Fortress conservation

Anelectric fencesurrounding a conservation area inWest Virginia

Fortress conservationis a conservation model based on the belief that biodiversity protection is best achieved by creating protected areas where ecosystems can function in isolation from human disturbance.Its implementation has been criticized forhuman rightsabuses against indigenous inhabitants when creating and maintaining protected areas.

Background

Ecotourism

Ecotourism money is argued to drive the eviction of indigenous people.

Main article:Ecotourism

It is arguedthat money generated fromecotourismis the motivating factor to drive indigenous inhabitants off the land.The organizationAfrican Parks,whose President isPrince Harry,has as its motto "a business approach to conservation" and had at its outset that tourism is its key in making their parks financially sustainable.

Militarization

Conservation charities, the biggest of which is theWorld Wildlife Fund,have increasingly militarized the campaign against poaching.Such poaching is often by organized criminal gangs that prey on the endangered species and, in 2018, 50 park rangers were killed globally.African Parkshas been at the forefront of militarization with training from South African, French and Israeli military personnel.Veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been recruited to teach forest rangers counterinsurgency techniques and ex–special forces operatives promote their services at wildlife conferences. This has often involved recruiting paramilitary groups who are then supplied with military grade weaponry.

Land rights

Many indigenous groupsare often challenged as not having land rights as many do not have formal title deeds, despite having inhabited the forests for centuries.The justice system can also be used against the indigenous where for example, people have been arrested for remaining on their land after it was granted to extractive companies by the government.

Efficacy

Transferringland rightsto indigenous inhabitants is argued to efficiently conserve forests.

Some conservation groupsargue for the fortress conservation model with theKunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework,an outcome of the2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference,arguing for the30 by 30initiative to designate 30% of Earth's land andoceanarea asprotected areasby2030.While the fortress conservation model views human as being inherently destructive to the environment, somehave argued that the most efficient conservation methods involve transferring rights over land from public domain to its indigenous inhabitants, who have had a stake for millennia in preserving the forests that they depend on.This includes the protection of such rights entitled in existing laws, such as theForest Rights Actin India, where concessions to land continue to go mostly to powerful companies.The transferring of such rights inChina,perhaps the largestland reformin modern times, has been argued to have increased forest cover.Granting title of the land has shown to have two or three times less clearing than even state run parks, notably in the Brazilian Amazon.Even while the largest cause of deforestation in the world's second largest rainforest in theCongois smallholder agriculture and charcoal production, areas with community concessions have significantly less deforestation as communities are incentivized to manage the land sustainably, even reducing poverty.Additionally, evicting inhabitants from protected areas often under the fortress conservation model often leads to more exploitation of the land as the native inhabitants then turn to work for extractive companies to survive.

Prevalence

TheWorld Wildlife Fundhas been accused of fundingpark rangerconflicts that push indigenous people off their land in national parks.

Up to 250,000 people worldwide have been forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for conservation projects since 1990, according to the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.Another estimate put the total number of people displaced between 10.8 million and 173 million.

Botswana

See also:Ancestral land conflict in Botswana

InBotswana,many of the indigenous San people have beenforcibly relocatedfrom their land to reservations. To make them relocate, they were denied access to water on their land and faced arrest if they hunted, which was their primary source of food.The government claims the relocation is to preserve the wildlife and ecosystem, even though the San people have lived sustainably on the land for millennia.Additionally, their lands lie in the middle of the world's richestdiamondfield. On the reservations they struggle to find employment, andalcoholismis rampant.

Cameroon

Baka peoplein Cameroon'sLobéké National Parkhave alleged abuse by park rangers funded by theWorld Wildlife Fund(WWF).

Democratic Republic of the Congo

In national parks in theDemocratic Republic of the Congo,such asKahuzi-Biéga National Park,heavily armed park rangers come into deadly conflict with the pygmy inhabitants who often cut the trees down to sell charcoal.The conservation efforts of national parks in the country are often financed by international organizations such as the WWF and often involve removing native inhabitants off the land.

Kenya

Okiekcommunities, who lived mostly around theMau Forestand have been subject to evictions by successive governments, are contesting land taken by theMount Elgon National Park.In 2022, theAfrican Court on Human and Peoples' Rightsruled that the Kenyan government must compensate the Okiek for decades of material and moral damages, recognize their indigeneity and help get them official titles to their ancestral lands.Those of theSengwer peopleliving in theEmbobut Foresthave been attacked by theKenya Forest Serviceunder the pretense of conservation during an European Union funded conservation project.

Nepal

The creation ofChitwan National Parkin the 1970s led to tens of thousands of indigenousTharu peopleto be evicted.The World Wildlife Fund has been accused of providing high-tech enforcement equipment, cash, and weapons to rangers involved torturing Tharu living near national parks such asBardiya National Park.Nepalese law was changed to give forest rangers the power to investigate wildlife-related crimes, make arrests without a warrant, and retain immunity in cases where an officer had “no alternative” but to shoot the offender while the park's chief warden has the power to hand out 15-year prison terms by themselves.

Republic of the Congo

Forest rangers, known as ecoguards, dressed in paramilitary uniforms and heavily armed with funding from the WWF, are accused of torture, rape and murder ofBaka pygmiesin the proposed Messok Dja protected area as part of an effort to remove the Baka pygmies from the area.

Tanzania

More than 150,000Maasai peopleface eviction inTanzaniawith moves to turn their lands into nature reserves for luxury safari tourism and fortrophy huntingin theNgorongoro Conservation Area,which is aUNESCOWorld Heritage Site,and inLoliondonear theSerengeti National Park.Previous attempts to forcefully evict the Maasai have alleged to have included burning their homes.

United States of America

The preservation ofYosemite National Parkunder the advocacy ofJohn Muirmeant the expulsion of theMiwokandPaiuteNative Americans.

See also

• Green grabbing
• World Wide Fund for Nature § Human rights abuses by paramilitaries