The inquiry follows an explosive report by Buzzfeed News that revealed that WWF funds, equips, and works directly with paramilitary forces that have been accused of beating, torturing, sexually assaulting, and murdering scores of people.
WWF’s main response to the Buzzfeed exposé has been to commission a law firm specializing in “reputation management” to conduct an “independent review.”
The investigation will examine whether WWF UK conducts proper due diligence to ensure that the grant money it sends overseas does not contribute to violence.
In a statement, the commission said the “atrocities and human rights abuses that were alleged are at odds with everything we associate with charity.”
The news comes just a day before the launch of the new Netflix-WWF series Our Planet, narrated by Sir David Attenborough.
Survival International’s Director Stephen Corry said today: “It’s a step forward that the Charity Commission is finally launching an investigation, but we’re not holding our breath. The Commission is only concerned with WWFUK, and has no ability to judge its complicity in human rights violations.
“The most that will happen is that it will require WWF to investigate, which WWF has already said it’ll do. We’ll then have a long wait, ending in a bucket of whitewash.
“WWF has known about these atrocities for years. Let’s not forget that, at this moment, WWF is calling for a new protected area, Messok Dja, which is stealing Baka “Pygmy” land in Congo. What we need is a public outcry against fortress conservation which is so damaging to the planet and its peoples.”
An unprecedented wave of wildfires has swept through indigenous communities in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Three deaths have been reported, and up to 700 people have been listed in critical condition. In the aftermath of the fires, the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo Peoples have declared a state of emergency and turned to the international community for help.
Located on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is one of the world’s highest coastal ranges. Its millenary guardians are the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo, the four indigenous descendant communities of the ancient Tayrona civilization.
The Indigenous peoples believe the Sierra Nevada is the Heart of the World, where they protect the balance of all life through pagamentos, or offerings. The Arhuaco and Kogi were one of the few indigenous communities that were never colonized and resisted being evangelized. They preserve their language, dress, and culture.
The Arhuaco and Kogi communities in particular were severely affected by the fires after an exceptionally dry and hot summer. The communities are currently asking for humanitarian help and donations because of the critical situation in the Sierra Nevada. More than 1,000 hectares and 4,000 people have been affected by the severe fires, damaging several important spiritual settlements. Some Kogi settlements have also been affected by the fires.
Many animals died in the fire as well, including mules, horses and the sheep that produce wool used to make traditional bags.
In a press release, the organizations representing the Kogui Indigenous People (OGT), the Arhuaco (CIT), the Wiwa (OWYBT) and the Kankuamo (OIK), represented by the Territorial Council of Cabildos (CTC SNG), explain the serious situation caused by the fires and the environmental crisis caused by an unusually hot summer.
The press release states the following:
“The four Indigenous Peoples of the Sierra Nevada make a statement the environmental crisis in the heart of the world
“The Indigenous Peoples and Organizations Kogui (OGT), Arhuaco (CIT), Wiwa (OWYBT) and Kankuamo (OIK), representing the Territorial Council of Cabildos (CTC SNG), speak about the serious situation caused by the fires and the environmental crisis caused by the strong summer in the Sierra Nevada de Gonawindua.
“We hereby communicate to the public, local, regional, national and international opinion, and the civil society the following:
“As caretakers of the Heart of the World, we express our uncertainty about the serious environmental situation and humanitarian crisis generated by the fires, which have been presented since last February 24, in more than ten (10) places in the Sierra Nevada, that increased because of the long summer, the heat wave and the strong winds that increase the risk of destroying other areas in this sacred territory, threatening our material and immaterial heritage, natural in cultural and environmental terms.
“The magnitude of the damages is incalculable, the fires have devastated more than 1000 Hectares (nearly 2,500 acres) of the mountainous ecosystem of the Sierra Nevada. To date the total destruction of houses in the settlements of Seynimin (Arhuaco), and Waneyaka (Kogi) is reported, fires still persist in the region of Nabusimake (Pueblo Bello), Sogrome, Donachwi, Jukwinchukwa, Suribaka, Shendukua, Zinka, (Valledupar) Piñoncito, Sabana Grande and Potrerito (San Juan), and other regions are at risk. In addition, spiritual and material damages have affected the following ancestral sites: Ezwamas, Kadukwa, Mamanua, Shentuan (Ceremonial Government Center) Kankurwas (traditional houses), farms, health centers, schools, and hundreds of families.
“Faced with this serious situation that puts at risk the balance and harmony of the territory as a source of life and the physical and cultural permanence of the communities that inhabit and take care of the Heart of the World; the mamos (spiritual authorities), indigenous authorities and peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, have taken the following steps:
TO DECLARE [a state of] cultural, social, environmental and economic emergency in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, traditional and ancestral territory of four indigenous communities.
TO REQUEST in an urgent manner the help of national, regional, and local authorities; relief, risk and disaster agencies, [Colombia’s] public prosecutor’s office and international organizations, [as well as] immediate intervention to address the declared [state of] emergency through coordination, accompaniment, and monitoring mechanisms.
TO ALERT the regional and local indigenous authorities along with the communities and families within the [four] communities to take the necessary measures of prevention and control in this situation according to our own mandates and regulations.
TO APPEAL for the solidarity of those who wish to provide humanitarian aid, donations of equipment, non-perishable food, mats, tents, hammocks, and other necessary elements that will be received in the offices of the indigenous houses in Valledupar, Santa Marta, and Riohacha.”
Direct donations can be sent to:
Asocit
Asociación de Autoridades Arhuacas de la Sierra Nevada
(Arhuaco Authorities Association of la Sierra Nevada)
Ana Barón is a collaborator of Mestizo Muisca origin, translator, and environmental activist involved in supporting indigenous communities in Colombia, South America.
This article is being published in collaboration with The Esperanza Project, a Green News Portal for the Americas.
Park officials in India’s Rajaji Tiger Reserve colluded with poachers in the killing of endangered leopards, tigers and pangolin, according to an investigation by a senior wildlife officer.
The accused officials range from the park director to junior guards. WWF-India boasts that it trained “all Rajaji frontline staff in skills that were vital for protection,” including law-enforcement. It also provided vehicles, uniforms and essential anti-poaching equipment to the guards.
The investigation, reported in India’s Down to Earth magazine, found that not only were officials helping to hunt down and kill wildlife, they also beat and tortured a man named Amit – an innocent villager who was trying to stop the poaching.
Officials are reported to have arrested Amit under false charges, resulting in him being detained for up to a month. He was also beaten and given electric shocks by a wildlife warden and two range officers.
The involvement of those supposed to protect wildlife in hunting is common. A UN report in 2016 confirmed that corrupt officials are at the heart of wildlife crime in many parts of the world, rather than tribal peoples who hunt to feed their families.
Stephen Corry, Survival International’s Director, said today: “Rangers who poach as well as violate human rights won’t surprise those environmentalists who’ve been speaking against fortress conservation for years. Corrupt rangers often collude with poachers, while tribal people, the best conservationists, bear the brunt of conservation abuses.”
Northeast Syria–The Germany Minister of Interior Horst Seehofer declared on February 12 2019 a ban on the Kurdish publishing house Mezopotamya. The ban is directly affecting our ecological campaign Make Rojava Green Again. 200 copies of our newly released book have been confiscated.
The Mezopotamya publishing house is distributing not only our books, but a huge variety of books on the topic of Kurdistan in many different languages. The 200 copies of Make Rojava Green Again which were seized were due to be distributed through Mezopotamia. The books had arrived only some days before the declaration of the ban by the Ministry of Interior, and the place of the publishing house has been raided and closed. All of the books and brochures have been confiscated.
Within the last months the book has been released in English, Italian, Greek and German. French, Swedish, Turkish, Kurdish and Spanish editions are due to be released in the coming weeks. With the book we try to show perspectives for solving ecological problems within Northern Syria and worldwide. In this we refer to the theories of Social Ecology of Murray Bookchin and the Democratic Confederalism of Abdullah Öcalan.
The ban of the publishing house and confiscation of materials directly affects our work. We condemn this decision and demand the return of the books as well as the lifting of the ban of the Mezopotamya publishing house. The closing of Mezopotamya is an attack on freedom of thought and speech. The ban is an attempt to suppress the discourse of the establishment of self-administration in Northern and Eastern Syria and perspectives on solving the crisis in the Middle East. The spreading of ideas of a gender liberated, ecological and democratic society will not be prevented by bans and censorship, because already today these ideas are source of inspiration and hope for millions of people worldwide. We will continue our work despite these actions and with an even higher motivation. Under these circumstances we especially call for everyone to read our newly released book, Make Rojava Green Again, and other writings affected by the ban, and to spread the writings. The critique of a system which is every day enslaving billions of people and pushing for the destruction of natural resources remains legitimate and today is even more necessary than ever.
The dense Messok Dja rainforest has been home to the Baka Peoples since time immemorial. But now the forest is being closed off to them to make way for a new national park. Although the park hasn’t been formally established, the Baka are being driven from their homes and deprived of their vital lifeline of forest resources—with devastating results.
For nearly a decade, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has been working with the Congolese government to set up the Messok Dja National Park with the help of funding bodies like the European Commission (EC), the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
During this time, WWF-funded park rangers have actively patrolled the area. The Baka, who are vehemently opposed to the national park, have routinely denounced the rangers, whom they accuse of violence, discrimination and torture.
One Baka woman described how “The wildlife guards just want to kill us. Once, I had just gone to do some dam-fishing. I was coming back with some fish to grill in packages made of leaves, to eat with my husband and children. I’m coming back with the pot of fish, I put it down. Just like that, the ecoguards grab me: Bam, bam, bam. For no reason. I hadn’t provoked them, I didn’t owe them anything. They just beat me and I don’t even know what for.”
Another man reported, “We just suffer these terrible beatings here for nothing. If they see us, they just beat us with machetes. Bam, bam, bam [on your body].”
In the face of such persecution, many Baka have retreated from the forests to live in road-side camps. Already they are being forced to abandon their age-old tradition of “molongo” – going deep into the forest for extended periods to hunt and gather. This is now impossible as one Baka woman explained:
“How can I go into the forest?…I just go round in circles here. At this time of year I gather wild mangos, [but] now I just stay close to the road. I just gather the mangoes that are near here.. that’s their forest – they’ve taken it.”
Confronted with an alien way of life outside of the forest, the Baka face the very real possibility of food scarcity. “We live from the Lipolo forest: wild mangoes, fish, meat, wild honey and yams, everything… but it’s now blocked off and we’re left to suffer. We don’t know how we can live.”
Conservation-related malnutrition among tribal peoples in the Congo is already a well-documented problem. In 2017, a Congolese organization raised concerns that conservation had contributed to the deaths of several dozen Bayaka children during an epidemic in 2016. The deaths were attributed by a medical expert to malaria, pneumonia and dysentery, aggravated by severe malnutrition.
“We’re suffering here. We don’t know how we’re going to survive. There is nowhere for us to live. It’s as though any value we have is gone.”
And of course, when the Baka now fall ill, they are unable to collect the medicinal plants they need from the forest.
To make matters worse, the Baka communities have never given their consent for the national park, with one local Baka chief explaining, “We can’t agree to it. Everything is there: food, life, health all come from that forest. If we were to give up the forest, we’d be sacrificing our children’s lives, our parents’ lives, our own lives. It would be as if someone were committing suicide.”
The Baka remain resolute in their opposition to the project. The forest is not only key to their survival, it lies at the heart of their sense of community and identity. Life outside it is simply inconceivable to them.
“We Baka, we’re not the type of people who just stay in the village. We’re forest people… Our life, our future is out in the forest. For us and for our children. I know the forest from A-Z. Every root, every tree.”
Many Baka communities have written signed letters of complaint which they asked Survival International to forward to the funders of the proposed park. One letter reads, “If the park is established in our forest, it will be very serious. Instead of working with us, the park rangers have made us suffer so much: they beat us, they whip us with their belts. If that carries on, how will our children live? We are told that according to international law, before starting a project in our forest they need to ask our consent. So we ask you to come here, listen to us and see our suffering, and make sure the law is respected.”
The Baka’s understanding of their legal rights is sound: international law indeed dictates that the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of local communities must be obtained for major projects undertaken on their land. Without their consent, Messok Dja National Park is illegal.
In spite of this, WWF is pushing ahead with its plans for Messok Dja and the project continues to enjoy the support of the EC and USFWS as major donors. Neither of these funding bodies or the conservation giant show any signs of pulling the millions of dollars they have committed to the project.
The Baka–who are excellent conservationists in their own right–are adamant that this must change, and reproach those funding the project for their lack of financial responsibility: “[We] want those funding the park to take action. We’ve never seen a white person come to see where their money is going.”
Despite the considerable body of evidence of terrible human rights violations committed against the Baka, WWF has thus far denied any allegations of wrongdoing. A recent tweet read: “As if WWF would allow local communities to be systematically abused, that really is too crazy for words!”
“[We] want those funding the park to take action. We’ve never seen a white person come to see where their money is going.”
In an article written last year, a WWF coordinator described how its ranger team in northern Congo was “fully supported by WWF, and therefore well supervised and equipped.” He went on to praise the team for their efforts to stabilize elephant numbers in the region.
The conservation organization insists that it “takes the allegations seriously.” However it has not replied to any of the community complaints submitted via their whistle-blowing mechanism in July last year regarding the Messok Dja project.
The organization says it aims to respond to complaints made within two weeks.
The European Commission has defended its involvement in the conservation initiative, stressing that Messok Dja “ought to contribute to the improvement of the living conditions of the communities around the park as well as upholding conservation objectives.”
The USFWS was made aware of the situation facing the Baka in Messok Dja in November last year. Survival International has no record of any reply.
The case of Messok Dja National Park and the fate of the Baka tribe is far from an isolated case. Survival International has already reported extensively on the conservation-related human rights abuses in the context of the Congo Basin, Africa and India; it is truly a global problem.
The tribal peoples’ rights organization says that up to 14 million people worldwide have been evicted from their lands in the name of conservation. One study even calculated that the number could be as high 136 million people. In India alone, a recent ruling by the Supreme Court means that some 8 million tribal and other forest-dwelling people could be evicted from their forests due to pressure from conservation groups.
It is clear that neither the scope nor the serious nature of conservation-related problems faced by indigenous and tribal peoples worldwide can be overlooked. Survival International says that the Baka now face “existential threat as a hunter-gatherer tribe” as a result of the Messok Dja conservation initiative.
There are reasons for optimism however.
Survival’s conservation campaign continues to gain momentum and with a damning indictment of WWF’s human rights record published this week by the news platform Buzzfeed, the pressure is now very much on the WWF, and the conservation industry at large, to dramatically change the way it operates and respect tribal peoples’ rights.
In his book Capitalism and Slavery, Trinidadian historian Dr. Eric Williams writes that “Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.”
Williams, like many others, argues that racism was created by the powerful to justify subjugation that was already in progress. In other words, the desire to exploit came first, and racism was developed as a moral system to justify the exploitation.
This has profound implications for how we approach the topic of dismantling racism and white supremacy.
Most people today know that race and racism are not “natural.” Scientifically, there is no such thing as “race.” Of course, there are differences in skin color between different groups of people. And it is possible to lump people into rough geographic groups based on their heritage and specific physical characteristics. But the concept of race is a vast oversimplification of this natural variation.
The fact that race is an artificial construct becomes clear when you study how “mixed-race” people are perceived in society today. In general, society considers a person who is half white and half black to be… black. In these sorts of examples, race is exposed as a set of stereotypes, a shorthand that people use to categorize people into a set of expectations and social boxes.
This, of course, isn’t to say that race isn’t “socially real.” In our culture, race is a material reality. But it’s a fuzzy one, a constructed one. This becomes obvious when we study the history of race and racism, and when we examine how these concepts have evolved over time to better serve the (fractured, not unitary) ruling class.
For another example of how race functions as a system of power, we can look at how various ethnic groups have shifted in and out of the privileged class “white” over time. The book How the Irish Became White traces this phenomenon, examining how mostly dirt-poor Irish immigrants to the US were treated as a sub-human race of lesser innate worth and intelligence, and how over time, the Irish became accepted as “white” in return for their largely collective agreement to oppress blacks and other non-white peoples.
Racism functions today, as it has historically, as a system used to justify the oppression and exploitation of billions of people of color worldwide. In his pioneering book The Nazi Doctors, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton writes that people cannot continue to commit atrocities without having them fully rationalized. He calls these justifications a “claim to virtue.” For the Nazis Lifton studied in particular, the mass murder of Jews was justifiable to create Lebensraum (“living space”) for the Aryan race.
Similarly, racism allows white supremacists (both overt and covert) to claim virtue as they brutally exploit people. The ideology of slavery and colonization relies on the idea that Black and indigenous peoples are “sub-human” and need to be “civilized.” Early white historians of slavery such as Ulrich B. Phillips wrote that slavery lifted the African people from barbarism, protected them, and benefited them.
From claiming that non-white people were separate species, to racist IQ tests, to Trump claiming Central American refugees are disease-ridden rapists, these campaigns of virtue have continued for hundreds of years.
If racism was born primarily out of political necessity to justify exploitation—this changes the way that we approach dismantling racism. Instead of a cultural attitude or idea that can educated away, this understanding has us see racism as fundamentally linked to a material system of exploitation. In fact, we could say that racism IS material exploitation.
Today, this system of racist exploitation takes many forms.
It takes the form of a massive private prison system that profits from the enslavement of the largest prison population in the world, a population that is disproportionately black, Latino, and indigenous. There are more black people in prison today than were in prison at the height of slavery, and these people are forced to work for free or slave wages (often $1 per hour or less) for private profit.
It takes the form of a complicit educational system that dehumanizes black and brown children from birth while railroading them on the school-to-prison pipeline.
It takes the form of an economic system that uses redlining, payday loans, and other predatory financial practices to steal from the poor black and brown people of this country, leaving people destitute and facing homelessness, disease, cold, and hunger.
It takes the form of the war on drugs, which originated in the crack cocaine epidemic in black inner cities started in the 1980’s. In 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb, who worked for The Mercury News newspaper in San Rose, launched his “Dark Alliance” series of articles with this: “For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.” This drug ring “opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles” and, as a result, “helped spark a crack explosion in urban America.” This helped fuel the drug war, a key pillar of US internal counterinsurgency strategy, and led to massively profitable asset forfeiture programs, internal security business, and a booming private prison system. After this report, Webb was attacked by the three largest newspapers in the country, run out of his job, went bankrupt, and eventually ‘killed himself’ with two self-inflicted gunshots.
It takes the form of a fossil fuel and real-estate boom making billions of dollars while bulldozing through indigenous lands and building on top of burial grounds and sacred sites, and more broadly of environmental racism through which toxic and radioactive industries, waste, and facilities are offloaded onto communities of color.
It takes the form of a US and western foreign policy that backs right-wing coups and wars in places like Honduras, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, The Philippines, and elsewhere for the sake of geopolitical and financial power, then demonizes refugees fleeing from this violence who can then be exploited for low wage jobs, prostitution, and practical slavery while they live in fear.
It takes the form of global trade agreements like NAFTA which impoverish millions of poor people of color globally and make it even more profitable and easy for corporations to make billions on the exploitation of cheap labor in sweatshops, maquiladoras, and electronics factories.
These are just a few examples.
***
Feminist author Marilyn Frye described oppression as being similar to a birdcage. Examine any one bar of the cage, and it appears to be no obstacle. After all, a bird can simply fly around it. Only when you consider the inter-relationship between the different bars do you get a sense of how the cage works to immobilize and confine the occupant.
Racism works in a similar way. Education, prisons, mass media, banks, war, politicians, non-profits, developers, drugs and alcohol, entertainment, and various other institutions and forces combined form a cage that is locked tightly around people of color.
This brutal system is responsible for the deaths of millions and an obscene amount of suffering.
The routine public executions of black and brown people conducted by the police are a terrorist tactic no different from the lashing of slaves. For both white and black and brown community, these displays clearly teach and enforce the power hierarchy. Body cameras have only made these dominance displays more public, and thus more effective.
***
When we understand how racism functions, we are better able to plan our attack against it.
If racism is a system of power set up to benefit the ruling class, education (the favorite method of liberals) can never be enough. Fundamentally, racism is not based on ignorance; it’s based on power and exploitation. That doesn’t mean education is worthless, but it does mean that ending racism is primarily a power struggle, not a matter of changing minds. Education is necessary, but not sufficient.
A radical approach to dismantling racism requires dismantling the material institutions that uphold and benefit from white supremacy.
To call this understanding of racism “economic” is an oversimplification. Systems of oppression function mostly to steal from the poor and reward the rich, but they are not purely rational. And this approach doesn’t mean subordinating racism to class struggle. Racism is not “less important” than class struggle, and arguments that it is (mainly from white people) have rightly drawn a lot of criticism from people of color activists.
That said, radical people of color have long understood that racism is one key pillar in a system of domination and exploitation that is much broader than racism alone. Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition in Chicago is a key example, bringing together black, Puerto Rican, working class white, and socialist groups, not to subordinate their struggles to a larger goal, but to coordinate their fight against the ruling class as a united front.
***
Modern white supremacy has its foundation in ideas and in culture, but it expresses itself primarily through economic power, military power, police power, media power, and so on. These are all concrete institutions that can be destroyed. I believe that too little attention is paid to vulnerabilities in the global system of white supremacist empire.
This line of thought has not been explored much by radical leftists. Revolutionary traditions have been dominated by strains of Marxism, which focus on seizing state and corporate power and institutions, not on destroying or incapacitating them.
The revolutionary strategy “Decisive Ecological Warfare” (DEW) was originally described in 2011 as an emergency measure to address the environmental crisis. However, this strategy has implications for the fight against racism as well.
The DEW strategy calls for underground guerilla cells to target key nodes in global industrial infrastructure, such as energy systems, communications, finance, trade hubs, and so on. The goal is to cause “cascading systems failure” in the global capitalist economy while minimizing civilian casualties. If successful, this strategy could fatally damage capitalism and deal a major blow to the power of white supremacy.
The first objection most people in the global north have to this strategy is reflexive: we are dependent on capitalist systems for survival. This is the depraved genius of any abusive system; white supremacist capitalism systematically exterminates alternative ways to live, and thus makes us dependent upon the same system that exploits and murders us. It’s the exact same method used by abusive men to control and coerce their wives and girlfriends.
Capitalism does not care about us. The state does not care about us. In the face of global ecological collapse, these institutions will leave us to die while the rich retreat to gated communities with armed guards. They make us dependent on their system then profit from our misery and death. We need to build alternative grassroots institutions, food systems, self-defense groups, and communities outside of capitalism. This is essential whether we pursue DEW or not. But without DEW and other forms of offensive struggle, the corporate-state will destroy alternative communities whenever possible. Defending these spaces will be a losing battle without larger changes.
No war is won through defense alone.
No one strategy is a magic bullet. But Decisive Ecological Warfare offers revolutionaries a weapon that could strike decisive blows against white supremacist, capitalist power structures, and create opportunities for new types of communities based on justice to exist and flourish.
