Bulletin Issue 73 - August 2003

September 2003 is a crucial month for the global environment movement. During September, global trade talks under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation are to be held in Cancun, Mexico. Social and environmental organisations plan sharp protests against the way the Bretton Woods organisations are still pushing the world headlong down a slide towards unregulated markets, international trade without equity and liberalization without restraint. Without checks and balances, without simultaneous improvements in governance, environmental regulation and empowerment of local communities, such a process can only result in greater poverty and environmental ruin.

It is surely one of the most brazen evasions of reality ever painted. John Constable's “The Cornfield”, completed in 1826, and now hanging in the National Gallery's new exhibition Paradise, evokes, at the very height of the enclosure movement, a flawless rural harmony. Just as the commoners were being dragged from their land, their crops destroyed, their houses razed, the dissenters transported or hanged, Constable conjures the definitive English Arcadia. A dog walks a herd of sheep into the deep shade of an August day. A ruddy farm boy drinks from a glittering stream, his donkeys browsing quietly behind him. In the background, framed by great elms, men in hats and neckerchiefs work a field of wheat. Beyond them a river shimmers through watermeadows.

Nearly 30 years have passed since the World Conservation Union, at its 12th meeting held in Kinshasa, first acknowledged the need to respect indigenous peoples’ rights to their lands in the establishment of protected areas. The resolution called on governments and conservation bodies to recognise the value of indigenous peoples’ ways of life and to devise ways for indigenous peoples to bring their lands into conservation areas without having to relinquish their rights or be displaced.

To coincide with the World Parks Congress, the World Rainforest Movement and the Forest Peoples Programme, are launching a new book, “Salvaging Nature: Indigenous Peoples, Protected Areas and Biodiversity Conservation.” Written by FPP Director Marcus Colchester, the book provides a detailed review of the experience of indigenous peoples with protected areas and makes strong recommendations for how the current and all too prevalent conflicts between the two can be overcome.

The world’s first ‘Park’, established in Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada in California was the homeland of the Miwok people. The startling landscapes of Yosemite, substantially an outcome of indigenous land use systems, were proposed for conservation by the very same settlers and miners who, twelve years previously, had waged the 'Mariposa Indian War' against the area's indigenous people - the Miwok. In this one-sided struggle, forces sanctioned by the US Government made repeated attacks on Indian settlements. Indian villages were burned to the ground to force the Indians out of the area and to starve or freeze the Indians into submission.

Resolution 1.49 on Indigenous Peoples and the IUCN calls upon members ‘to consider the adoption and implementation of the objectives of’ ILO Convention 169 and the CBD, ‘and comply with the spirit of’ the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Resolution 1.50 on Indigenous Peoples, Intellectual Property and Biological Diversity recognizes ‘the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands and territories and natural resources, as well as their role in management, use and conservation, as a requirement for the effective implementation’ of the CBD.

It is now well-documented how indigenous communities face serious discrimination from their societies, are exploited by others, and possess little protection for their resource rights upon which they rely to secure their livelihoods. Many of these groups also live in areas where local, national and international conservation organisations maintain strong interests. New conservation principles for conservation projects affecting indigenous communities were therefore approved by the World Conservation Congress in 1992, setting out standards and implementing guidelines promoted by the World Commission on Protected Areas, WWF and the IUCN. Key concepts embodied in these principles, include:

Exxon's £1.3bn Chad-Cameroon pipeline stretches 1,000km across arid lands and equatorial forest to the African coast. When it reaches west Cameroon it runs adjacent to an old wildlife reserve where, for centuries, thousands of indigenous Bagyeli pygmies have depended on the forest for hunting and medicines. As "compensation" for any disturbance, the World Bank, the Dutch government and international conservation group Tropenbos combined in 1999 to create the giant Campo Ma'an national park. The stated aim was to protect the forest, alleviate poverty and to allow scientific research.

Humankind’s closest relatives, the African Great Apes, may have vanished from the wild by the end of this century. The combined pressures of habitat loss and bushmeat hunting are driving them towards extinction. Unless these pressures are curbed, soon, there seems little hope that the dwindling populations of forest-dwelling mountain gorilla, lowland gorilla, chimpanzee and bonobo can sustain themselves for long.

The idea of a series of protected natural areas joined by surrounding buffer zones where low intensity activities take place is no doubt attractive. It could be a scheme that might even guarantee landscape or habitat continuity and avoid the fragmentation caused by industrial activities such as large-scale agriculture and tree plantations, urbanization or works such as roads and dams. This is what the text of the Meso-American Biological Corridor (MBC) project proclaims.

On analyzing the issue of protected areas, it is essential to hear the opinion of those who inhabit them, as the establishment of such areas usually results in impacts on the local populations. In this respect, we have extracted part of the Declaration of the Meso-American Indigenous Peoples to the First Meso-American Congress on Protected Areas (March 2003), which clearly expresses their points of view and their claims. The declaration makes the following considerations:

For most of the population of Honduras, the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve is a motive for national pride. Added to the scenic beauty of this zone is its biological and cultural wealth with its conservation ensured for future generations. However, another part of the population – the most important one – is not of the same opinion.

The Greater Amazonia that stretches over approximately 7,8854,331 km2 (*) possesses the largest rainforest in the world, with flora and fauna that constitute, on their own, over half the world’s biota, comprising hundreds of thousands of plants and millions of animals, many still unknown to western science. At the same time, its waters represent between 15 and 20% of the planet’s total fresh water reserves, and the great River Amazon alone empties 15.5% of the non-salt water into the Atlantic Ocean.

High in the Peruvian Andes a unique initiative in indigenous-run conservation is being pursued to preserve the huge variety of domesticated potatoes that are one of the most significant elements of the region’s biodiversity. The ‘Parque de la Papa’ (Potato Park) is the brainchild of an indigenous-run organisation called the ‘Asociacion Andes’ (Quechua-Aymara Association for Sustainable Livelihoods – ANDES) and is being implemented by an association of six Quechua villages in the mountains south of Pisac in the Sacred Valley of the Incas.

The Sundarban is the largest contiguous mangrove forest presently remaining in the world, and has been declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1997. However, it is now on the verge of destruction (see WRM Bulletins 44, 66, 72) despite local peoples’ determined and bold resistance --even to death-- against the destructive action of profit-led business, mainly the shrimp farming industry (see WRM Bulletin 51), as well as exploration activities of oil and gas companies (see WRM Bulletins 15 and 72).

The Kayan Mentarang National Park situated in the interior of East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, lies at the border with Sarawak to the west and Sabah to the north. With its gazetted 1.4 million hectares, it is the largest protected area of rainforest in Borneo and one of the largest in Southeast Asia.

The Philippines has been regarded as one of the most active and progressive countries in Asia in terms of developing policies and laws recognising the rights of indigenous peoples and ensuring their participation in protected area management and decision-making. However, it is indigenous peoples’ themselves that are finding the adequate ways for ensuring conservation and respect to their rights.

Jordan Ryan, the head of the United Nations Development Programme in Vietnam, is keen on sustainable development. In May 2002, at the launch of a partnership between aid agencies, NGOs and government ministries to protect Vietnam’s environment, Ryan announced, “If we succeed, one day it will be said of this new partnership: ‘It made sustainable development a reality in Vietnam.’” A few weeks later, this time at the signing of a $2 million project called Vietnam Agenda 21, Ryan said, “The challenge is to make sustainable development a reality in Vietnam.”