India’s Supreme Court has ordered the eviction of up to 8 million tribal and other forest-dwelling people, in what campaigners have described as “an unprecedented disaster,” and “the biggest mass eviction in the name of conservation, ever.”
The ruling is in response to requests by Indian conservation groups to declare invalid the Forest Rights Act, which gives forest-dwelling people rights to their ancestral lands, including in protected areas. The groups had also demanded that where tribespeople had tried and failed to secure their rights under the Act, they should be evicted.
The groups reportedly include Wildlife First, Wildlife Trust of India, the Nature Conservation Society, the Tiger Research and Conservation Trust and the Bombay Natural History Society.
In an extraordinary move, the national government failed to appear in court to defend the tribespeople’s rights, and the Court therefore ruled in favor of the evictions, which it decreed should be completed by July 27.
The order affects more than 1.1 million households, with experts estimating this could mean more than 8 million individuals will now be evicted – and the number is likely to rise, as some states have not provided details as to how many will be affected.
Survival International’s Director Stephen Corry said today: “This judgement is a death sentence for millions of tribal people in India, land theft on an epic scale, and a monumental injustice.
“It will lead to wholesale misery, impoverishment, disease and death, an urgent humanitarian crisis, and it will do nothing to save the forests which these tribespeople have protected for generations.
“Will the big conservation organizations like WWF and WCS condemn this ruling and pledge to fight it, or will they be complicit in the biggest mass eviction in the name of conservation, ever?”
Most people, or at least most people with a beating heart, have already done the math, added up the arrogance, sadism, stupidity, and denial, and reached the bottom line: a dead planet. Some of us carry that final sum like the weight of a corpse. For others, that conclusion turns the heart to a smoldering coal. But despair and rage have been declared unevolved and unclean, beneath the “spiritual warriors” who insist they will save the planet by “healing” themselves. How this activity will stop the release of carbon and the felling of forests is never actually explained. The answer lies vaguely between being the change we wish to see and a 100th monkey of hope, a monkey that is frankly more Christmas pony than actual possibility.
Given that the culture of America is founded on individualism and awash in privilege, it’s no surprise that narcissism is the end result. The social upheavals of the ’60s split along fault lines of responsibility and hedonism, of justice and selfishness, of sacrifice and entitlement. What we are left with is an alternative culture, a small, separate world of the converted, content to coexist alongside a virulent mainstream. Here, one can find workshops on “scarcity consciousness,” as if poverty were a state of mind and not a structural support of capitalism. This culture leaves us ill-prepared to face the crisis of planetary biocide that greets us daily with its own grim dawn. The facts are not conducive to an open-hearted state of wonder. To confront the truth as adults, not as faux children, requires an adult fortitude and courage, grounded in our adult responsibilities to the world. It requires those things because the situation is horrific and living with that knowledge will hurt. Meanwhile, I have been to workshops where global warming was treated as an opportunity for personal growth, and no one there but me saw a problem with that.
The word sustainable—the “Praise, Jesus!” of the eco-earnest—serves as an example of the worst tendencies of the alternative culture. It’s a word that perfectly meshes corporate marketers’ carefully calculated upswell of green sentiment with the relentless denial of the privileged. It’s a word I can barely stand to use because it has been so exsanguinated by cheerleaders for a technotopic, consumer kingdom come. To doubt the vague promise now firmly embedded in the word—that we can have our cars, our corporations, our consumption, and our planet, too—is both treason and heresy to the emotional well-being of most progressives. But here’s the question: Do we want to feel better or do we want to be effective? Are we sentimentalists or are we warriors?
For “sustainable” to mean anything, we must embrace and then defend the bare truth: the planet is primary. The life-producing work of a million species is literally the earth, air, and water that we depend on. No human activity—not the vacuous, not the sublime—is worth more than that matrix. Neither, in the end, is any human life. If we use the word “sustainable” and don’t mean that, then we are liars of the worst sort: the kind who let atrocities happen while we stand by and do nothing.
Even if it were possible to reach narcissists, we are out of time. Admitting we have to move forward without them, we step away from the cloying childishness and optimistic white-lite denial of so much of the left and embrace our adult knowledge. With all apologies to Yeats, in knowledge begins responsibilities. It’s to you grown-ups, the grieving and the raging, that we address this book.
The vast majority of the population will do nothing unless they are led, cajoled, or forced. If the structural determinants are in place for people to live their lives without doing damage—for example, if they’re hunter-gatherers with respected elders—then that’s what happens. If, on the other hand, the environment has been arranged for cars, industrial schooling is mandatory, resisting war taxes will land you in jail, food is only available through giant corporate enterprises selling giant corporate degradation, and misogynist pornography is only a click away 24/7—well, welcome to the nightmare. This culture is basically conducting a massive Milgram experiment on us, only the electric shocks aren’t fake—they’re killing off the planet, species by species.
But wherever there is oppression there is resistance. That is true everywhere, and has been forever. The resistance is built body by body from a tiny few, from the stalwart, the brave, the determined, who are willing to stand against both power and social censure. It is our prediction that there will be no mass movement, not in time to save this planet, our home. That tiny percent—Margaret Mead’s small group of thoughtful, committed citizens—has been able to shift both the cultural consciousness and the power structures toward justice in times past. It is valid to long for a mass movement, however, no matter how much we rationally know that we’re wishing on a star. Theoretically, the human race as a whole could face our situation and make some decisions—tough decisions, but fair ones, that include an equitable distribution of both resources and justice, that respect and embrace the limits of our planet. But none of the institutions that govern our lives, from the economic to the religious, are on the side of justice or sustainability. Theoretically, these institutions could be forced to change. The history of every human rights struggle bears witness to how courage and sacrifice can dismantle power and injustice. But again, it takes time. If we had a thousand years, even a hundred years, building a movement to transform the dominant institutions around the globe would be the task before us. But the Western black rhinoceros is out of time. So is the golden toad, the pygmy rabbit. No one is going to save this planet except us.
So what are our options? The usual approach of long, slow institutional change has been foreclosed, and many of us know that. The default setting for environmentalists has become personal lifestyle “choices.” This should have been predictable as it merges perfectly into the demands of capitalism, especially the condensed corporate version mediating our every impulse into their profit. But we can’t consume our way out of environmental collapse; consumption is the problem. We might be forgiven for initially accepting an exhortation to “simple living” as a solution to that consumption, especially as the major environmental organizations and the media have declared lifestyle change our First Commandment. Have you accepted compact fluorescents as your personal savior? But lifestyle change is not a solution as it doesn’t address the root of the problem.
We have believed such ridiculous solutions because our perception has been blunted by some portion of denial and despair. And those are legitimate reactions. I’m not persuading anyone out of them. But do we want to develop a strategy to manage our emotional state or to save the planet?
And we’ve believed in these lifestyle solutions because everyone around us insists they’re workable, a collective repeating mantra of “renewables, recycling” that has dulled us into belief. Like Eichmann, no one has told us that it’s wrong.
Until now. So this is the moment when you will have to decide. Do you want to be part of a serious effort to save this planet? Not a serious effort at collective delusion, not a serious effort to feel better, not a serious effort to save you and yours, but an actual strategy to stop the destruction of everything worth loving. If your answer feels as imperative as instinct, read on.
Today on Facebook I came across an article celebrating the fact that NASA has found that the earth has greened up over the past 20 years thanks to massive tree planting in China and India.
Surely not, I thought. So I googled the phrase “NASA says world greener” and found a slew of articles published over the past 24 hours all trumpeting the news. The first 20 or so all had variations on the same headline praising China and India’s tree planting. So it must be true, right?
Unfortunately no. This is a really good example of bad science reporting, spin and “greenwashing”.
Over the last two decades, the Earth has seen an increase in foliage around the planet, measured in average leaf area per year on plants and trees. Data from NASA satellites shows that China and India are leading the increase in greening on land. The effect stems mainly from ambitious tree planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries. Credits: NASA Earth Observatory [Image and caption copied directly from the NASA Ames Research Centre article linked below]
Regrettably, even the NASA web page about the research – which was NOT conducted by NASA at all but merely used publicly available data from NASA’s satellites – is highly misleading. And it’s all in the spin. When you talk about “China and India leading the increase” and China’s “ambitious tree planting programs” as in NASA’s caption above, you can certainly see where the commonly reported headline comes from. While the NASA article isn’t technically incorrect, the wording is very misleading. Unless you have been trained to focus on the precise meaning of every single word (as scientists like me have), you are simply not going to pick it up. But it’s spin. Fake news. Greenwash. Given an aura of legitimacy by the NASA badge.
YES, it’s true, there have been massive tree plantings in China and, to a lesser extent, India. And we should certainly be happy about that.
And YES, scientist Chi Chen and colleagues from Boston University in Massachusetts are reporting a 5% increase in average total leaf area across the entire planet over the period 2000-2017.
But tree plantings in China and India are NOT chiefly responsible for the increase in planetary greenness. What the headline should probably have said is what the scientists actually reported in their paper, namely
“Earth is 5% greener since 2000 due to the Greenhouse Effect”.
But that’s not quite as sexy, is it. Nor is it good news. In fact it’s quite the opposite.
What Chi Chen and colleagues actually found (as reported in Nature Sustainability volume 2, pages 122–129 (2019)) was:
the earth’s Greenness Index (something detected by sensors on NASA’s MODIS satellites) has increased over the period 2000-2017 and this equates to a 5% increase in annual average total leaf area across the entire planet
over the period 2000-2017 the total surface area covered by leaves in the planet’s vegetated zones has grown. The increase is spread out across the world but if put together would be roughly equal in size to the Amazon rainforest.
in addition to this, about 30% of land that was already green in 2000 is even greener now and about 5% is less green now
the “dominant drivers” of this overall increase in greenness are “climate change and CO2 fertilization effects”. In other words – the Greenhouse Effect. These indirect effects of human activity account for 70% of the increased greenness across the planet.
the remaining 30% is due to direct effects of human activity and this is concentrated in China and India
in China:
42% of the increase in greenness is due to large scale tree plantings.
32% of the increase in greenness is due to agricultural intensification
(that is, greater use of irrigation, fertiliser (particularly Nitrogen), pesticides and fossil fuels.)
in India:
only 4% of the increase is due to large scale tree plantings.
and fully 82% of the increase is due to agricultural intensification.
A worker in China plants a pine sapling as part of the country’s ambitious plan to reforest its landscape. Credit: Xinhua/ZUMA Wire
Now, if you’ve made it this far through the article and all that accurate science reporting hasn’t put you to sleep, you’ll see that this tree story isn’t half as green as it seemed. Indeed its only 42% of 25% of 5% as green as it seemed. It’s precisely 0.525% as green as it seemed.
So the great news about the tree plantings in China (and it really IS great news) is sadly only the thin silver lining on an otherwise dark cloud of climate change and ‘business-as-usual’ industrial agriculture.
Am I disappointed the world isn’t 5% greener due to tree plantings? Yes, I am. But I am much more disappointed that the research has not been reported honestly by a respected scientific institution, and that literally dozens of news services that trust that institution are now promulgating the spin, fake news, and greenwash of its story. Why would the Ames Research Center spin the story this way? Who knows. Maybe it’s just a staffer in their communications department with a particularly optimistic disposition, who lacks the skills to actually read the original article properly. Maybe it goes much deeper than this and comes down to political influence. But regardless of where it sits on the spectrum, from inept to devious, it stinks!
If, like me, harsh realities like this tend to make you sad, angry and perhaps despairing, let me encourage you to take that energy and invest it in a positive way. Do what you can – everything you can – to stop being part of the problem and, as much as is within your power, every day strive to be part of the solution.
You cannot live a political life, you cannot live a moral life if you’re not willing to open your eyes and see the world more clearly. See some of the injustice that’s going on. Try to make yourself aware of what’s happening in the world. And when you are aware, you have a responsibility to act.
—Bill Ayers, cofounder of the Weather Underground
A black tern weighs barely two ounces. On energy reserves less than a small bag of M&M’s and wings that stretch to cover twelve inches, she flies thousands of miles, searching for the wetlands that will harbor her young. Every year the journey gets longer as the wetlands are desiccated for human demands. Every year the tern, desperate and hungry, loses, while civilization, endless and sanguineous, wins.
A polar bear should weigh 650 pounds. Her energy reserves are meant to see her through nine long months of dark, denned gestation, and then lactation, when she will give up her dwindling stores to the needy mouths of her species’ future. But in some areas, the female’s weight before hibernation has already dropped from 650 to 507 pounds.1 Meanwhile, the ice has evaporated like the wetlands. When she wakes, the waters will stretch impassably open, and there is no Abrahamic god of bears to part them for her.
The Aldabra snail should weigh something, but all that’s left to weigh are skeletons, bits of orange and indigo shells. The snail has been declared not just extinct10, but the first casualty of global warming. In dry periods, the snail hibernated. The young of any species are always more vulnerable, as they have no reserves from which to draw. In this case, the adults’ “reproductive success” was a “complete failure.”2 In plain terms, the babies died and kept dying, and a species millions of years old is now a pile of shell fragments.
What is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair? We are living in a period of mass extinction. The numbers stand at 200 species a day.3 That’s 73,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, feels entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news.
There is a name for the tsunami wave of extermination: the Holocene extinction event. There’s no asteroid this time, only human behavior, behavior that we could choose to stop. Adolph Eichman’s excuse was that no one told him that the concentration camps were wrong. We’ve all seen the pictures of the drowning polar bears. Are we so ethically numb that we need to be told this is wrong?
There are voices raised in concern, even anguish, at the plight of the earth, the rending of its species. “Only zero emissions can prevent a warmer planet,” one pair of climatologists declare.4 James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia hypothesis, states bluntly that global warming has passed the tipping point, carbon offsetting is a joke, and “individual lifestyle adjustments” are “a deluded fantasy.”5 It’s all true, and self-evident. “Simple living” should start with simple observation: if burning fossil fuels will kill the planet, then stop burning them.
But that conclusion, in all its stark clarity, is not the popular one to draw. The moment policy makers and environmental groups start offering solutions is the exact moment when they stop telling the truth, inconvenient or otherwise. Google “global warming solutions.” The first paid sponsor, Campaign Earth, urges “No doom and gloom!! When was the last time depression got you really motivated? We’re here to inspire realistic action steps and stories of success.” By “realistic” they don’t mean solutions that actually match the scale of the problem. They mean the usual consumer choices—cloth shopping bags, travel mugs, and misguided dietary advice—which will do exactly nothing to disrupt the troika of industrialization, capitalism, and patriarchy that is skinning the planet alive. As Derrick has pointed out elsewhere, even if every American took every single action suggested by Al Gore it would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 21 percent.6 Aric tells a stark truth: even if through simple living and rigorous recycling you stopped your own average American’s annual one ton of garbage production, “your per capita share of the industrial waste produced in the US is still almost twenty-six tons. That’s thirty-seven times as much waste as you were able to save by eliminating a full 100 percent of your personal waste.”7 Industrialism itself is what has to stop. There is no kinder, greener version that will do the trick of leaving us a living planet. In blunt terms, industrialization is a process of taking entire communities of living beings and turning them into commodities and dead zones. Could it be done more “efficiently”? Sure, we could use a little less fossil fuels, but it still ends in the same wastelands of land, water, and sky. We could stretch this endgame out another twenty years, but the planet still dies. Trace every industrial artifact back to its source—which isn’t hard, as they all leave trails of blood—and you find the same devastation: mining, clear-cuts, dams, agriculture. And now tar sands, mountaintop removal, wind farms (which might better be called dead bird and bat farms). No amount of renewables is going to make up for the fossil fuels or change the nature of the extraction, both of which are prerequisites for this way of life. Neither fossil fuels nor extracted substances will ever be sustainable; by definition, they will run out. Bringing a cloth shopping bag to the store, even if you walk there in your Global Warming Flip-Flops, will not stop the tar sands. But since these actions also won’t disrupt anyone’s life, they’re declared both realistic and successful.
The next site’s Take Action page includes the usual: buying light bulbs, inflating tires, filling dishwashers, shortening showers, and rearranging the deck chairs. It also offers the ever-crucial Global Warming Bracelets and, more importantly, Flip-Flops. Polar bears everywhere are weeping with relief.
The first noncommercial site is the Union of Concerned Scientists. As one might expect, there are no exclamation points, but instead a statement that “[t]he burning of fossil fuel (oil, coal, and natural gas) alone counts for about 75 percent of annual CO2emissions.” This is followed by a list of Five Sensible Steps. Step One? No, not stop burning fossil fuels—“Make Better Cars and SUVs.” Never mind that the automobile itself is the pollution, with its demands—for space, for speed, for fuel—in complete opposition to the needs of both a viable human community and a living planet. Like all the others, the scientists refuse to call industrial civilization into question. We can have a living planet and the consumption that’s killing the planet, can’t we?
The principle here is very simple. As Derrick has written, “[A]ny social system based on the use of nonrenewable resources is by definition unsustainable.”8 Just to be clear, nonrenewable means it will eventually run out. Once you’ve grasped that intellectual complexity, you can move on to the next level. “Any culture based on the nonrenewable use of renewable resources is just as unsustainable.” Trees are renewable. But if we use them faster than they can grow, the forest will turn to desert. Which is precisely what civilization has been doing for its 10,000 year campaign, running through soil, rivers, and forests as well as metal, coal, and oil. Now the oceans are almost dead and their plankton populations are collapsing, populations that both feed the life of the oceans and create oxygen for the planet. What will we fill our lungs with when they are gone? The plastics with which industrial civilization is replacing them? In parts of the Pacific, plastic outweighs plankton 48 to 1.9 Imagine if it were your blood, your heart, crammed with toxic materials—not just chemicals, but physical gunk—until there was ten times more of it than you. What metaphor is adequate for the dying plankton? Cancer? Suffocation? Crucifixion?
But the oceans don’t need our metaphors. They need action. They need industrial civilization to stop destroying and devouring. In other words, they need us to make it stop.
Ever since the German Nazis committed horrendous mass murders of Jews, homosexuals, Roma, and Catholics, many commentators, analysts and scholars have made the mistake of associating “genocide” with “executions and gassing” of people en masse.
The originator of the term “genocide” attorney and author Raphael Lemkin’s analysis essentially explains this error when his analysis points to how the Holocaust is not a synonym for genocide, but the consequence of Nazi imperialism and Colonialism in Europe. While the massive murders by the Nazi government was a horrific case of human destruction the genocide had already begun before the killings. Read from Lemkin’s book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe(Washington, DC: Carnegie Council, 1944) on page 79 how he describes genocide:
Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group: the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population, which is allowed to remain, or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and the colonization of the area by the oppressor’s own nationals.
In other words, when a distinct people is systematically occupied by an outside population with the intention of replacing that population with the invading people under the instrumentality of a government or other organized agent monopolizing violence, that process is genocide. All events after the occupation—the Colonization—are the result of the initial genocide.
Scholars claim that there have been no fewer than 181 “genocides” since what they describe as the “beginning of genocides” in 1945–that is, instances where human beings have been massively killed with the intention of destroying that human population.
The Center for World Indigenous Studies is conducting a study of “Genocides against Fourth World Peoples” to learn about the extent of genocide (in the Lemkin sense and in the latter-day scholars’ sense) committed against Fourth World peoples and what alternatives exist to establish justice and prevent occurrences of genocide.
By simply examining the continental figures for Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East gathered by contemporary scholars tabulating the killings of groups by particular perpetrators we find that 156 Fourth Nations have been invaded with the resultant killing of an estimated 12.482 million people between 1945 and 2017.
Up to 58 UN member state governments and the militias they supported were responsible for all 156 invasions and ultimate killings of Fourth World peoples.
Our initial finding is that “governments” (Republics, Dictatorships, Empires, Kingdoms) commit the vast majority of genocides in both the Lemkin and the latter-day scholars’ sense.
According to our estimate, UN member states committed an average of 51% of all 181 incidents of genocide counted by contemporary scholars. That figure alone is astonishing, since invasions and killings of Fourth World nations account for about 86% of all “genocides” counted by contemporary scholars since 1945.
Clearly by these numbers alone, cultural genocide and massive killings constitute a major feature of genocide over the last 70 years and beyond. But, curiously, despite the International Convention on Genocide (1948) and the Rome Statute of 2002 that created the International Criminal Court, the cultural genocide of a people in whole or in part has not been prosecuted. And, of equal interest is the fact that not one of the governments responsible for invasions and then killing of Fourth World people has been sanctioned by the international community or any juridical forum.
Ongoing genocides are taking place now in China against the Uyghurs, Iraq against the Yezidi, Madaeans, Zoroastrians, and Assyrians; and against the Rohingya in Burma; and many other nations.
CASE STUDY: THE INDIGENOUS UYGHURS
Many Fourth World nations are suffering under invasion, occupation and killings similar to the Rohingya in southwestern Burmawhat and the Uyghurs. States cannot be permitted to continue the carnage.
Uyghuristan is the homeland of more than 12 million Uyghurs neighboring Mongolia, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan. It has been an established nation of people for more than 2,500 years and the peoples’ written history extends to 1,480 BP. According to the TENGRITAGH AKADEMIYESI Uyghur Academy of Arts and Science Uyghurs were identified by Europeans as “Turkic” and referred to as “Taranchi.” The Russians referred to the Uyghurs as “Sart” or “Turk.” That their language is related to neighboring Turkic languages may have been the reason for these misapplied names. The Kuomintang government of China grouped all Uyghurs as part of the 11 million mostly Moslem Hui people who are located in northwestern China. Despite the practice of Islam, they are completely separate peoples.
Since the Peoples’ Republic of China under Mao Zedong and his successors annexed Uyghuristan the Uyghurs have pursued their independence and have frequently attempted to call the world’s attention to China’s cultural genocide against the Uyghurs.
Until China claimed Uyghuristan in 1949, the Uyghur population constituted more than 94% of the total population in the country. China has systematically relocated Han Chinese into Uyghuristan reducing the Uyghur proportion of the total population to a little more than 45%. Effectively the Chinese have committed cultural genocide by invading, occupying and attempted to replace the Uyghur population with its own population. The Uyghur resistance is strong and persistent to the point where the Chinese government as recently as 25 January 2018 began placing Uyghurs in “re-education camps” to force their fealty to the Chinese government. They have imprisoned tens of thousands and, under the veil of “terrorism” as their justification, killed many thousands more.
Yes, 156 Fourth World nations have suffered cultural genocide since 1945 and not one government responsible for invasions and killings of millions of people have been called to account.
Rudolph Ryser is the Chair of the Center for World Indigenous Studies.
Ogiek stake claim for the Mau forest after victory at African court
The Ogiek have demanded the return of the Mau forest land to the community.
The community is laying claim to more than 21 forest blocs and the Maasai Mau Trust Land that makes up the Mau Complex saying it is their ancestral land.
The demands were tabled yesterday in Nakuru when representatives of the community met a taskforce on the implementation of the African Court’s ruling on the Ogiek land rights in the Mau forest.
Ogiek steadfast on their unceded forest homeland. Members of the Ogiek community during a meeting when they presented their memorandum on February 6, 2019 to the members of the task force on implementation of the African Court’s decision on the Ogiek community’s land rights in the Mau forest issued against the government of Kenya in 2017. [Photo: Harun Wathari]
In May 2017, the African Court ruled that the Government had infringed on the Ogiek community rights. The Arusha-based court ruled that the Mau had been part of the community’s ancestral land for decades.
The ruling arose from a case filed in 2006, in which the Ogiek complained that Kenya Forest Service (KFS) officials issued them with notices to vacate the forest without factoring in how this would affect their lives.
Follow-up
In a follow up to the ruling, the Ogiek People’s Development Programme Executive Director Daniel Kobei yesterday tabled a 13-point memorandum.
Top on the list of the memoranda is that the Mau forest ownership be returned to the community for safekeeping.
“We wish to remain the custodians of the land and forest. With the help of the Government, we will see to it that all misery and degradation of forested homelands are restored,” said Kobei.
The Ogiek are seeking community land titles which shall not be alienable in future.
“Member households will have rights for house and farm plots in perpetuity but any transfer shall be done to their fellow members of the Ogiek community,” he said.
The community proposed that the habitation within the forest shall be limited to areas agreed upon with the Kenya Forest Service and other agencies and grazing restricted to naturally unforested zones or as advised by the government.
It also wants a sharing agreement for all revenue generated from the Mau and compensation for loss of property, development and freedom to exercise its culture.
MEMORANDUM FROM THE OGIEK COMMUNITY
Presented on 6 th February 2019, Nakuru Town, Kenya
TO:
THE TASKFORCE ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DECISION OF THE AFRICAN COURT ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES’ RIGHTS ISSUED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT OF KENYA IN RESPECT OF THE RIGHTS OF THE OGIEK COMMUNITY OF MAU AND ENHANCING THE PARTICIPATION OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN THE SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF FORESTS
Dr. Robert Kibugi (2nd right) receiving the memorandum from the Ogiek Community in Nakuru on 6. January 2019. Left in red shirt the most steadfast Ogiek defender of many decades Mr. Joseph Towett and 3rd from right Mr. Daniel Kobei. [picture: Pristone Mambili]
Dr. Robert Kibugi – Chairperson
Dr. Sally Kimosop – Vice Chairperson
Ole Kamuaro Olottisatti Nabulu – Member
Malik Aman Abdi – Member
Stephen King’uyu – Member
Esau Oginga Omollo – Member
Cyrus Mutuku Maweu – Member
Eugene N. Lawi – Member
Alfred Mumpasoi Keriolale – Member
Emmanuel Bitta – Member
Belinda Okello – Member
Tom Abuta – Member
IN RESPECT OF THEIR INALIENABLE RIGHTS TO DIGNITY, SURVIVAL, AND WELL BEING
Preamble
Considering that, in accordance with the principles proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations, recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all, is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace.
Recognizing, the urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of Indigenous peoples which derive from their political, economic and social structures and from their cultures, spiritual traditions, histories and philosophies, especially their rights to their lands, territories and resources.(UNDRIP) Article 10 of UNDRIP, Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands and territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation, and where possible , with the option of return.
Inspired by the provisions of Article 1.1 of the Declaration of the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities; which states that ‘States shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories shall encourage conditions for the promotion of their identity.
It is our hope that the Taskforce on the implementation of the Decision of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights issued against the Government of Kenya in Respect of the Rights of the Ogiek Community of Mau Complex and enhancing the participation of indigenous communities in the sustainable management of forests which was appointed by the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Forestry Vide Gazette Notice No. 11215 of 2018, shall endeavour to take constructive and decisive steps to fulfilling their Terms of Reference, which includes a review of the decision of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights issued against the Government of Kenya in respect of the rights of the Ogiek Community of Mau and any other judgements issued by domestic courts in relation to the Ogiek Community’s occupation of the Mau Forest.
Further, we call on the government to speed up the implementation by remedying all the violations meted on the Ogiek people as identified by the African Court decisions i.e. the violations of articles 1, 2, 4, 8, 14, 17, 21, and 22 of the African Charter while honouring the decision of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights which is one of the guiding principle in addressing the land claims of the Ogiek community.
Specifically, through this Task force, we call on the Government of Kenya to recognize of our right to live in the Mau Forest as our ancestral land in accordance with the Constitution of Kenya (Article 63 (2) (d) (ii)), and on conservation conditions to be agreed. The objective is to save our lands, our culture and our forests.
The Ogiek of Mau
We, the undersigned are all members of the Mau Ogiek community of approximately 45,000 members, historically and presently living in and around the Mau Forest Complex in central Rift Valley. We have consulted with the Mau Ogiek people and the submission made here is made of and on behalf of all Mau Ogiek.
We are closely related to our brothers Ogiek living historically and presently on Mount Elgon. They face the same problems of having their lands wrongfully taken as government then made public lands, set aside for so-called forest protection. Our forests have not been protected and our lives have been almost destroyed. We have always known and still know that the key to our survival and contributions as all Kenyans as forest protectors is recognition of our rightful ownership of our forested territories. We welcomed the Constitution of Kenya in 2010 with relief and tears because it provided for this. Government’s failure to deliver on Article 63 (2) (d) (ii) is an abuse of the Constitution and all the human, development, and other modern rights it pledges for all Kenyans.
The Mau Ogiek are concentrated mainly, but not solely, in the following areas:
8. The remainder of the Ogiek people mainly live in the forested areas of Mount Elgon, at Chepkitale.
The Ogiek of Mt. Elgon will make their own submissions to the Task Force as will other indigenous forest peoples: the Sengwer, Yiaku, Watha and Aweer. We have all suffered the same ill-treatment of our land and human rights during the 20 th century.
We have been subjected to numerous violations of our rights to our land and resources stemming from colonial times. We have been displaced, disposed and evicted numerously from our ancestral lands after extensive de-gazettement of our forest land in Mau and elsewhere by the government through protectionist policies with camouflage of conservation that do not recognize our historical claims to forest areas, being our ancestral land. The African Court ruling recognized the Mau as our ancestral lands. Our primary concern is to see this delivered.
Summary of Human and Land Rights issues experienced by the Ogiek
i. Land tenure issues: – Lack of land tenure has made the Ogiek vulnerable to land loss through evictions, dispossession and displacements. The land loss has been occasioned by irregular excision and allocations that took place in the Ogiek land in Mau and are aggravated by perennial evictions. Further, corruption and fake land documents or title deeds have catalyzed dispossessions of Ogiek land through numerous court cases. Illegal titles have become a source of conflict with corruptions draining the community of resources spent in litigation while making the community poorer by day. To end this the entire Ogiek land must be restored to us through revocation and cancellation of all title deeds.
ii. Recognition of the Ogiek Community as a distinct separate people. The Kenyan constitution and the reports from the Ministry of Home Affairs indicate that there are 43 ethnicities in Kenya. Like other hunter gatherer communities in Kenya, the Ogiek are not included in that number. This is contrary to international standards on recognition of indigenous peoples, especially since the Ogiek meet both the objective and subjective criteria of any existing definition. Though the current constitution refers to the Ogiek as a minority community or marginalized group, we are yet to witness meaningful impact of this recognition.
iii. Some laws and policies have criminalized Ogiek culture. Between 1930 and 1935, a Carter Land Commission constituted by the British Colonial government recommended that the Ogiek and other hunter gatherer groups be assimilated into the communities they neighbour. Subsequent wildlife and forest laws outlawed hunting and gathering thus effectively criminalizing the Ogiek hunting and gathering cultures. New laws e.g. the Forest Act 2005 and Forest Conservation and Management Act 2016, do not also cater for the interests of hunter gatherer communities as primary rights holders to their forest lands. The last law does allow for community forests on community land, but first we need recognition that these are our lands. These laws provide only for forest people to register as Community Forest Associations (CFAs) and enter into management agreements with the government before they can be given the right to help Government protect forest lands. This fundamentally denies the inherent existence of communities for who such forests have always been their homes, and makes their continued existence dependent on state recognition. It has further eroded Ogiek traditional rights by introducing user charges, privileging the emergence of competing interests and resulting in massive loss of forest.
iv. Logging and other illegal activities in the Mau forest constitute the biggest threat to Ogiek cultures, religious and livelihoods. The licensed and unlicensed logging activities not only also threaten the biodiversity of the forest but are leading to the rapid drying up of rivers a e.g. Lake Nakuru, Elementaita and Naivasha. The Mara River that sustains the Maasai Mara Game Reserve – one of the Seven Wonders of the World is also threatened. We would not allow logging and other illegal activities if our lands were recognized as our property.
v. Frequent arrests and intimidation of Ogiek leaders and community members is also a major problem. Many Ogiek are facing land related cases in Court in spite of the court rulings that protects them, more specifically those residing in Mariashoni and Ngongongeri (Esingetit). There has been selective and malicious prosecution of Ogiek community. Some of the community members having sentence to life imprisonment due to land related matters.
vi. Fruitless government engagement and consultation with the Ogiek:
The Ogiek have, on numerous occasions, engaged the government in negotiations and approached the Kenyan courts to seek justice. However, for reasons not well known to them, none of their cases have been successful prosecuted and on the rare occasions when decisions have been in their favour, they have not been fully implemented. Besides the legal redress mechanisms, the Ogiek have also engaged the government in abide to resolve land grievances on the following instances:-
a) During 2009/2010 the Hassan Noor led Interim Coordinating Secretariat to the Mau Task Force Report
b) 2014/15 engagement with the Ministry of Environment and Natural resources led by then Permanent secretary in the Ministry Dr.Richard Lesiyampei
c) And recently (2015/16) the engagement with the National Lands Commission led by Prof. M. Swazuri
Worth noting is the several past attempt by the government to address the Ogiek issues through task forces, commissions and committees but which after their term ends there has been no positive change but rather perpetuation of the vice against the Ogiek peoples. Government has been consistently not serious in both recognizing our land rights and seeing this as the best means through which the tragically degraded Mau forests can be saved. It has been advised many times that this is practical and right including by these projects and documents; the Kenya Indigenous Forest Conservation (KIFCON-1991 to 1994), the Njonjo Commission of Inquiry 1999, the Ndung’u Commission 2002, the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission 2012, the Mau Task 2009.
We respectfully ask this Task Force to advise Government to end this tragedy, for the sake of our rights and for the sake of forest conservation.
These are our submissions:
1. We demand restitution of our ancestral lands which extend over much of the Rift Valley comprising the 21 Government Forests blocks and the Maasai Mau Trust Land Forest that make up the Mau Complex. These includes lands lost through land grab and other irregular and corrupt schemes e.g. Farms of Ngongongeri, Likia, Teret.
2. We want these forests returned to our ownership and fully accept that this transfer must be made on these conditions:
a. That Ogiek are not ready for commercialization of their rights. As such we remain custodians of our land and forest and would never agree to sell these lands. Our precious forests, also sources of Kenya’s most precious water towers ARE NOT FOR SALE. Our descendants will hold these lands in posterity in the same way as our forefathers did, and as we expect to be formalized today.
b. We will keep these forestlands for time immemorial as forests safeguarding them against encroachment, exploitation and dilapidation.
c. We will, with Government help, see that all the misery and degradation of our forested homelands are restored as far as possible to their former glory. WE WANT OUR HOMELAND BACK AND ITS CONDITION.
d. We want the government to recognize the Ogiek as a people with unique interaction with the nature by recognizing Ogiek special cultural zones and erecting a monument for the Ogiek in Mau forest.
3. We have a strong will to do this and in doing so we safeguard national Kenyan interests in ensuring that the forests are restored to their former condition. We submit that it is of direct importance for us more than for other Kenyans, that the Mau is rehabilitated. This is because forests are the foundation of our livelihood and culture. Our society will die without the forests. We have been fighting against that for many years and no matter what happens, we will keep fighting for our cultural survival.
4. We want Mau returned to us as our communal land. This is how we lived in and kept the forests in good condition, because we were spread out by clans.
5. The resources accruing from the natural resources of Mau shall have benefit sharing arrangement. These would include and not limited to forest products but also the waters of Mau flowing to various parts Kenya.
6. Compensation of the Ogiek for all damages suffered as a result of the violations, including the payment of pecuniary damages to reflect the loss of their property, development and natural resources, the payment of non-pecuniary damages, to include the loss of their freedom to practise their religion and culture, the establishment of a community development fund for the benefit of the Ogiek, the payment of royalties from existing economic activities in the Mau Forest, and ensuring that the Ogiek benefit from any employment opportunities within the Mau;
7. We seek formal entitlements reflecting our ancient territorial arrangements and which are still practical today. We expect entitlement in the form of Community Land Titles. Each territory will be known as Ogiek op Nessuit Community Land, Mariashoni Community Land, Sasimwani Community Land, and so on. This ownership will never be alienable. This may be inscribed on our title deeds.
8. The Constitution of Kenya 2010, recognizes that we are community landholders and that we are eligible for issue of formal title (Article 63 (2) (d) (ii). The Land Act, 2012 protects customary land ownership as equally important as private ownership (section 5). The Community Land Act, 2016 was enacted to enable all communities to identify and secure their lands under titles. We urge all possible action to see the Community Land act 2016 is operationalized including in our regard. This will also mean we can declare Community Forests on our lands (see below).
9. Member households of each community landowner will have rights. They will be issued usufruct entitlements for house and farm plots in perpetuity. They will be permitted to transfer these entitlements to other members of the community or to other Ogiek and outsiders through a procedure that each community will individually decide upon. Ultimate title to these parcels will remain with the community. This is also what the Community Land Act provides for.
10. We want our indigenous knowledge and innovations contributing to conservation of Mau forest biodiversity is recognized and valued. Ogiek are protectors of bees and birds which are pollinators of our crops and plants which contribute to food sovereignty. It is worth noting that the Ogiek community in conjunction with KFS and other stakeholders have rehabilitated over 100 acres of indigenous trees and 25 community scouts have volunteered to protect the forest as show case of our potentiality.
11. Habitation within each zone will be limited to areas which we agree with Kenya Forestry Service or other appropriate agencies. These will include areas that are naturally unforested and lands in and around present Forest Stations. Grazing will be restricted to zones that are naturally unforested (glades and moorlands), again in agreement with our technical adviser, the Kenya Forest Service.
12. Each community will also define Community Forest Reserves. In most cases we believe this will fall into two categories: Community Protected Forests and Community Use Forests. Different rules will apply. In neither case will any habitation or farming be permitted.
13. a) We understand that responsibilities go with rights. We look forward to becoming the rehabilitators and conservators of the Mau Complex in service for the nation. We look forward to working with the Ministry of Environment and all its agencies towards saving the Mau, and saving our society. We need and want their advice to help us do the very best job.
13. b) We make a prayer to the Task Force on the implementation of the decision of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights issued against the government of Kenya in respect to the Ogiek Community of Mau to address our shared land and forest rights as a priority for action. We acknowledge that it is not practical to return land to all aggrieved people of Kenya. But the case of traditional forest dwellers is straightforward and special. We have been waiting for recognition of our homeland forests for over 100 years. We know that without return of our forestlands, we cannot survive. We also know that without restoration of our land rights the Mau will slowly but surely disappear.
14. We also demand that while all the above is being delivered that we, the rightful owners of the Mau Forests will not be evicted from our homeland.
It’s worthy noting that the Ogiek are an important part of Kenyan history and heritage. Protecting our culture and guaranteeing our survival is an inherent duty of the State. In the face of wrongdoing, as found conclusively by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, it is the obligation of the State to take the necessary steps to restore our dignity and worth, and we call upon the Task Force to work to urgently implement this path-breaking judgment.
We wish to implore to the Taskforce to consider Ogiek Peoples Development Program (OPDP) for any form of consultation on behalf the Ogiek Community of Mau, as the case was with ACHPR. It will ease and deter masqueraders from intruding to the Task Force.
This memorandum is an addendum to the judgment of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and formal submission we have made to the Court since at is request. This submission is consistent with that submission held by the Court. It does not supersede the wishes of the Ogiek community and the ruling of the Court.
6 th February 2019, Nakuru Town, Kenya
Signed by 71 Ogiek Elders
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“At the moment we cannot say we have much for public consumption but by May we shall have our report and submit to the CS,” the task force chair Dr. Robert Kibugi said after visiting various forest blocks of the Mau.
The meeting was also attended by Kuresoi South MP Joseph Tonui and nominated Senator Victor Prengei.
The African Union landmark ruling was delivered already on May 26, 2017 and Kenya is in delay to follow the verdict and implement the remedies.
The Court found that the Kenyan government violated various rights of Ogiek by evicting them from their ancestral land in Mau Forest.
The court ordered the Kenyan government to take all appropriate measures within a reasonable time frame to remedy all the violations committed against the Ogiek.
