When the United States began setting up its national park system in the 1800s, the naturalist John Muir had an idea about what our most splendid natural areas should look like: They should be free of people, even if that meant evicting Native Americans who already lived there. Unfortunately, the legacy of this ruthless ideal is alive today in places like East Africa and India, according to Robert Williams, a University of Arizona legal scholar. Weekly, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples receives reports of governments, supported by wealthy nations and organizations, resorting to evictions, destruction of farms and confiscation of livestock to get Indigenous residents off land destined for eco-tourism and wildlife protection. In a guest essay published today, Williams argues that any government, nonprofit or other institution pursuing conservation has an obligation to guarantee Indigenous people's right to free, prior and informed consent "in any protected areas' project that will have an impact on their traditional lands, lives or livelihoods." What's more, he writes, there are plenty of successful alternative models for community-based conservation that can be deployed to develop economic opportunities around nature conservation and meet biodiversity goals. These models don't involve evictions or other forms of human rights abuses and instead rely on Indigenous-led conservation practices, which "have proved time and again to protect biodiversity effectively," writes Williams. Read the article:
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Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Opinion Today: Indigenous people shouldn’t be kicked off their land
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