Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Photo: Sabine
We’re used to hearing that land conservation is a good thing, especially for the endangered species that often live on the land being protected. But what about the people who live on that land? Journalist Mark Dowie explores that question in a new book called Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native People. His verdict? Our host Katy Clark spoke with Dowie.
- More on Mark Dowie’s book
- More on the Batwa people in Uganda
- More on Bwindi Impenetrable National Park
Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.
KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. Across the globe there is often a tension between preserving land and preserving culture. Environmental groups and governments have set aside vast areas of parkland, but in an effort to protect native ecosystems, they have sometimes evicted native peoples. Writer Mark Dowie harshly criticizes that practice in his latest book. It’s called “Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples.” Dowie writes that more than 12% of the land worldwide is now under conservation protection. That’s an area larger than the continent of Africa.
MARK DOWIE: In the course of protecting that land, millions of people have been displaced from the land in the appeared interest of conservation. People who have been living, for the most part, have been living on those lands for hundreds or thousands of years, clearly living in a sustainably or the conservation establishment wouldn’t be interested in preserving the land, and it’s turned out to be a mistake. And I think the conservation movement realizes now that it’s a mistake and are going to pretty impressive ends to rectify it.
CLARK: Give us an example of how conservation has negatively affected the people who live on the land, and I was thinking maybe about the Bahtera [PH] or the Pygmy.
DOWIE: Yeah, the Bahtera in Uganda, the Bahtera pygmies who were in 1993 evicted from the Boyndie, the impenetrable forest where they had been living for thousands of years clearly sustainably. That’s a very, very healthy forest. They actually after the area, the Boyndie, they were allowed to stay for quite a while. And it was rumor that was spread furthered by Dian Fossey that the Pygmy were killing the great apes, which they weren’t and that’s what led to their eviction and they now live in the Perimeter of the Boyndie in rundown squalorous villages and have had their entire livelihood and their culture taken from them.
CLARK: Have they been allowed back at all to their native lands?
DOWIE: Yes, they can get permits to go in and harvest honey. They can get permits to go in and visit their ancestors graves that are scattered through the Boyndie, but the Boyndie is guarded now by eco guards, armed eco guards who if they believe that somebody is poaching inside the forest, they’ll shoot them.
CLARK: I don’t want to ignore what’s happened here in the United States where when it comes to land conservation, we’ve had our stories of not treating native people so well either and I’m just thinking we’re talking on the heels of the Ken Burns’ TV documentary on the National Parks where Burns hit on the tension between preservation and use, but didn’t actually come down on one side of the issue or the other. Talk a little bit about what happened in this country.
DOWIE: He does acknowledge that native people have been evicted from American national parks. This whole model of conservation began here in Yosemite in the middle of the 19th Century, which was at the time occupied by Lewach [PH] Indians. And John Muir and the other people who were inspired to create a national park where Yosemite is, were not impressed with the Indians. In fact, Muir was revolted by them, and asked that they be removed from the Park and they were. That happened again in Yellowstone and several other American parks around the country. That became known as the Yosemite model of conservation, and was exported by the organizations that now dominate global conservation, all of which are American organizations.
CLARK: You describe your book as a “good guy versus good guy story.” So is there anybody in particular to blame for how this seemingly good idea has gone wrong?
DOWIE: It is a good guy versus good guy story. I mean, you’ve got to say that people who are trying to preserve biological diversity and endangered species around the world are on a good mission. However, I think it’s a misperception on the part of the early leaders of global conservation that native people were not good stewards of the land, which was based on their lack of textbook science really. And a disrespect for their traditional ecological knowledge which they had accumulated over thousands of years largely drive, of course, by food security, not by conservation.
CLARK: Explain a little bit more about what you mean by that.
DOWIE: Well, if you’re living in an area and you’re relying on what that area delivers to you in the way of sustenance, your primary motivation for protecting the natural health of that area is food security. It’s not some romantic notion about wilderness or it’s not a tourist industry. It is food security. That’s the primary motive.
CLARK: You want to make sure that you’re going to have food for your family and for your children’s children. That sort of thing?
DOWIE: Yes, exactly and strangely enough if a culture operates that way in an ecosystem, it seems to be pretty good for the ecosystem.
CLARK: So how do you propose we strike a better balance between what’s good for the land and what’s good for the people who live there?
DOWIE: Well, first of all, let the people who live there stay there when you grade a protected area. In Canada there has recently been two interesting developments. One in British Columbia where native people have been allowed to return to a national park, and then another in Quebec where a national park has been formed on Cree land and the Crees are going to stay there, continue their life ways and manage the park. I think that’s the future of national parks and the future of protected areas. Involve the local people in the conservation project and the management of it. And respect the traditional ecological knowledge that they’ve developed, which has kept the place as healthy as it is.
CLARK: Are there any examples of places that are getting conservation right from the get-go?
DOWIE: One place I think where the future of conservation is going to be severely tested is in Gabon. The reason I say that is the country very suddenly created 13 national parks recently all in areas that could easily have become forest concessions or mining concessions, all of which are occupied by indigenous people. So here is a test case now for a nation backed by the United States government, which put $56 million into this park system and supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society and three other big international conservation groups to do it right. I mean, to go in there and start negotiating right away, do what they’re doing in Canada with the Cree and let the native people stay there and be part of the management and protection of these areas.
CLARK: Mark, we’ve been talking about the native peoples of these lands that have been created into parks and how they’ve been kicked off that land and haven’t really done so well. Are there examples of these people who are gone now as a result of what’s happened?
DOWIE: I would say not entirely gone, but I would say that the Basarwa, the Bushmen of the Kalahari. Their culture is seriously threatened by the fact that they have been removed and put into basically what amount to concentration camps. The Massai who for thousands of years have cultivated and ranged their cattle in the Rift Valley. They have been seriously decimated as a culture and I visited the Batlo [PH], and it was very sad to see how rapidly they are losing their song, their dance and their indigenous culture. Land is part of culture. Culture shapes place and place shapes culture, and if you remove people from the place where their culture evolved, they’re going to lose that culture and it happens in like less than a generation.
CLARK: Writer Mark Dowie’s book is called “Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples.” Mark, good to speak with you. Thanks.
DOWIE: Thanks, Katy.
Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.
This is evidence that, as I hoped and expected from this president, he is restoring faith, respect, and recognition for our great nation. We are in the presence of someone great; and the world has taken notice. We should appreciate the humble way in which he accepted it.
[...] Radio Interview (with Partial Transcript) with Mark Dowie, author of Conservation Refugees CLARK: I don’t want to ignore what’s happened here in the United States where when it comes to land conservation, we’ve had our stories of not treating native people so well either and I’m just thinking we’re talking on the heels of the Ken Burns’ TV documentary on the National Parks where Burns hit on the tension between preservation and use, but didn’t actually come down on one side of the issue or the other. Talk a little bit about what happened in this country. [...]