Is nature conservation a form of Green Colonialism?
Posted on 29. Jan, 2021 by Paul Sochaczewski in Environment, Environment EarthLove
Is nature conservation a form of Green Colonialism?
In a world rich in uncertainties and conflicting values, surely nature conservation is a universally accepted, politically correct goal that people worldwide agree on?
Well, not really. Nature conservation is regularly accused of being a neo-colonial escapade. It’s called “green colonialism.”
A 2018 article in Foreign Policy told of a conflict in a national park in Ecuador:
“The episode illustrates a tension that threatens to undermine conservation efforts in Cayambe Coca and thousands of other protected areas around the world. Like many other indigenous communities whose ancestral homes sit inside state-sanctioned conservation zones, the Cofán are victims of a sort of green colonialism. Cayambe Coca and parks like it may have been founded with the best of intentions: to safeguard endangered biospheres. But the way these protected areas have been established and maintained has damaged the lives of the indigenous peoples who live within their borders, forcing them into what is effectively a landlord-tenant relationship with the state that deprives them of control over their land. Because the local governments often lack the will or resources to prevent industry encroachment, many such arrangements also end up undermining their creators’ explicit goal: conservation. This double failure is part of the complicated legacy of the modern conservation movement.”
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The modern international conservation movement began with the establishment of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) in 1948 and the subsequent creation of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1961.
The people who started these groups, and many others since, were, for the most part, well-intentioned, cosmopolitan, well-educated, well-placed European Caucasian men.
Their early emphasis was initially skewed towards work in the less-developed parts of the world, with energy and fundraising devoted towards saving charismatic African megavertebrates, tigers in India, pandas in China, and other talismanic critters.
I joined WWF International, based in Switzerland, in January 1981, at the beginning of its period of great expansion. By this time, IUCN and WWF had expanded their reach beyond species to address conservation issues worldwide, including, of course, serious problems in the more-developed countries of the West, as well as paying greater attention to the need to protect entire ecosystems rather than individual species.
And the conservation movement evolved, questioning whether the answer could be found in fencing in natural parks and keeping out people, or by supporting communities to act as stewards for their traditional lands. The problem with the “people as managers” approach was that relatively few indigenous communities actually held title to their traditional lands, and they had little protection against domestic and foreign interlopers who encroached on the territories they were expected to manage. As one villager in eastern Indonesian told me: “We better collect the birds nests and birds of paradise and shark fins before the outsiders do.”
As the fictional 1978-era Peter Socrates Walburton, director of communications of the International Nature Foundation and the narrator of my satiric novel EarthLove recalls:
“We didn’t consider the arrogance.
“The more-developed North (that’s us, and every large, well-intentioned conservation organization), not the less-developed South, makes the rules and sets the standards.
“Scientists from the North discover and name the new species.
“The North exposes corruption, anoints heroes, and chastises villains.
“We hire people who are like us, who are Western-educated, folks who fit into our model of a modern conservationist. We dole out the money. We write the reports.
“We have decided that all poor countries are basically same-same. A rhyme about the World Bank approach to conservation goes:
World Bank, highest of them all
Looks down to see poor people small
Like atoms, all the same size
For which it’s right to standardize
“Paternalistic? Certainly. Colonial Resurgence? You betcha.”
* * *
In EarthLove, this tension can be seen in the debate about oil palm plantations in Borneo.
The (relatively rich) West shouts that oil palm is evil. We get on our high horse and protest that oil palm plantations have decimated tropical rainforests, thereby threatening the livelihoods and culture of local people and annihilating orangutan populations.
Yet the conundrum is that the West is addicted to palm oil.
It’s found in more than half of all products in a supermarket. It stops ice cream from melting, makes chips crispier, soap frothier, lipstick smoother, and increases the shelf life of everything from pizza to cake to chocolate. It’s easily the world’s most productive, and therefore the cheapest, vegetable oil, producing a harvest eight times greater per area than soy. We use it for fuel and fertilizer. And it’s cheap. It’s the Alice’s Restaurant equivalent of food products.
I have met several Southeast Asian ministers of trade, finance, and development who scold me: “You can more about orangutans than you do about people.” They point out their countries have large networks of national parks, adhere to “green” industry guidelines, and have joined all the major conservation treaties. And, then they play the trump card: “You, the North, built your wealth by cutting down your forests, by polluting the atmosphere during the industrial revolution and ever since, by forcing children to work as virtual slaves. You, the North, built your empires by looting and pillaging the natural resources of the South, by destroying our native cultures, by putting us in debt to a monetary system we didn’t want in the first place.” They add, rightly: “your supermarkets would be barren without palm oil.” Our conversations generally exude the undercurrent: Well, surprise, we’re independent now. Don’t tell us what to do.
Can common ground be reached? Or is the polarity destined to solidify positions until gridlock is established?
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EarthLove is available at Amazon.com, or on order from any bookstore.
978-2-940573-34-9 Paperback KDP (Amazon)
978-2-940573-35-6 Paperback IngramSpark
978-2-940573-36-3 E-Book
And you might enjoy watching the two-minute EarthLove video trailer. I wrote the script; it was produced and directed by Marton Varo, brandefy.com .