A recent article in World Watch Magazine, A Challenge to Conservationists by Marc Chapin, berates international conservation NGOs for deviation from earlier practices.

As corporate and government money flow into the three big international organizations that dominate the world’s conservation agenda, their programs have been marked by growing conflicts of interest—and by a disturbing neglect of the indigenous peoples whose land they are in business to protect...

In June 2003, representatives of major foundations concerned with the planet’s threatened biodiversity* gathered in South Dakota for a meeting of the Consultative Group on Biodiversity. On the second evening, after dinner, several of the attendees met to discuss a problem about which they had become increasingly disturbed. In recent years, their foundations had given millions of dollars of support to nonprofit conservation organizations, and had even helped some of those groups get launched. Now, however, there were indications that three of the largest of these organizations —World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation International (CI), and The Nature Conservancy (TNC)—were increasingly excluding, from full involvement in their programs, the indigenous and traditional peoples living in territories the conservationists were trying to protect. In some cases, there were complaints that the conservationists were being abusive.

The meeting led to a series of soul-searching discussions, led by Jeff Campbell of the Ford Foundation, who initiated two studies—one to assess what was really happening between the indigenous communities and conservationists, and the other to look into the financial situation of each of these three big groups. The work plan (or “terms of reference”) given to the investigators contained two key observations about the three conservation giants: they had become extremely large and wealthy in a short period of time; and they were promoting global approaches to conservation “that have evoked a number of questions— and complaints—from local communities, national NGOs and human rights activists.” Because the two studies provided only a quick first foray into terrain that is undeniably complex, geographically extensive, and diverse (WWF, for example, works in more than 90 countries around the world),

No news here, this is pedestrian stuff that has been widely discussed for a long time. The interesting bit is that it was published in World Watch Magazine, possibly a blunder that has damaged the magazine and prompted some high level personnel changes. This was anticipated in part, enough to prompt an editor's offering to publish rebuttals from the gored.

We anticipate that this article will launch an open and public discussion about a complex and contentious issue that has been debated behind closed doors in recent months. While the fresh air may at times be chilly, we believe that active, engaged discussion is essential to resolving these issues and to strengthening the conservation and indigenous community movements.

The author of the article is an active “player” in that debate, and we look forward to publishing other views in the January/ February issue. We therefore invite all interested readers, including staff of the “Big Three” conservation organizations discussed herein, to submit responses for publication. We welcome the views of indigenous people, NGOs that are working with indigenous groups, foundations or agencies that fund such work, and others concerned with these issues.

Controversy will swirl around the issues of funding, scale and conflicts of interest but the meat of the critique - "excluding, from full involvement in their programs, the indigenous and traditional peoples living in territories the conservationists were trying to protect" - is one facet of a larger issue that has animated the conservation community for some time. This paper - Ecological Visions Report (pdf) Palmer, et.al, Ecology for a Crowded Planet - from ESA is an example:

The ecology of the future must explain and predict our shared environment, apply that predictive power to address environmental problems from local to global scales, and increase fundamental knowledge about humans and the natural world.

Accomplishing these visions will require revolutionary changes within the ecological scientific community and in ESA's future agenda.

The important bit from this bland synopsis is the word human. The radical idea that humans are part of ecosystems and that preservation and remediation efforts are doomed to failure when they do not fully account for human social involvement has been sweeping the ecology community for some time. The fine magazine Conservation Ecology even changed its name to Ecology and Society to reflect these insights and emphasize the necessity to model human behavior in ecosystems rather than exclude them. People are natural too. It's socioecology not just ecology. This Wendell Berry essay, Private Property and the Common Wealth, pointed to many times before and serving as one of the themes of this blog, makes the point well.

"If in order to protect our forest land we designate it a commons or commonwealth separate from private ownership, then who will care for it? The absentee timber companies who see no reason to care about local consequences? The same government agencies and agents who are failing at present to take good care of our public forests? Is it credible that people inadequately skilled and inadequately motivated to care well for the land can be made to care well for it by public insistence that they do so?

The answer is obvious: you cannot get good care in the use of the land by demanding it from public officials. That you have the legal right to demand it does not at all improve the case. If one out of every two of us should become a public official, we would be no nearer to good land stewardship than we are now. The idea that a displaced people might take appropriate care of places is merely absurd: there is no sense in it and no hope. Our present ideas of conservation and of public stewardship are not enough. Duty is not enough. Sentiment is not enough. No mere law, divine or human, could conceivably be enough to protect the land while we are using it.

If we want the land to be cared for, then we must have people living on and from the land who are able and willing to care for it.

It isn't just that the 3 majors are greedy, callous, exclusive, impatient and supercilious with indigenous people. It is that they are wrong. Their methods don't work. It is merely preservation of paper, bucks and acres, mouse based monitoring by remote control, marketing materials to wheedle ever more donations and grants for the greater glory of management and political clout. The important part of the term "environmental movement" is movement not environment. The environment is merely used by interest groups to generate a revenue stream and political power. This is true of all interest group movements. Though there are sincere people who care about the substance of such issues once it becomes a movement then leadership, money and power are captured by players for their own benefit.

The anti-humanist ideology of the environmental movement has been utterly discredited in the minds of sincere environmentalists. The population bomb nutters are the problem not a solution and though not yet politically irrelevant they are intellectually irrelevant. Reform will take time and there will always be predators lurking around the issues eager to capture political power and money, to jump in front of passing parades and pretend to lead them, but change is coming. Some of the parasites will be purged. All of which emphasizes the fact that it is socioecology and that nothing can work that doesn't take this fact into account.

» Natural Trust from Crumb Trail
Jon also mentioned Nature Noted, a newish blog primarily focused on land trusts that I've flirted with a couple of times. Pat's most recent post, BINGO hits the fan, deals with an issue I have been following elsewhere. My, Dr. Chapin seems to have sti......[read more]
Tracked: December 29, 2004 11:56 PM