented level of organized poaching of iconic wildlife species such as elephants and rhinos have been accompanied by a relentless push for escalating security budgets[11].
Yet these challenges only partially describe the nature of the problem facing conservation in the country today. Tanzania’s pattern of forcibly displacing ancestral communities from their land and significantly hindering mobile people’s ability to seasonally access needed resources, while the tourism industry and the government conservation agencies continue to accumulate territory may be the most fundamental challenge to the conservation of biodiversity in the country[12].
On one side, disillusioned communities surrounding parks and game reserves, once stewards of their own environments, have been divested of all but tiny remnants of their ancestral lands or have been fully dispossessed, leading to destroyed livelihoods, out-migration and social conflict. Peoples integrally connected to their natural environment, such as the Maasai of Loliondo[13], and communities who in the past proactively reached out to seek a partnership with the government to implement conservation, such as Uvinje on Tanzania’s northern coast[14], have been stripped of their tenure rights and their ability to properly care for themselves and the wildlife, and portrayed as enemies of conservation. On the other side, there are the comparatively well-funded activities of an entrenched conservation machinery. Under their watch, wildlife has been imperilled by organized criminal poaching taking advantage of corruption[15] and by ill-managed trophy hunting[16].
Similar stories can be told about other countries[17], with poaching ironically reaching alarming and critical levels inside protected areas[18]. Yet overall, protected areas have come to be widely regarded as the best or even the only hope for nature’s survival.
To what extent this is a response to increased opportunities for international assistance and investment in tourism, a defensive reaction against mining and other forms of economic development that result in destruction of habitat, or a result of skepticism about the ability of human beings to live in harmony with nature, is unclear. Probably all of these factors are playing a role.
Regardless, protected areas are — under the premise the ends justify the means— being pursued at any price and by any means possible. For indigenous and rural communities who live on land targeted for conservation by the state or by conservation NGOs, even when they have been stalwart stewards of the ecosystems they inhabit, the result is devastating.
THE CULTURE OF CONSERVATION
Unfortunately, as long as we remain resigned to a culture of conservation that treats human beings as the enemy and that turns a blind eye to violations of human rights, the approach will be self-defeating. Current declines in biodiversity are not primarily a result of gaps in the number, extent and representation of parks and other kinds of protected areas, nor is the decline of iconic species caused by insufficiently strict exclusion of poor rural people from their traditional territories. What we are seeing are the consequences of a fundamentally misguided strategy being pursued by global and national conservation establishments. There are three essential problems with this strategy.
First, the pursuit of conservation through the creation of boundaries and enclosures which divide communities and nature and place nature under the strict control of powerful, unaccountable non-local institutions can only work to the extent that protected areas can be buffered from social discontent beyond their boundaries—an essentially impossible task. The marginalization and dispossession of indigenous peoples and rural communities in the name of conservation, the capturing of the tourism dollars and other economic benefits of conservation by local and national elites and by international investors, and the militarization of protected areas can only lead to increasing social conflict and disillusionment with the very idea of conservation and with the organizations promoting it. Cash payouts as a part of “benefit sharing”, even when they do actually materialize, even when they do amount to something more than crumbs, cannot compensate for losing one’s livelihood, cultural bearings, land and home.
In contrast to this trend is the growing recognition from both researchers and practitioners that biological diversity is intrinsically connected to cultural diversity, and that indigenous peoples and local communities enrich the practice of conservation. Indeed, where indigenous and local communities have been able to secure their rights to govern their territories as well as implement their values and outlook on protected areas and conservation, positive conservation outcomes have been achieved, and productive partnerships and new forms of collaboration have developed.[19] Conversely, the failure to acknowledge this has prevented national governments and the conservation establishment from benefiting from traditional ecological knowledge, from grassroots social and institutional experience in sustainably managing ecosystems, and from the home-grown, heartfelt conservation ethic which people who live on and from the land so often possess. We cannot expect to achieve conservation when the means of doing so violate the welfare of those who have fostered biodiversity.
Second, the dominant approach seems to ignore the fact that we live in an interconnected world, where local processes have global consequences and vice versa. What happens beyond parks is as critical as what happens within them, often more so. The international trade in engendered species, climate change, and the destruction of habitat by conflicts and by industrial resource extraction all affect indigenous and rural communities whose traditional territories lie within and adjacent to parks, but are not caused by them.
This problem was identified at the recent World Parks Congress:
The failure of the IUCN and the conservation sector to take seriously the surge in mining, extractive industries and other forms of development has put into question the integrity of protected and conserved areas, the maintenance of livelihoods for Indigenous peoples and local communities, and possible solutions to climate change and instability.[20]
Even when these communities are, in some places, contributing to the loss of biodiversity, as through the expansion of agriculture into ever more marginal lands and wildlife habitats, it must be recognized that these activities are intricately connected to conditions of poverty, failings of governance, and social injustice. Addressing environmental challenges in a fragmented way that does not account for these deeper drivers and that does not take into account the need to engage with a broader range of custodians of territories who could help to counter these drivers will not shield us from serious environmental consequences either within or outside of protected areas. Often, it is communities members’ practices we blame, as well as communities’ territories we turn our attention to, and in doing so, we fail to see what happens in the more industrialized and geopoliticized landscapes.
The third problem is more fundamental. It relates to the thinking underlying a culture and approach to conservation which divides people and nature. This fragmented worldview produces solutions based on fragmentation. It leads either to the belief that nature is a resource, something to be dominated and used, or to the conviction that it must be defended from human beings. Most state-led conservation approaches are based on a dualistic separation between people and the environment, in many cases leading to displacement, resettlement and to loss not only of rich biological, but also of cultural, diversity.[21]
Indigenous worldviews, on the other hand, see human beings as part of the world of nature and recognize an interconnectedness which runs deeper than simply acknowledging that our material survival depends on healthy ecosystems. In a worldview founded on interconnectedness, nature shapes who we are as human beings. And it is shaped by us—not as engineers fabricating a machine to chosen specifications, but as creatures that move within and help to make up the world of nature. Small parts called “protected areas” cannot be healthy apart from the whole.
From this perspective, the very phrase “protected area” reveals misguided thinking. Protected from what? The answer—protected from us—reveals the imbalance that calls out for correction. Indigenous worldviews suggest that it is interconnectedness that allows diversity to thrive. These views have been, more often than not, persistently disregarded in state-managed conservation and the mainstream conservation paradigm whose worldview is one of reducing the world and ways of thinking down to their component parts. Another question—protected for whom?—calls into question who it is that really benefits. As protected areas increasingly become linked to economic ventures, through payment for ecosystem services and offsets, bioprospecting and tourism, the people who benefit most are seldom those who live in or adjacent to the actual sites of conservation.
MEANINGFUL INSTITUTIONAL AND COLLECTIVE ACTION IS NEEDED
Setting conservation on a different path will require thorough changes in institutions and institutional culture, the challenging of vested interests, and new ways of thinking about human beings’ relationship with nature, all of which will be long term undertakings. Yet, there are some steps that could be taken immediately to help reframe conservation in a way that respects human rights, protects cultural diversity, and mobilizes local communities as allies in environmental conservation efforts.
REASSESSING PROTECTED AREA TARGETS AS A MEASURE OF PROGRESS
Through the Convention on Biological Diversity, the countries of the world have agreed to targets for the establishment of protected areas: at least 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10% of coastal and marine areas.[22]
The guidelines for achieving these targets allow for protected areas with differing management objectives, including sustainable use of resources, and allow for different forms of governance, including governance by local communities and indigenous groups. However, in their implementation the targets have provided a perfect excuse for land grabs and other unjust practices in the name of conservation. The single-minded push to create national parks and game reserves has undermined the role of people who are connected with and care about nature, and in so doing it undermines conservation.
The protected areas targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity also include a milestone that “all protected areas are effectively and equitably managed”. It is time for this milestone to be given some teeth. Unless it is aboriginal peoples specifically requesting for a park to be established on their territory, this might entail withdrawing support towards the establishment of national parks within territories inhabited by aboriginal peoples, and not counting these cases as contributing to protected area targets.
Ultimately, progress in conservation effectiveness needs to be defined also in terms of equity, shared or community-led jurisdiction and the cooperative engagement of local custodians rather than percentage of territories set aside as protected areas[23].
REORIENTING WHAT CONSERVATION BUDGETS ARE SPENT ON
Currently, much of the assistance from international conservation organizations and aid agencies for conservation in developing countries supports, either directly or indirectly, the dominant strategy based on strong, state-governed protected areas.
An alternative approach would direct more resources to initiatives such as supporting ongoing but overlooked efforts of local communities[24], and building the capacity of community-based organizations and indigenous and local governments to engage in conservation and develop sustainable economies.[25] It would also facilitate equitable partnerships for conservation, which put communities on an equal footing with government, international conservation NGOs and the tourism industry in terms of participation in decision-making, access to training and certification, and access to employment.
Conservation dollars might also be expected to achieve a greater long term impact by monitoring and addressing drivers of environmental degradation beyond protected areas, the real culprit behind loss of ecosystems and biodiversity.
Support is needed for landscape-wide approaches which include communities as full partners, which recognize and protect their assets and tenure rights inside and outside protected areas, and which aim for protection of habitats as well as sustainable and just use of natural resources beyond protected area islands.
Where powerful interests cannot be expected to partner with communities in good faith, the financing of social justice initiatives is needed: funds to support community legal action in defence of human rights, and mechanisms to ensure meaningful engagement, informed collective consent, and compliance on the part of powerful states and non-state conservation actors.
RECONNECTING PEOPLE WITH NATURE
Even in rural areas, people’s connection to their environment is changing. But this is a trend that could be reversed by taking a more socially conscious approach to conservation.
Countries that still have large areas of natural forest and savannah should not be building walls to keep people away from nature or slowly depriving areas of badly needed services and infrastructure as a way to push people away. Instead, they should support people to make decisions for the well-being of their children and grandchildren, provide requested extension services, and encourage local economies that protect biocultural diversity while also adding value to it.
The primary purpose of parks should not be to attract international tourists. Instead, more should be done to attract and assist local people to (re)connect with their territory. This is particularly true for rural people who live adjacent to protected areas. Rural people we have spoken to who live near Serengeti National Park Tanzania, for instance, miss the days when the Park regularly sent buses to take their children on trips into the park[26]. People living on the north-east side of Saadani National Park do not understand how government reclassification of their former village lands can be used to prevent them from visiting ancient sacred places.[27]
There is a need to recognize and support indigenous people’s and local communities’ ability to live well in their territories and to use their resources according to their values and knowledge. Indeed, there is growing evidence that indigenous peoples whose human rights are protected, e.g. their rights to their lands, territories and resources and right to self-determination, have ecosystems that are in much better shape than national parks and reserves managed by the State or other external actors.[28] The separation of communities from their ancestral territories undermines the interconnectedness that we so badly need and depend upon.
JUST CONSERVATION
Beyond the specific necessities of reassessing protected areas targets as a policy tool and reorienting what conservation budgets are spent on, there is a broader, longer term need to re-examine existing global and national policies and governance mechanisms for conservation. At a moment when organized poaching and international trade in endangered species is threatening the survival of too many species, in some instances fuelling armed conflicts (…even within state-governed parks and game reserves! …even though conservation spending is the highest in history!), threats within and beyond protected areas surpass the ability of any one stakeholder, approach or institution to maintain biologically and culturally diverse landscapes.
The need to re-enlist local communities as allies in conservation is urgent. This need can be met, not through “awareness-raising” programs, but through tangible steps toward recognition of rights to territory, concrete redress of social justice infringements and participation in decision-making processes, as well as effective delivery of requested services and infrastructure in areas that are often impoverished and marginalized.
Meaningful institutional inclusion, shared jurisdiction and clear recognition of diverse values and knowledge systems guiding conservation, direct training and employment and sustainable economies can lead to multi-level cooperation and concerted collective action. Meager benefit-sharing programs and draconian restrictions on inhabitation, access and use of protected areas will not suffice.
In particular, enforceable mechanisms are needed for the defence of human rights and the preventing of evictions of local communities and indigenous peoples from targeted landscapes. This must include safeguarding and in many cases reinstating communities’ land tenure rights, as well as creating systems for meaningful engagement between local communities on the one hand and government conservation agencies and conservation NGOs on the other. Just conservation is effective conservation: it is time for tangible action to make it happen.
REFERENCES
[1] Survival International, Parks Need Peoples.[2] Watson, J., Dudley, N., Segan, N. and Hockings. 2014. Theperformance and potential of protected areas. Nature, 515: 72.
[3] Coetzee, B., Gaston, K. and Chown, S. 2014. Local scale comparisons of biodiversity as a test for global protected area ecological performance: A meta-analysis. PLoS ONE 9(8): e105824.
[4] The “Promise of Sydney” was the official communiqué of the IUCN World Parks Congress, held in Sydney in November 2014. It rests on four pillars which collectively represent the outcomes of the World Parks Congress: the core Vision; twelve Innovative Approaches;Commitments, including pledges from countries, funders and organizations; and Solutions. The four pillars “collectively represent the direction and blueprint for a decade of change that emanate from the deliberations of this World Parks Congress”.
[5] Brosius, J. P. 2004. Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas at the World Parks Congress. Conservation Biology, 18: 609–612.
[6] Chapin, M. 2004. A challenge to conservationists. World Watch Magazine, (November/December), 17–31.
[7] United Nations, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the General Assembly on 13 September 2007; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure, endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security on 11 May 2012. Indian Law Resource Center and IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy. 2015. Conservation and Indigenous Peoples in Mesoamerica: A Guide; D. Roe, G. Oviedo, L. Pabon, M. Painter, K. Redford, L. Siegele, J. Springer, D. Thomas and K. Walker Painemilla. 2010. Conservation and human rights: the need for conservation standards. London: IIED; IIED, Conservation Initiative on Human Rights; IIED and Natural Justice, Human Rights Standards for Conservation; Campese, J., Sunderland, T., Greiber, T. and Oviedo, G. (eds.) 2009. Rights-based approaches: Exploring issues and opportunities for conservation. Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR and IUCN.
[8] Mark Dowie. 2009. Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[9] T.A. Benjaminsen, M. J. Goldman, M.Y. Minwary and F. P. Maganga. 2013. Wildlife management in Tanzania: State control, rent seeking and community resistance. Development and Change, 44(5): 1087–1109; T.A. Benjaminsen and I. Bryceson. 2012. Conservation, green/blue grabbing and accumulation by dispossession in Tanzania. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(2): 335-355; Kumar, K.J, 2008. Reserved Parking: Marine reserves and small-scale fishing communities.SAMUDRA Dossiers. International Collective in Support of Fishworkers. Chennai, India: Nagaraj and Company Pvt Ltd
[10] Survival International, 2015. World Wildlife Day: tribespeople denounce persecution in the name of ‘conservation’; Vidal, J. How the Kalahari bushmen and other tribes people are being evicted to make way for ‘wilderness’. The Guardian, 16 November 2014; Survival International, Parks Need People; Bennet, G., J. Woodman, J. Gakelebone, S. Pani, J. Lewis. 2015. Indigenous Peoples destroyed for misguided ‘conservation’. Lecture presented at the ‘Beyond Enforcement: Communities, governance, incentives and sustainable use in combating wildlife crime’ conference, 26-28th February, Muldersdrift, South Africa; Bennett, O. and C. McDowell. 2012. Displaced: The Human Cost of Development and Resettlement. Palgrave Macmillan.
[11] (“We need a $77 million budget per year to be able to ensure all our national parks are sufficiently secured, while the current budget stands at $38 million annually,” Minister of Tourism (The East African, 28 April 2012); “[T]his includes additional millions of dollars to help countries across the region build their capacity to meet this challenge, because the entire world has a stake in making sure that we preserve Africa’s beauty for future generations,” Barack Obama (Washington Times/The Global Animal, 8 August 2013).
[12] J. Friedman-Rudovsky. The ecotourism industry is saving Tanzania’s animals and threatening its Indigenous People. Vice Magazine, 12 May 2015.
[13] D. Smith. Tanzania accused of backtracking over sale of Masai’s ancestral land. The Guardian, 16 November 2014; N. Malilk. Rich Gulf Arabs using Tanzania as a playground? Someone opened the gate. The Guardian, 17 November 2014.
[14] Orozco, A., 2014. Uvinje Village and Saadani National Park, Research For Change; Minority Rights Group International, MRG warns community land rights are under threat in Uvinje, Tanzania, 18 February 2015; ICCA Consortium, Consortium appeal to the Tanzania authorities: NO eviction of Uvinje villagers, respect communities sensitive to conservation!
[15]K. Heath. New report shows corruption and abuse rife within Tanzania wildlife sector. Wildlife News, 10 March 2015.
[16] There is no question that trophy hunting is very lucrative; whether and under which conditions it is being carried out in a sustainable way and in partnership with local communities is another question, brought to center stage by the killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe: see Cooney, R. What will Cecil the Lion’s legacy be? And who will decide? The Huffington Post, 2 August 2015. Packer, C., H. Brink, B.M. Kissui, H. Maliti, H. Kushnir and T. Karo. 2010. Effects of trophy hunting on lion and leopard populations in Tanzania. Conservation Biology, 21(1): 142-153
[17] G. Bennet, J. Woodman, J. Gakelebone, S. Pani, J. Lewis. 2015.Negative impacts of wildlife law enforcement in Botswana, Cameroon and India – How tribal peoples are evicted, arrested and imprisoned in the name of conservation. Survival International; Roe, D., S. Milledge, R. Cooney, M. ’t Sas-Rolfes, D. Biggs, M. Murphree and A. Kasterine. 2014. The elephant in the room: Sustainable use in the illegal wildlife trade debate. London: IIED; Duffy R., F.A.V. St John, B. Büscher, and D. Brockington. 2015. The militarization of anti-poaching: Undermining long-term goals? Environmental Conservation (in press). DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0376892915000119; D.W.S. Challender and D.C. MacMillan. 2014. Poaching is more than an enforcement problem.Conservation Letters, 7(5): 484-494.
[18] Duffy, R. 2014. Waging a war to save biodiversity: the rise of militarized conservation. International Affairs, 90: 819–834. Rhino poaching in South Africa at record levels following 18% rise in killings(The Guardian, 11 May 2015), with most taken in the Kruger National Park.
[19] Porter-Bolland, L., E.A. Ellis, M. R. Guariguata, I. Ruiz-Mallén, S. Negrete-Yankelevich, V. Reyes-García. 2015. Community managed forests and forest protected areas: An assessment of their conservation effectiveness across the tropics. Forest Ecology and Management, 268: 6-17; Ross, H., C. Grant, C. Robinson, A. Izurieta, D. Smyth and P. Rist. 2009. Co-management and Indigenous Protected Areas in Australia: achievements and ways forward. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, 16(4): 242-252; Andrade, G. S. M., and J. R. Rhodes. 2012. Protected areas and local communities: an inevitable partnership toward successful conservation strategies? Ecology and Society 17(4): 14; Indigenous Peoples’ and Community Conserved Territories and Areas (ICCAs).
[20] World Parks Congress, A strategy of innovative approaches and recommendations to enhance implementation of a New Social Compactin the next decade. The vision of the new social compact that came out of the World Parks Congress is to inspire a movement towards effective and just conservation that increases the relevance and strength of protected and conserved areas by galvanizing diverse stakeholders to collectively commit to a new conservation ethic.
[21] See current stories of bans, evictions and resettlements in the sitesJust Conservation and Survival International.
[22] Aichi Biodiversity Targets
[23] “A common theme at the World Parks Congress was a recognition that the quality components of Aichi Target 11 are more important than the percentage targets” (A strategy of innovative approaches and recommendations to reach conservation goals in the next decade).
[24] Sheil, D., M. Boissière, and G. Beaudoin. 2015. Unseen sentinels: local monitoring and control in conservation’s blind spots. Ecology and Society 20(2): 39.
[25] Example of engaging communities in the wildlife trade: Roe, D (ed). 2015. Conservation, crime and communities: case studies of efforts to engage local communities in tackling illegal wildlife trade. London: IIED.
[26] Robinson, L.W., N. Bennett, L.A. King, G. Murray. 2012. “We Want Our Children to Grow Up to See These Animals”: Values and Protected Areas Governance in Canada, Ghana and Tanzania. Human Ecology,40:571-581.
[27] Orozco, A. 2014. Uvinje village and Saadani National Park, Research for Change.
[28] Tauli-Corpuz, V. Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Statement to the 14th session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 27 April 2015, New York; Springer, J., and F. Almeida. 2015. Protected areas and the land rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities: Current issues and future agendas. Washington: Rights and Resources Initiative.
by DGR News Service | Aug 13, 2015 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
This interview was conducted by Derrick Jensen for his Resistance Radio series. Find options to listen to this interview, or any in the series, at the Resistance Radio archive.
Dahr Jamail is an award winning journalist and author who is a full-time staff reporter for Truthout.org. His work is currently focusing on Anthropogenic Climate Disruption. We discuss the harm caused by massive military maneuvers off of Alaska.
Derrick Jensen: Something terrible is happening off the coast of Alaska. Can you tell me about that?
Dahr Jamail: The Navy is poised to begin what they call Northern Edge, a huge, joint exercise they’re doing in conjunction with the Air Force, Marines and Army. The Navy’s aspect is going to focus in a huge area – over 8,000 square nautical miles, off the coast of Alaska, between Cordova and Kodiak. In this giant rectangle they’re permitted to conduct active and passive sonar, weapons testing, and live-fire exercises, including bombs, missiles, bullets and torpedoes. It starts June 15th and continues for at least two weeks. They’re permitted to continue doing this year after year. Plans are in the works for them to request permits up to 2030.
What’s really troubling about this, aside from the obvious, is that the area in question is critical habitat for all five Alaska salmon species, as well as almost a dozen whale species, including the highly endangered North Pacific Right Whale, of which there are only about 30 left. It also includes dolphins and sea lions and hundreds of other marine species in the area. There are a dozen native tribes living along coastal Alaska who are going to be directly impacted by their subsistence living being damaged and poisoned: destroyed. Some of those tribes include the Eskimo, the Eyak, the Athabaskans, Tlingit, and the Shungnak and Aleut tribes,
There have been and continue to be uprisings in the communities in coastal Alaska against this. For example, the cities of both Kodiak and Cordova have passed resolutions opposing the Navy’s plans, but the Navy has basically thumbed their noses at these voices of protest and are loading up their bombs.
D.J.: How is this going to harm the creatures who live there?
Dahr J.: The Navy is permitted to release as much as 352,000 pounds of what they call ‘expended material’ every year. That includes the live munitions that I mentioned ― missiles, bombs, torpedoes, etc. ― but also other types of things that will be released into the marine environment. Just by way of example, one of the propellants in one of the missiles and torpedoes they want to use contains cyanide. The EPA’s ‘allowable’ limit of cyanide is one part per billion, and the type of cyanide in the Navy torpedo is going to be introducing cyanide into the waters of Alaska in the range of 140 to 150 parts per billion.
Other impacts include ‘takes’, which are basically a military bureaucratic way of covering over a death. The Navy’s own Environmental Impact Statement estimates that over the five-year period that their war games are going to be conducted, there will be over 182,000 takes.
There are two ways they’ll be killing marine mammals. First is direct impact of them literally being exploded by bombs or shot by bullets or internally hemorrhaged by massive sonar. Secondarily, essential behaviors will be disrupted like surfacing or having babies or nursing.
Over a dozen large ships will be roaming the area, preventing fisherfolks from using it. Natives relying on that area for subsistence fishing and living will not be able to carry that out.
D.J.: You mentioned sonar. Can you talk more about that?
Dahr J.: It’s not your average sonar that a transport vessel or a fisherperson might use to navigate or to track the depth of the water. We’re talking about weapons grade sonar. The Navy regularly conducts underwater sonar weapons testing. They’re developing different types of sonar that they’ve weaponized to use to knock out communications and electronics, and I think they’re aiming towards killing humans in Navy vessels from other countries.
The NRDC won a lawsuit against the Navy down off Southern California for using this type of sonar. They showed the Navy was knowingly, deleteriously impacting over nine million different marine biota ― fish, whales, etc. ― by the use of this sonar. There are well-documented cases around the globe of pods of whales, dolphins, etc., that get hit by this sonar, and then these mammals wash up on the shore. A lot of times you’ll see their ear drums are exploded and it causes internal hemorrhaging. There have been cases of dolphins washing up, literally with blood coming out of their heads because they happened to have been where the Navy is using this type of weapons grade sonar.
To be clear, this sonar is powerful enough to literally explode the eardrums of whales and dolphins. That is how these mammals communicate; that is how they navigate; having that ability destroyed or compromised in any way basically means these mammals are going to die. And when the Navy is using it in a way that literally explodes their internal organs to the point where blood is coming out of their head that gives you an idea of how powerful it is.
D.J.: Here is something I wrote in Endgame about a National Science Foundation ship that was using air guns to fire sonic blasts of up to 260 dB, to use for mapping the ocean floor: “Damage to human hearing begins at 85 dB, a police siren at 30 meters is 100 dB. And decibels are logarithmic, meaning that every 10 dB increase translates to ten times more intensity. And sounds ― because human perception is also logarithmic ― twice as loud.
So what that means is that the blast from those research vessels was ten quadrillion times more intense than a siren at 30 meters, and would sound to humans 16,384 times as loud. The sound of a jet taking off at 600 meters is 110 dB, a rock concert is 120 dB, and whales and other creatures are subjected to sounds 100 trillion times more intense than that. The threshold at which humans die from sound is 160dB.”
Dahr J.: That gives people an idea of what we’re talking about: the military developing sound to use it as a weapon. As though the oceans aren’t already suffering enough, from the extreme amount of plastic pollution you’ve written and talked about for decades that’s now insidious around all the oceans on the planet, to acidification from rising temperatures.
And now on top of that, the military decides to go and use bombs and use sound weapons up in some of the most pristine waters on the planet outside of Antarctica. Bear in mind, these waters are at the end of an undersea current that is an upwelling, and this water is a thousand years old. This is why Alaska salmon are so prized, because they are a clean fish, they’re pure, and the Alaska salmon brand relies on it. Not to commercialize this, but it’s important to think about in regards to the people in Alaska relying so heavily on the salmon for both subsistence and to earn a living up there. All of that is being compromised.
The Navy’s action is creating some interesting collaborations between people across the political spectrum that normally wouldn’t mix.
D.J.: Leaving aside this culture’s death urge, why is the military doing this? What is their rationale?
Dahr J.: I mentioned in my article, Destroying What Remains: How the US Navy Plans to War Game the Arctic, that the Navy is increasingly focused on possible climate change wars up in the melting waters of the Arctic. In that context, it has no intentions of caretaking the environment when conducting its military exercises.
This connection was made amazingly clear to me in the course of writing this piece. I was in Alaska getting the ground data for this story, doing interviews. I went to Cordova, went over to Kodiak, passed through Anchorage, talking to people all along the way, and then I came back home to Washington State to write.
I live on Puget Sound, right on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I’m writing this story about the impending Naval exercise up in the Gulf of Alaska, the largest of its kind in the more than 30 years the Navy has been doing them in that area. Meanwhile, about two miles from my house, out on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Shell is bringing their giant drilling rig over to the port of Seattle where it’s going to tie up. So we have the military exercises at the same time they’re positioning these rigs in Seattle, getting them ready to take up to Alaska to start drilling.
It doesn’t take a genius to see the writing on the wall as to the timings of these. It’s not a coincidence. The Navy is getting ready to protect so-called US interests to go up into the Arctic. They’re racing Russia; they’re racing Scandinavian countries. Basically anyone who has any kind of border with the Arctic is in full preparation to go up there, in a race for what’s left, to try to tap into the oil that’s been inaccessible under the ice.
Over a year ago I wrote about the Navy conducting their own study and estimating we would see ice-free periods in the summer in the Arctic starting by 2016. A couple of weeks ago, the current satellite data mapping Arctic ice, both in extent and volume, showed Arctic ice at its lowest volume on record. So it’s certainly possible that by late summer of 2016, meaning late August, early September, we’ll see ice-free periods.
So that’s the context in which all of this is happening. The military is getting ready. That’s why there’s this massive uptick in war-gaming across the entire country ― not just the Navy, but on land, the Air Force is doing things, the Marines are doing things ― because the military is positioning itself for potential war against Russia and China, but also, the race for the Arctic resources is clearly very high on their agenda.
D.J.: This is a great example of something I’ve long thought: that this culture will not have a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. Instead of being horrified that the Arctic will soon be ice-free, they are looking at it with what can only be deemed ‘lust’ for the resources that will be made available. I find it impossible to express through words the disgust, contempt, and hatred that that makes me feel.
Dahr J.: One reason I wanted to do this article was that I lived up in Anchorage for ten years. That’s where I was living when the Iraq war broke out, and my work as a journalist is ultimately what brought me to move out of Alaska. But I love the state, meaning I love the nature there, and I loved going into the mountains and camping and climbing, and going out on boats with people into the waters. I reveled in the powerful natural beauty of the state. And of course, that includes the oceans and the marine mammals. When I learned of the Navy’s plans, I wanted to go up there and report on it, kind of out of a protective urge for this place that is so close to my heart. And when I was up there working on this story and talking to all these people who were going to be impacted by these Navy exercises, I felt that same kind of anger.
Or maybe first I just felt mystified: not only are we going off the cliff as a species, because of the industrial growth society and what it’s done to the planet and what it’s doing and continues to do, but we’re accelerating! The planet is showing us every distress signal it possibly can; we’re watching huge parts of the ecosystem die, increasingly vast numbers of species go extinct, even more and more public awareness of the possibility of our own species rendering itself extinct; but instead of taking a precautionary approach, slowing down, pausing a minute to think that maybe what we’re doing isn’t the best thing, it’s ‘let’s accelerate as fast as possible’ into this dark, death-giving future of ‘we’re going to war game, we’re going to drop more ordinance, we’re going to get ready to go into one of the most pristine areas left on the planet, pollute it like it’s never been polluted before, all for the sake of drilling it, sucking out more oil that shouldn’t even be burned in the first place, because it’s only going to further accelerate what we’re already doing to the planet!’ It really is stupefying; it’s almost beyond imagination. It’s something out of a really bad sci-fi novel, but, unfortunately, it’s the reality.
D.J.: Can we talk now about some of those surprising alliances you mentioned?
Dahr J.: There have been many. For example, the commercial fishing community in Alaska aren’t known for being ‘lefty/greeny’ environmentalists. They’re there to catch the maximum amount of fish allowed by law every season, and make as much money as they can. But when this news of the Navy’s plans started to spread around coastal Alaska, people from these very, very politically conservative fisherfolk across two different unions in the state started to band together, and literally everyone I spoke with about the Navy exercise ― every fisherperson, every person in the fishermen’s union across the state ― was opposed to the Navy’s plans.
And when the Navy played the national security card, saying they’re doing this to protect the state and the waters, the people in Alaska called B.S. Not just environmentalists, but people from all these other groups from the Alaska Marine Conservation Council to the Alaskans First! Coalition to fishermen’s unions to everyone banding together and saying look, we’re absolutely opposed to this.
It’s hard to find a silver lining to this story, but if there is one, that might be it: we’re starting to witness a coalescing of groups across the political spectrum who are seeing the madness perpetrated by the industrial growth society and who are starting to stand up against it together.
D.J.: Are people making that connection between these destructive activities and the industrial growth society? And were they making the connections that you were making, about how we’re going over a cliff and just accelerating?
Dahr J.: Not so much, unfortunately.. One of the most important voices in the story, however, does. Emily Stolarcyk works for the Eyak Preservation Council out of Cordova. It’s an environmental and social justice non-profit with a primary aim to protect wild salmon habitat, period.
Emily sees the bigger picture. She’s gone out of her way to sound the alarm bell on this and has therefore, of course, been targeted by the government of Alaska and the Navy itself. People are really coming after her now.
Unfortunately, the average person I spoke with tended not to see beyond the immediate economic impact. For a lot of folks, their prime motivation was not losing the Alaska salmon brand, in that they can’t have news come out that the salmon are contaminated in any way, because if that market tanks, they’re in big trouble.
D.J.: How is she being targeted?
Dahr J.: For example, the Navy has tried to discredit her, even though she has gone out of her way to quote directly from the Navy’s own Environmental Impact Statement. It’s online, people can look it up themselves, and she literally is using quotes. The Navy tells people she is not giving accurate information, that she’s inflating figures, and so on. The military is deified by mainstream America and by the corporate media as a benevolent force that is only there to protect us. Of course that’s absolute nonsense, but because of that misperception, most people still tend to believe the military.
Emily has also been targeted by Senator Lisa Murkowski, a hardcore right-wing, anti-environment, pro-corporate profit, pro-fossil fuel industry, pro-military senator up there in Alaska. She sent the state fisheries person down to meet with Emily. The fisheries person called Emily on her personal cell phone at night to cuss her out and threaten her. It was bad enough he later emailed her an apology for it. So there have been bellicose threats, bellicose language used against her from this person, and from the Navy itself.
The Navy has found anyone in these communities who could potentially be on their side and actively worked to turn them against Emily Stolarcyk and the Eyak Preservation Council. They’ve demonized them, putting out false statements, trying to make it seem the Eyak Preservation Council isn’t actually working for their stated purpose of preserving critical salmon habitat. Basically negative propaganda campaigns run against her and the organization she works for.
D.J.: How can people support her?
Dahr J: Other people need to take up the fight against the Navy. They need to get up on the facts of the story, understand what the Navy is planning on doing, and join in the fight. They don’t necessarily need to come work alongside Emily Stolarcyk, but to understand the relevance of her work and the importance of it. These types of Navy war games are happening off the coast of Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California, and have been for a long time. So, anyone in proximity to those coasts, this is our fight, too. And all of us need to be talking about this, all of us need to be getting this into the media and getting as many activists involved as possible, people who might have other ideas about how they can help.
D.J.: You mentioned Lisa Murkowski. Is the problem there individual politicians, that if she were replaced these atrocities might not occur? Or is the problem more institutional, and widespread?
Dahr J.: Lisa Murkowski is of course terrible, as is Congressman Don Young. No matter what, those two are always full steam ahead with anything the military and the fossil fuel industry want. They are villains in this story: they are actively working against the interest of nature and the planet in every possible, conceivable way. But the problem really is institutional.
Let’s use Washington state as a case study. Governor Jay Inslee paints himself as the ‘green’ governor, and when I first moved here I thought, ‘yeah, this guy is doing a lot of good stuff. He’s taking the climate change issue head on, he’s saying a lot of the right things and sometimes doing some of the right things.’
But because of how deeply embedded the military is in this state and how much money the state gets from their presence, this is a governor who knowingly accepts what the Navy is doing here. He refuses to take a stance directly against the wargaming that’s already going on here or against future wargame plans for the state of Washington, and is basically in their back pocket. The same for Derek Kilmer, one of the representatives here. And the same is true for numerous other political so-called representatives.
I’m sure the same can be said for California. I think many people hear about these military exercises, and think, “The Democrats are in charge, and they wouldn’t do this.” But political party is irrelevant in this story with the military. The military is so embedded in these states and there’s so much money being brought into the states by their presence that you’d be hard-pressed to find a political so-called representative who is not on the take. That gives you an idea why there isn’t any real political pushback against these exercises.
D.J.: We all know that the military is a form for massive corporate welfare. It’s a giant Keynesian stimulus. And we all know capitalism relies on subsidies. But that always leads to the question: why can’t they just subsidize nice things instead of bad things?
During the 1970s, liberal George McGovern asked somebody at one of the military contractors, “Since all you care about is making money, could we just subsidize your corporation to make school buses instead of bombers? Would you do that?”
The military contractor said, “Sure!” and then they both burst out laughing because they knew that Congress would never allow that in the budget.
Dahr J.: At this point the US military is in the final stage of empire. When we look through history, empires use numerous ways to maintain control and power. There’s the economy, there’s propaganda, there are appeals to people’s morality, etc. The final stage – and the weakest and the shortest – is using military might, pushing the military frontiers out as far as possible and putting all their resources into maintaining and growing the military. Then they collapse relatively shortly thereafter. That’s exactly what the US is doing.
Today, while we do this interview, we have news of them setting up yet another new US base in Iraq and sending more troops over there. Domestic military exercises are pushing new bounds of what’s ever been done before, looking at expanding up into the Arctic, and preparing for war gaming against Russia and China in the future.
Over 50% of all US taxpayer money is going directly to the Pentagon in one way or another. I think that underscores what you just said, Derrick, about the preposterous idea that something could be done differently. I don’t think anyone in the government could really take seriously any attempts to significantly defund the military. At this stage of the game everyone understands the military is the final weapon the US government is using geopolitically at this point. I think anyone who challenges that and thinks they’re going to change how the government and economy function at this stage of the game is not living in reality.
D.J.: Apart from the environmental degradation, do we know the numbers on how much this military exercise is going to cost?
Dahr J.: No. The military is very careful not to release total figures of these types of exercises. You always have to try to puzzle figures out from hints. For example, the Navy is trying to push through electromagnetic warfare training out on the Olympic Peninsula, planning on starting early next year. They want to use these jet aircraft called Growlers, maybe because they’re the loudest aircraft ever built. Extremely loud – ear-splittingly loud.
To fly one of those costs over $12,000 an hour. That’s just one jet. That’s not a war ship. It’s difficult to get the numbers, but I think it’s safe to say that a two-week joint military exercise involving a dozen ships, however many aircraft are going to be on those ships, all the personnel, all the weapons that are going to be used, all the fuel burned, will very easily cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
D.J.: What can people do if they are in Alaska or elsewhere, to prevent this from happening again?
Dahr J.: People need to recognize this is happening not just in and around Alaska, but all over. There’s a massive domestic military expansion happening everywhere. People need to become aware of this and make others aware of it. They need to get this information out there. And then they need to start raising hell. They need to start fighting it.
We’re starting to see people standing up, and we’re starting to see them work together.
This whole struggle dovetails with what’s happening in the battles against the pipelines and against fracking that we’re seeing down in Texas now, and across the Midwest, where really interesting alliances are being formed between some pretty right-wing political groups as well as some pretty hard-core left-leaning groups of environmentalists and other activists.
Just like those movements draw these alliances, people who are opposed to this military expansion—and that should be all of us—need to work together to stop this. People need to get involved. The sooner the better.
