Communities Under Threat

Conservation groups are fighting around the world to defend our threatened habitats and species. Often, this is at considerable danger to themselves and more often that not the situation has been made so bad through corruption, illegal activities and government inaction that 'drastic' action is required. Often, this puts conservation at odds to local communities and there have been as a consequence some appalling situations develop for displaced communities. This project aims to give these communities a 'voice', to bear witness to their plight. They number amongst the poorest communities on our planet and it is not their fault that the rest of us have brought our planet to the edge of environmental destruction. AWF project teams will film and record individual situations, making sure to always give a balanced and objective overview of what is happening. Without active conservation work we could see whole species and habitats fall, but without local community support for their work it is likely that their efforts will ultimately fail.

The Problem:

It is widely known that indigenous communities are thrown and chased out of their rightful land to make space for agriculture, oil drilling and metal production.

However, the biggest threat they are facing now is conservation efforts (stated by an indigenous delegate at the United Nations meeting in 2004.)

Conservation foundations known to alienate local communities include:

Conservation International (CI), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) as well as the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Africa:

14 million out of the 20 million conservation refugees are found in Africa.

In Kenya, 10% of all land is set aside for wildlife conservation and ecotourism.

Studies based on local communities and their views on the National Parks in their area, has revealed that:

Solutions and good practices:

Even though people are still made refugees by conservation organisations, some foundations have now realised that the natives, who possess local knowledge of the land, are an asset to conservation and have started to take measures to ensure that they are involved in future developments.

Within many communities, there is a diverse range of people that are interested in the management of parks. These include local Aboriginal communities for whom the park is significant, park visitors, neighbours, local residents and businesses.

There are already positive working models of socially sensitive conservation within every continent, particularly in Australia, Bolivia, Nepal, and Canada. Within these areas conservationists join hands with indigenous communities and work out creative ways to protect wildlife habitat. They work to sustain biodiversity while allowing indigenous citizens to thrive in their traditional settlements.

The input and interest of local tribe's shows that they want to preserve the environment just as much as conservationists do and even more, since they are completely reliant on it.

Native people initiate the creation of a reserve, which is often called an "indigenous protected area" (IPA) or a "community conservation area" (CCA) and is a very effective way of combining conservation with local awareness.

These reserves are primarily managed and protected by tribes that still inhabit the lands in their own traditional ways.

Where it is going wrong:

1. In Eastern Africa the Maasai tribes have inhabited the Serengeti / Ngorongoro region for over 2500 years.

In 1940 their land was made into the Serengeti national Park (SNP) but the Maasai tribes were permitted to stay up until 1950 where the park divided into the SNP and the NCA (Ngorongoro Conservation Area).

The Maasai tribes were evicted from the SNP but permitted to stay in restricted areas of NCA.

These evictions and restrictions had great consequences not only to the Maasai lifestyle, but to the environment. During the wet season the Maasai, migrate their cattle to the Serengeti for grazing, but due to the parks divide their last resort was to graze where they were permitted to.

The seasonal migrations from the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro helped prevent over-grazing in one location; however with the new restrictions in place, over-grazing would be apparent and could result in starvation of their cattle and the exhaustion of environmental resources.

2. In Guinea, (West Africa) deforestation has become the historical and environmental norm. Only 1.8% of the country's natural "tropical moist forest" remains. In order to preserve the remaining forested lands, conservationists have set aside land as protected areas, which restrict hunting, farming, and residency.

As a result, a shocking 663,000 people have been evicted from the three protected areas and are now conservation refugees.

Other regions are also greatly affected:

Setting a good example:

What we can do

Indigenous communities are being threatened all over the world- by urban development, mining and logging (often illegal), expansion of commercial farming, the impacts of Global Warming on what are often already marginal habitats to name but a few of their problems.

The fact that other Westerners, in the name of 'conservation', are imposing further threats on these communities is simply appalling. Such policies are often poorly thought through, rarely work and usually result in dreadful social consequences for the displaced communities involved.

We can 'Bear Witness', send teams of volunteers into affected areas to work with such communities and record (film, photographic, document) their plight. To these films, we can add testimony from politicians and conservation groups to explain their actions.

We have access to an international internet portal through which we can show these documentaries and expose to the world what is going on, in the name of 'conservation'. We can work with Mende tribal groups in the Gola Forest, Sierra Leone, with Veddah tribes of Sri Lanka, indigenous Indians in Peru and Bolivia, Quechua Indians in Argentina, and the Muong hill tribe of Vietnam from our existing project bases.

WHAT THE AWF WILL DO:

We will be filming and documenting the plight of communities threatened by conservation initiatives across our project ranges, this includes: Ghana, Sierra Leone, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Bolivia and Venezuela.