It’s getting hot out there. For a stretch of 16 months running through August 2016, new global temperature records were set every month.[1] Ice cover in the Arctic sea hit a new low this past summer, at 525,000 square miles less than normal. [2] And apparently we’re not doing much to stop it: according to Professor Kevin Anderson, one of Britain’s leading climate scientists, we’ve already blown our chances of keeping global warming below the “safe” threshold of 1.5 degrees. [3]
If we want to stay below the upper ceiling of 2 degrees, though, we still have a shot. But it’s going to take a monumental effort. Anderson and his colleagues estimate that in order to keep within this threshold, we need to start reducing emissions by a sobering 8-10% per year, from now until we reach “net zero” in 2050. [4] If that doesn’t sound difficult enough, here’s the clincher: efficiency improvements and clean energy technologies will only win us reductions of about 4% per year at most.
How to make up the difference is one of the biggest questions of the 21st century. There are a number of proposals out there. One is to capture the CO2 that pours out of our power stations, liquefy it, and store it in chambers deep under the ground. Another is to seed the oceans with iron to trigger huge algae blooms that will absorb CO2. Others take a different approach, such as putting giant mirrors in space to deflect some of the sun’s rays, or pumping aerosols into the stratosphere to create man-made clouds.
Unfortunately, in all of these cases either the risks are too dangerous, or we don’t have the technology yet.
This leaves us in a bit of a bind. But while engineers are scrambling to come up with grand geo-engineering schemes, they may be overlooking a simpler, less glamorous solution. It has to do with soil.
Soil is the second biggest reservoir of carbon on the planet, next to the oceans. It holds four times more carbon than all the plants and trees in the world. But human activity like deforestation and industrial farming – with its intensive ploughing, monoculture and heavy use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides – is ruining our soils at breakneck speed, killing the organic materials that they contain. Now 40% of agricultural soil is classed as “degraded” or “seriously degraded”. In fact, industrial farming has so damaged our soils that a third of the world’s farmland has been destroyed in the past four decades. [5]
As our soils degrade, they are losing their ability to hold carbon, releasing enormous plumes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
There is, however, a solution. Scientists and farmers around the world are pointing out that we can regenerate degraded soils by switching from intensive industrial farming to more ecological methods – not just organic fertiliser, but also no-tillage, composting, and crop rotation. Here’s the brilliant part: as the soils recover, they not only regain their capacity to hold CO2, they begin to actively pull additional CO2 out of the atmosphere.
The science on this is quite exciting. A study published recently by the US National Academy of Sciences claims that regenerative farming can sequester 3% of our global carbon emissions. [6] An article in Science suggests it could be up to 15%. [7] And new research from the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania, although not yet peer-reviewed, says sequestration rates could be as high as 40%. [8] The same report argues that if we apply regenerative techniques to the world’s pastureland as well, we could capture more than 100% of global emissions. In other words, regenerative farming may be our best shot at actually cooling the planet.
Yet despite having the evidence on their side, proponents of regenerative farming – like the international farmers’ association La Via Campesina – are fighting an uphill battle. The multinational corporations that run the industrial food system seem to be dead set against it because it threatens their monopoly power – power that relies on seeds linked to patented chemical fertilisers and pesticides. They are well aware that their methods are causing climate change, but they insist that it’s a necessary evil: if we want to feed the world’s growing population, we don’t have a choice – it’s the only way to secure high yields.
Scientists are calling their bluff. First of all, feeding the world isn’t about higher yields; it’s about fairer distribution. We already grow enough food for 10 billion people.[9] In any case, it can be argued that regenerative farming actually increases crop yields over the long term by enhancing soil fertility and improving resilience against drought and flooding. So as climate change makes farming more difficult, this may be our best bet for food security, too.
The battle here is not just between two different methods. It is between two different ways of relating to the land: one that sees the soil as an object from which profit must be extracted at all costs, and one that recognizes the interdependence of living systems and honours the principles of balance and harmony.
Ultimately, this is about more than just soil. It is about something much larger. As Pope Francis put it in his much-celebrated encyclical, our present ecological crisis is the sign of a cultural pathology. “We have come to see ourselves as the lords and masters of the Earth, entitled to plunder her at will. The sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life are symptoms that reflect the violence present in our hearts. We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the Earth; that we breathe her air and receive life from her waters.”
Maybe our engineers are missing the point. The problem with geo-engineering is that it proceeds from the very same logic that got us into this mess in the first place: one that treats the land as something to be subdued, dominated and consumed. But the solution to climate change won’t be found in the latest schemes to bend our living planet to the will of man. Perhaps instead it lies in something much more down to earth – an ethic of care and healing, starting with the soils on which our existence depends.
Of course, regenerative farming doesn’t offer a permanent solution to the climate crisis; soils can only hold a finite amount of carbon. We still need to get off fossil fuels, and – most importantly – we have to kick our obsession with endless exponential growth and downsize our material economy to bring it back in tune with ecological cycles. But it might buy us some time to get our act together.
A slightly different version of this piece appeared in The Guardian, September 10, 2016.
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK / GARDINER, MONTANA: Yellowstone National Park has initiated wild bison capture operations in their Stephens Creek bison trap, and plans to send hundreds to slaughter in coming weeks. Yellowstone asserts that these actions are necessary to appease Montana’s livestock industry which claims wild bison pose a threat. Bison were recently bestowed with the honor of being designated as the United States’ National Mammal.
“Bison were recently granted national mammal status by the U.S. Congress because they embody such monumental significance in this country, as a symbol of the wild, untamed land, as the true shapers and stewards of native grasslands and prairie communities, and for their profound cultural importance to many indigenous tribes,” said Stephany Seay of Buffalo Field Campaign. “Yet here we have the supposed care-takers of the country’s last wild, migratory herds shipping them to slaughter to cater to the whims of producers of an invasive species – the domestic cow.”
Bison once roamed most of North America, numbering tens of millions strong. They were nearly driven to extinction in an effort to subjugate Native Peoples and to clear the land for livestock grazing. Yellowstone National Park boasts the last stronghold of continuously wild American buffalo in North America. The roughly 600,000 bison who exist in the country today are largely privately owned and ranched as domestic livestock, or intensively managed on public lands. The migratory wildlife species is ecologically extinct throughout its native range, with Yellowstone and small fractions of neighboring Montana being the last place they continue to survive.
Capture operations at Yellowstone’s Stephens Creek bison trap began Saturday, January 7, 2017. BFC field patrols in the Gardiner Basin report that forty-four wild buffalo are currently being held. Yellowstone and other bison managers plan to slaughter or domesticate — if a controversial quarantine plan is approved — upwards of 1300 wild bison this winter, all in an effort to appease the powerful Montana livestock industry. Livestock interests claim that wild bison may pose a threat of spreading the livestock bacteria brucellosis back to cattle, something that has never happened in the wild. Livestock proponents also claim that Yellowstone’s bison population is too numerous for the land base, yet Yellowstone’s grasslands are thriving, and wild buffalo have never come close to overreaching sustainability within the Park.
“Montana’s livestock lobby continues to play deadly political games with this keystone species which is not in the least guilty of the crimes cattlemen blame them with,” said Seay. “In truth, invasive cattle have left death, pollution, and destruction in their wake across the lands of the West, and only wild, migratory buffalo can heal these injuries. Only wild buffalo can restore the grasslands and prairie communities, which are some of the most threatened habitats in the world.”
In addition to capture, wild buffalo face other fatal dangers if they migrate out of Yellowstone’s boundary into Montana. Like other migratory ungulates bison must leave the park in order to survive Yellowstone country’s harsh winters. Less than a mile from Yellowstone’s trap, just outside the boundary, hunters wait, ready to shoot any who leave the park.
Capture operations are going to interfere significantly with state and treaty hunting, which is currently in full swing. Wild buffalo are being hunted along Yellowstone’s border by hunters who hold Montana tags, and by four Native tribes — the Confederated Salish & Kootenai, Nez Perce, Shoshone Bannock, and the Umatilla Confederacy — who hunt buffalo under treaty right. Hunters are upset that Yellowstone has begun capturing so early, and most are adamantly opposed to the capture and slaughter of wild, migratory buffalo.
“In one direction lies the trap, in the other the gun, and these attacks last for months on end without respite,” said BFC’s Seay.
While BFC does not agree with the way buffalo hunting is currently taking place, given the limited landscape, small buffalo population, and firing line-style, we do hope that we will strengthen our common ground with hunters and bolster solidarity efforts aimed at ending the trapping of wild buffalo for good. Unfortunately, the limited landscape where buffalo are allowed to roam facilitates highly unethical hunting practices which not only manifest in the gunning down of wild buffalo at Yellowstone’s borders, but forces the buffalo to flee back into Yellowstone and become trapped by park officials.
“Buffalo are bottled up in the Gardiner Basin and have no escape. Hunters at the Park’s boundary are in competition with each other, and also in a race against the trap,” BFC’s campaign coordinator Mike Mease. “In the midst of such management madness, wild buffalo have nowhere in the Gardiner Basin where they aren’t being shot by hunters or captured for slaughter by Yellowstone officials.”
At a fundamental level, Montana and its livestock industry are responsible for the buffalo slaughter. Buffalo Field Campaign is working to change and challenge the status quo of the Interagency Bison Management Plan. Wild bison advocates must work to repeal MCA 81-2-120 and remove the Montana Department of Livestock’s authority over wild buffalo, and also insist on a new plan that respects wild buffalo like wild elk in Montana.
“Any action that does not fight this intolerance and excessive killing, or that fails to advocate for the buffalo’s ability to live freely on the lands that are their birthright, poses a threat to the buffalo’s long term survival and evolutionary potential,” said Stephany Seay. “Montana has played its cards so slyly that they aren’t feeling much of the heat anymore; instead, all the entities who should be the strongest allies for wild buffalo — Native Peoples, subsistence hunters, Yellowstone National Park, buffalo advocates — are pointing fingers at each other. It’s the same old game of divide and conquer.”
Buffalo Field Campaign exists to protect the natural habitat of wild migratory buffalo and native wildlife, to stop the slaughter and harassment of America’s last wild buffalo, and to work with people of all nations to honor the sacredness of wild buffalo.
I recall a Buddhist parable involving a stick that appears from a distance to be a snake, causing fear to rise in the perceiver. As the perception shifts upon closer examination, the fear subsides and the relieved hiker continues down the path. Understanding and awareness have a lot to do with how we feel and how we act. As hosts to the dominant cultural mindset (our collective understanding of who we are in the universe), our minds play a critical part in both perpetuating our dominant way of life and also in shifting away from it. And so it’s just possible that I have performed no greater service in my three decades of activism than to simply challenge myself and others to consider the possibility that the social systems that support us and we sustain are inherently incapable of meeting basic human needs and that we must make a fresh start, in a sense, if we are to survive this century and prosper thereafter.
These systems are the largely invisible, cyclical patterns of interaction among and within society’s individuals, institutions and principalities. They include small town school systems all the way out to our globalized economic system and to the mother of them all, our globalized monoculture. You need to perceive the stick as a stick before you can confidently move on, and this consideration is a critical step in transforming the way we live. When an alcoholic decides to sober up, he needs to understand, as AA puts it, that he is powerless to the substance. This understanding is a necessary condition for recovery. Likewise, about 7 billion humans living on our planet are powerless to make our global systems support equitable, sustainable, enjoyable living. Further, we are powerless to use the tools of these systems to prevent our world from crashing down on itself.
In a few critical ways, our global monoculture dates back to the Mesopotamian settlements our history texts associate with the Agricultural Revolution. Over the millennia, this rapidly expanding cultural system, under the guise of various imperial masks, has come to produce predictable results, terrible and also quite marvelous. The terrible includes unrelieved poverty for the majority of the world’s population, widespread unhappiness and spiritual alienation, even (especially?) among the wealthy 10 percent of the world’s population, and the unsustainable use of natural resources. This last result seals our present day ultimatum – our culture and our survival as a species have become incompatible. As if possessing a will and mind of its own, the culture has a voracious appetite for assimilating all cultures into itself and then separating every thing under its umbrella from every other thing into the smallest possible units, mainly to compete with each other. Its compulsion is to consume and waste, grow and expand, dominate, control and compete at a speed and intensity that is destroying the societies we assume it has evolved to serve.
The systemic template of our civilization’s form of social organization is a domination or hierarchical model, in contrast to the tribal or partnership system, which is still fully operative among isolated tribal people and recessively, in remnant forms, throughout our society. Our institutions, even small ones, are virtually all hierarchical – power, wealth and status are concentrated in individuals occupying the higher positions of a pyramidal organizational structure. In contrast, a group of friends arranging for a day together at the park is more likely to organize itself and otherwise behave in a tribal or partnership fashion. Some nuclear and even extended families exhibit partnership qualities, as do cooperatives and collectives.
Despite the predictability of what is, in other ways, a very chaotic and patchwork culture, social innovators, entrepreneurs and activists continue even in this late and desperate hour to put their best energy into trying to make this system work. Though stepping from our prevailing way of life to a better one must be done in fact and not simply in our minds, I sense that we are forestalling the necessary leap in part because too many of us remain not only actively invested in the prevailing way, but mentally invested as well. And there are lots of folks who at some level perceive that things have deeply soured in our world but who, like the townspeople adoring their naked emperor, keep this outlook and associated anxiety well guarded, and carry on. Indeed, though the system as a whole is failing, individuals in society are rewarded with survival goods for maximizing their effectiveness within the system. And just as our collective faith holds up the currency and the economy it serves, our collective faith is also what ultimately keeps civilization itself, and its supporting culture, afloat. Our active cooperation with the systems and structures of the culture is an expression of this faith.
Though I press myself into the service of partnership community building as an alternative to this, I also express through my actions a reluctant allegiance to the big culture and systems upon which my survival depends. Yet as I personally go about my daily business in life, I carry with me some fluidly changing version of the following reminders to help reorient my thinking:
Release your faith, Jim, in the capacity of our dominant culture, its systems and tools, to save us from social oppression, economic collapse and biological extinction. Though some of its tools (solar panels?) may be employed in the cultural hereafter, they are useful only in a marginal way in the current cultural context. Culture, as a function of how people think, understand and see the world, is the locus or hinge of social change. It is, for example, the source and determinant of technology. Promising and threatening technological advances (and potential advances) in bioengineering, fuel cells, etc., are very important, but secondary, concerns. “Keep your eyes on the prize” of cultural shift.
Our culture, however it serves us, is now collapsing. I can’t imagine that any anthropologically trained space visitor would conclude otherwise. With each passing day, a newborn child stands less of a chance than a child born the day before of absorbing, internalizing and embracing what the grownups need to pass on to them to assure the culture’s survival. Teenagers and other adults are anxious and dis-eased. I assume that the rate of demise is of an exponential magnitude and that we’re now in the ‘moving very, very fast’ stage. We are also destroying the habitat our biological lives depend on at a similar rate. This is a collapse on two (related) fronts.
Practice seeing the world as it is, in its genuine meaning, as interpreted by your most honest wits. Process attendant pain with others. Pay particular attention – honest attention – to young children. Resist writing off absurdities and horrors as normal, as business-as-usual, as just-the-way-the-world-is, as in ‘toddlers/teens just behave that way’. Allow yourself to witness and feel the effects of a desperate and dying culture.
It may be possible to stop or even prevent a war, move more poor people into affordable housing or to make a nonpolluting car. Efforts like these are necessary. Keep making them, but also keep in mind that while they cushion systemic blows and enhance the lives of individuals (perhaps millions of them), these measures will not directly alter our cultural or systemic trajectories. If you teach a child to read in school, or campaign for school reform or more public expenditures for the school system, keep a third eye as you go on a not too distant future in which children, as fully reintegrated members of their communities, learn, grow and become strong, healthy adults in some manner very different from what they experience in today’s institutional settings.
Try to be a responsible, centered, loving person. It’s good for you and the world. But while bad people exacerbate social problems, they are not the problems. Likewise, good people are not the solutions. Though individuals make consequential choices, systems rule for the most part. The force of our dominant culture – as a system itself – and the many social, economic and political systems flowing within it drive and shape much of what we do, how we live and even many of the smallest choices we make. Car driving, as an example, is a terribly polluting, resource depleting, violent and isolating activity, but at the same time it is a very rational, life sustaining practice performed routinely by good people everywhere. Invisible systemic forces within the flow of our culture, and the structural manifestations of these forces, compel it. We will therefore have to change the cultural flow, create systems that work for people generally as they are. We will never get our current systems to work by trying to make people in them better, as many of us have been struggling to do. Look to see (and change) systems more and blame (credit or change) individuals less.
Unlike physical systems, the social systems that shuttle us around, as powerful as they are, are also paper-thin. They are vulnerable to change, even rapid, dramatic change. They have structural and material manifestations that seem overwhelmingly formidable, but our social systems are ultimately sustained through the sponsorship of our minds. This principle was demonstrated in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, an effect of a private conversation that snowballed into a movement with irrepressible force.
Have faith that people can live equitably, sustainably and happily and that we are ambitious and inventive enough to fully recreate the way we live. ‘Where there is a will there is a way’ applies. Generating will requires awareness. For sure we are facing a profound social and psychospiritual challenge associated with cultural collapse and transformation. Humans are also stunningly adaptable. People are stuck, tethered to the dominant system, but as we become aware that our cultural Titanistad is really going down, enough people will scramble to invent and to cut paths for others to follow. One method our culture uses to bolster our faith in it is to convince us that we can’t live any other way:
• We’re not good enough (starting with innate depravity).
• It’s up to the people in power to make big change.
• The weight of change itself is too heavy (as if it’s all on my plate).
• Or, there simply is no viable, even thinkable, alternative to the basic competitive, hierarchical framework we’ve been living under.
Confront and challenge these familiar mantras as they creep into your mental projections.
Look out for and pay attention to forward-reaching experiments. For some time, cultural innovators have been trying to experiment a way out of the dominant mode of living. Many of these social experiments are small, perhaps even conventional-looking trials. Many fail, which is par for the course of change. In trying to assess an experiment in this regard, ask yourself, ‘Does this experiment point to a world, say ten or twenty years out, that I would want to live in if the experiment were to succeed?’ I would cite Gaviotas, of rural Columbia, and the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, of Boston, as two large-scale examples that inspire this kind of change. Catch yourself dismissing outright any person or group trying or saying something strange and different, then lend support to those pointing to a world you really want for you and our children.
Don’t get stuck on, or worry over, what the world or your part of it is going to look like or how everything is going to fit together once the cultural dust settles. Contemplating ‘What if’ and ‘How are we going to’ obstructions might itself be the biggest obstruction. We have to move forward and out of where we are. A mass redeployment of creative energy and focus, driven by cultural shift, will produce results that are unimaginable to us now. ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’. Internalize the necessity.
The dominant cultural vision is not one of global diversity, but global assimilation. It imagines every person living essentially the same way, speaking the same language, trading in the same currency at the same store. Assume that creating a new way of life in the ashes of this vision will be closer to creating new ways of life. The tribal/partnership system has a very good and long track record as a basic form of social organization for humans, but:
a) this form allows for genuine cultural diversity and countless ways of living beyond the basic form;
b) people may invent civilizational forms that work in ways our current form doesn’t; and
c) there are options and possibilities other than these two basic forms.
As you free your thinking in these ways and relieve yourself of the burden – in your mind at least – of trying to make our systems work, encourage others to do the same and link up with an experiment in progress and/or innovate yourself. But even if you make no outward change in your life, this perspective shift will bring us significantly closer to a much, much better world, especially if you risk a conversation now and then. How we perceive and how we think are powerful forces of change.
Find like-minded people to support and to support you. There are millions of people suffering various kinds and degrees of oppression and desperation as they try, often in isolation, to negotiate our troubled world. When hands and minds are joined and we begin to see that the source of our trouble isn’t located in us, only some of the symptoms, we create a bond with enormous potential for change. ‘Where there are two or more gathered’ for this kind of conversation and mutual support, anything can grow from it. There is a ‘tipping point’ somewhere in this social transformation and your small contribution is very likely a needed one. As such, it is also a decisive one.
I have to honestly think of myself as deeply cynical and hopeless in relation to what I believe our cultural systems and institutions can ultimately provide us. A new deal with the old dealers won’t save us. New dealers in the same game won’t either. A new game, or an assortment of new games, might. The needed change is fundamentally a cultural change, not a piece of legislation or a piece of technology, and it is a change that is struggling from many directions to break through. The mainstream culture is focused on news-making individuals, institutions and events – not systems – so this cultural shifting is relatively invisible and under-reported. Have faith in it, be on the look out and maybe even jump in somewhere.
Cultural Survival condemns the action of the Ecuadorian government in the raiding of the Shuar federation, FICSH (Federación Interprovincial de Centros Shuar), and the arbitrary detention of its president, Agustin Wachapa, on December 20, 2016.
The Shuar have been organizing to defend their ancestral lands from the development of a Chinese copper mine. Under the San Carlos Panantza copper project, the Ecuadorian government conceded 41 thousand hectares of land to the Chinese mining company ECSA for a period of 25 years. The project, currently in the exploration phase, is estimated to deliver around $1200 million USD in annual profits.
To make way for the mine, the Shuar community of Nankints was evicted in August 2016 without their Free, Prior and Informed Consent, in violation of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, the Ecuadorian constitution, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Since the evictions, violent clashes have broken out between individuals seeking to regain control of their homes and ancestral lands and military and police who are stationed to guard the property and employees of the mine. Now, the government has declared a “state of exception” in the province of Morona Santiago, and militarized the community of Nankints with hundreds of military personnel, tanks, and trucks, and helicopters. The state of exception strips Indigenous residents of the rights to freedom of movement, freedom of association, freedom of assembly and inviolability of the home, among others.
Cultural Survival joins COICA (Coordinadora de la Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica) in making the following demands:
We urge for intervention by neutral third parties in order to find a dialogue that does not deepen and aggravate the existing conflict.
We call for an immediate demilitarization of the community of Nankints, insuring the continued respect for human rights and collective rights of the Indigenous Shuar people, guaranteed by the Ecuadorian constitution in article 57. 20.
We demand the immediate release of Shuar leader and human rights and environmental defender Agustin Wachapa, and for him to be treated in accordance with the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.
We condemn the Ministry of the Environment in Ecuador for their December 20th call to close the grassroots environmental organization Accion Ecologica.
The Resígaro tribe was eventually wiped out, and Rosa and her brother became the last remaining speakers of the language.
Rosa was also one of the last speakers of Ocaina and was regarded as a pillar of her community. She knew a wide repertoire of songs and stories in both languages and had recently been designated, by the government, to teach children Ocaina
Rosa’s community suspects that an outsider, known for violent behavior, is responsible for the murder. However, the local prosecutor has declared that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute. The community is calling for a serious investigation to take place to find the culprit.
In an unprecedented protest, 19 “Pygmy” communities in central Africa have denounced conservation projects on their land. Eleven of the communities have urged conservationists to stop funding the anti-poaching squads who have abused them.
The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) – two of the world’s biggest conservation organizations – have helped to create protected areas in the region from which tribal peoples have been illegally evicted.
The Baka and Bayaka “Pygmies” and their neighbors have endured years of violence, intimidation and abuse as a result of these conservation projects in Cameroon, the Congo, and the Central African Republic. But the organizations behind them, including WWF and WCS, have failed to change their approach, and continue to fund the squads.
In one letter Baka said: ”How are we going to survive in this world? We say to those who are giving money to [the conservationists]: ‘Do you want them to kill us?’ We no longer live well.”
Bayaka from the village of Socambo, said: “Despite the money that you provide to conserve the forest, we don’t benefit at all. Our ancestors lived perfectly well in this forest… Please think of us poor indigenous people who use our forest. We are fed up with how the project has cut us off from the forest.”
Bayaka from Mossapoula said: “We … are suffering a lot because of conservation. The guards threaten us, beat us, steal from us, even outside the park. And yet we have the right to enter the park. We ask you to come to Mossapoula before continuing your funding in order to hear our problems and seek our consent.”
The Bakwele chief of Ndongo said: “WWF has been coming here since 1996. We used to be very happy. But now we find ourselves marginalized and tormented in every way… We here are now only living on rice, really. Sir, your agents are very, very aggressive and we don’t want them to come here any more.
“In short, to those funders: if you have any projects, come to the field yourselves. I repeat: your agents are not here for work but for corruption. The guards have become the real poachers. They no longer respect the park limits. We no longer have access to the park.”
“Pygmies” face harassment and beatings, torture and even death while big game trophy-hunting tourists are encouraged. Tribal peoples are illegally evicted from large parts of their ancestral land and forced to live on roadsides where poverty and disease are rife. They have faced violence and plummeting health standards in the name of conservation – while WWF and WCS partner with logging companies like Rougier, CIB and SINFOCAM.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “As these powerful statements from “Pygmies” show, conservation projects are proving deadly for tribal peoples in the Congo Basin. As they see it, WWF and WCS have taken their land, ignored their rights, and continue to fund those abusing them. WWF and WCS have turned natural allies of conservation into its victims. The big conservation organisations really must start listening to these tribal peoples.”
Background briefing – WWF has been active in the Congo Basin for decades. Survival first raised concerns over its proposed projects in 1991. – The region is home to dense rainforests and several iconic species, including the giant pangolin, lowland gorilla and forest elephant. Tribal peoples like the Baka and Bayaka have been dependent on and managed this environment for generations. – According to European Union reports, no logging activity in Cameroon is being carried out lawfully. Despite this, WWF has entered into partnerships with several companies who are active in the region. – WWF cites the need to protect wildlife from poachers as the justification for funding, training and equipping wildlife guards. However, several of these guards have themselves been involved in the illegal wildlife trade. Earlier this year, for example, one guard, Mpaé Desiré was arrested for involvement in the illegal wildlife trade. – A Baka man told Survival: “Guards used to open tins of sardines and leave them as bait to attract leopards, so they could hunt them for their skins.” Rainforest tribes have unparalleled knowledge of their environment, but WWF has instead put its faith in armed guards and corrupt officials.
Tribal peoples have been dependent on and managed their environments for millennia. Their lands are not wilderness. Evidence proves that tribal peoples are better at looking after their environment than anyone else. They are the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world. They should be at the forefront of the environmental movement.
But tribal peoples are being illegally evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of conservation. The big conservation organizations are guilty of supporting this. They never speak out against evictions.
The big conservation organizations are partnering with industry and tourism and destroying the environment’s best allies.
Watch: Baka describe beatings and abuse at hands of anti-poaching squads. “Pygmy” is an umbrella term commonly used to refer to the hunter-gatherer peoples of the Congo Basin and elsewhere in Central Africa. The word is considered pejorative and avoided by some tribespeople, but used by others as a convenient and easily recognized way of describing themselves
