Saskia Ozinga
World Rainforest Movement / FERN
3 September 2003
Based mainly on information from the Forest
Peoples Programme (www.forestpeoples.org) and world
rainforest movement (www.wrm.org.uy)
Nobody knows how many people have been displaced for national parks or
protected areas. In Africa millions of people have been displaced to create
protected areas; statistics for Asia are lacking but one research estimates
that as many as 600,000 tribal people in India alone have been displaced by
protected areas; in Latin America an estimated 85% of parks is inhabited.
"We were chased out on the first day. I didn't know
anything was happening until the police ran into my compound. They all had
guns. They shouted at me, told me to run. I had no chance to say anything. They
came at us and we ran, they came so violently. I was frightened for the
children - I had eight children with me - but we just ran off in all
directions. I took my way and the children took theirs. Other people were
running, panicking, even picking up the wrong children in the confusion. I lost
everything. I had 31 cows and some goats and hens. They were killed - 20 cows
were killed and the rest taken. They burned everything, even the bed and
furniture and the kitchen. We're poor now".
This testimony was collected in Uganda by an Oxfam worker from Joy Ngoboka, who along with thousands of others was evicted from her home in order to provide a way for elephants to travel safely between national parks. The establishment of the so-called Kibale Game Corridor was supported by the European Union, NORAD and the World Bank.
There are currently some
60,000 officially recognized protected areas worldwide covering as much as 10%
of the land surface of the planet. The great majority of these are owned or
claimed by indigenous peoples. Reforming these parks in conformity with
international law is going to require a major commitment from policy makers,
conservationists, local people and development agencies.
¨
The first national parks established in Yosemite in
California in 1864, followed a bloody war of extermination of the Miwok people,
and involved the repeated, forced eviction of remnant Miwok settlements over
the following 105 years. The Yellowstone National Park established in 1872 also
involved the denial of indigenous peoples’ rights.
¨
This model of parks without people was to be
imposed throughout the US. The 1964 Wilderness Act states: 'a wilderness is hereby recognised as an area
where the earth and its community is untrammeled by man, where man himself is a
visitor who does not remain'.
¨ This US model has been exported worldwide. Summarising
the recent history of conservation, the previous chairman of the World
Commission on Protected Areas has noted: At least until
around the mid-1960s, the climate in which protected areas were set up around
the world favoured a top-down and rather exclusive view of protected areas.
Setting up large game parks without too much concern for the impact on local
people fitted well with the autocratic style of colonial administration
(especially in Africa); and it was equally at home in the early days of
post-colonial government which followed many of the same styles of administration…
Certainly the opinions and rights of indigenous peoples were of little concern
to any government before about 1970; they were not organized as a political
force as they are now in many countries.
These developments are in
spite of international texts and resolutions adopted by World Conservation
Union (IUCN) and other organisations:
¨ 1975: Kinshasa Resolution:
recognising the value and importance of traditional ways of life and the skills
of the people which enable them to live in harmony with their environment
¨ 1982: Bali resolution
recalled and affirmed rights of traditional societies to social, economic,
cultural and spiritual self determination and to participate in decisions
affecting the land and natural resources on which they depend. While avoiding
ensuring indigenous peoples' rights to self determination or recognising their
rights to control their territories the resolution also advocated the
implementation of joint management arrangements between societies which have
traditionally managed resources and protected area authorities
¨ 1994 World Conservation
Union (IUCN) adopted a revised set of categories of protected areas which
accept that indigenous peoples as well as others may own and manage protected
areas
¨ 1996 WWF adopted a statement
of principles on indigenous peoples and conservation, which endorsed the IN
Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
¨ The 1996 World Conservation
Congress (general meeting of World Conservation Union) adopted 7 Resolutions on
indigenous peoples, which (inter alia)
¨ recognise rights of
indigenous peoples to their land and territories;
¨ recognise their rights to
manage;
¨ recognise the need for joint
agreements with indigenous peoples for the management of protected areas.
¨ In 1999 the World Commission
on Protected Areas (one of the six IUCN committees) adopted Guidelines for
putting these 7 Resolutions into practice
¨ In 2000: The Millennium
Goals designed to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger list as goal 7: ensure
environmental sustainability - two indicators are proposed: proportion of
population with access to secure tenure and land area protected to maintain
biological diversity. If the latter indicator is to be realised without
compromising the former and without causing poverty, then the indigenous
inhabitants of existing and proposed protected areas must have their rights
recognised.
International Alliance of Tribal and
Indigenous Peoples of Tropical Forests: Indigenous
peoples recognise that it is in their long-term interest to use their resources
sustainably and respect the need for environmental conservation. Indigenous
peoples recognise that the expertise of conservation organizations can be of
use to their self-development and seek a mutually beneficial relationship based
on trust, transparency and accountability.
WWF: Loss of
traditional rights can reduce peoples interest in long term stewardhip of the
land and therefore the creation of a protected are can in some cases increase
the rate of damage to the very values that the protected area was created to
preserve…putting a fence around a protected area seldom creates a long term
solution to problems of disaffected local communities, whether or not it is
ethicaly justified.
Research by Forest Peoples
Programme with indigenous groups, based on 16 case studies in Latin America, 14
in Asia and 11 in Africa, has made clear made that these principles are not
widely applied. GEF projects are particularly problematic. In general protected
areas continue to be established and administered in violation of indigenous
peoples rights and ignorance of new standards.
Obstacles encountered
include:
¨ Entrenched discrimination in
national societies attitudes towards indigenous peoples;
¨ Absence of government reform
policies and laws re indigenous peoples;
¨ National laws and policies
with respect to indigenous peoples denying them to own and manage their land
¨ Lack of knowledge of new
revised protected area system
¨ Lack of appropriate training
and staff of conservation organisations able to work with communities.
¨
Poverty
¨
Enforced illegality
¨
Leadership systems destroyed
¨
Settlement patterns disorganised
¨
Social fabric and economy are torn apart
Moreover: "Common form of conservation which denies indigenous
peoples rights to their lands is creating poverty and in second place quite
likely may intensify pressure on natural resources outside protected areas and
third many ecosystems and faunal regimes may actually be maintained by
customary land use systems"
Furthermore:
¨
Many current conservation practices ignore
legal rights indigenous peoples and some have under international law
What are these rights?
¨
Maintain and enjoy their cultures and
traditional ways of life
¨
To own, develop, control, use and manage
communal lands and resources traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used
by them
¨
To represent themselves through their own
institutions
¨
To apply and enforce their customary law;
¨
To free and informed consent
¨
To full participation in decision making
These rights are established
in:
¨ the International Covenant
of Civil and Political Rights (148 states);
¨ the International Covenant
of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (143 states);
¨ the Convention on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
All are binding on Parties
that have ratified them. For list see Forests of Fear; the abuse of human
rights in Forest Conflicts; FERN available www.fern.org
¨ ILO 169 focuses specifically
on indigenous peoples rights, but is ratified by only 14 states including
Netherlands, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala and Mexico.
However in all regions
examples can be found of protected areas where since efforts to apply these new
standards are being made. Future studies of these areas may also find that
conservation goals have been achieved more successfully in such areas than in
those where managers find themselves in conflict with neighbouring communities
¨ South Africa: Khomani San,
once expelled from their lands and scattered to the winds-wnd who e\were
thought to have become extinct -have recuperated their language and revived
their settlements but have had their land restituted. Now being progressively
granted rights of access and use in large chuncks of their former tarritory
¨ Australia Ayer's Rock /Uluru
recognised as owned by ipos and comanage the area as national park
¨ Mt Cook in New Zealand
restituted to its Maori owners
¨
The Kayan Mentarang National Park, East Kalimantan,
Indonesian Borneo.
¨
The largest protected area of rainforest in
Borneo and one of the largest in Southeast Asia.
¨
The history of the natural landscape of the
park is inexorably intertwined with the history of its people. About 16,000
Dayak people live inside or in close proximity of this National Park.
¨
The communities living in and around the park
are still largely regulated by customary law or "adat" in the conduct
of their daily affairs and the management of natural resources in their
customary territory. They lived in and off the forest.
¨
The Nature Reserve established in 1980 had a
strict protection status, meaning that no human activities are allowed inside
the protected area.
¨
WWF together with LIPI (Indonesian Institute of
Research) and local people ran a long-term social science research program
("Culture and Conservation", 1991-1997) and conducted experimental
community mapping to show that the communities were dependent on forest
resources and had rightful claims to the land.
¨
The issue of social entitlements, and
particularly lack of tenure security, was identified by the WWF team as a key
issue and priority area for intervention in the period 1996-2000.
¨
Under these circumstances, the WWF Kayan
Mentarang project developed a strategy and program of field activities that
would lead to the legal recognition of "adat" claims and
"adat" rights so that indigenous communities could continue to use
and manage forest resources in the conservation area.
¨
After decades of marginalisation and dispossession,
recent developments in the Kayan Mentarang National Parks offer hope to the
indigenous communities of Kalimantan.
¨
It is becoming increasingly evident that
conservation objectives can rarely be obtained or sustained by imposing
policies and projects that produce negative impacts on indigenous peoples and
local communities.
¨
Alternative and progressive approaches that
genuinely take into consideration local peoples' needs and rights and secure
their full involvement in biodiversity management and decision making can
provide a more solid basis for ecological protection and improvement of
people's livelihoods. There is hope that the co-management arrangement being
developed in Kayan Mentarang will fulfil these objectives.
These cases show that full
restitution of rights and recognition of indigenous peoples rights to free,
prior and informed consent is not incompatible with effective protected area
management
If conservation
organisations and State agencies are to ensure that existing and future
protected areas are to be managed and established in conformity with their
objectives and the Millenium Goals then they must adjust their models of
conservation so that they effectively secure indigenous peoples’ rights. To
this end they must:
o give priority to reforming
national laws, policies and conservation programmes so that they respect
indigenous peoples’ rights and allow protected areas to be owned and managed by
indigenous peoples (including allocating funds);
o retrain conservation
personnel in both national and international bureaux so that they understand
and know how to apply these new principles;
o Encourage other major
conservation organisations to adopt these principles
Clear measures to undertake these actions need to be introduced into the
Durban Accord, which is the expected outcome of the Vth World Parks Congress.
This is especially important as the successful uptake of the conclusions of the
World Parks Congress will depend on debates at the VIIth Conference of Parties
of the Convention on Biological Diversity to be held in Kuala Lumpur in 2004.
The credibility of the CBD will be greatly enhanced by full compliance with the
human rights standards already established in other UN treaties.