From the Congo Basin.

[on communities challenged by conservation]

Mac Chapin's article in the last issue of World Watch accords powerfully with the perception of "Big Conservation" held by many indigenous and local communities from Central Africa. Chapin cited few Central African examples to illustrate his case, but the Forest Peoples Programme's (FPP) experience of working in the Congo Basin shows clearly that his conclusions are as relevant to this area as to the many others he cites. In Central Africa, indigenous and local communities' rights to access and use their traditional lands are being threatened and denied with the active support of Big Conservation and their donors, in spite of international and national guidelines and legislation protecting them. These internationally driven conservation processes threaten the destruction of indigenous livelihoods due to the imposition, by outsiders, of parks, reserves, and new landscape protection regimes that disregard local peoples' rights.

Below we provide a description of the context in which Central African conservation processes are being supported by Big Conservation, with a focus on one planned "landscape" overlapping Cameroon, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo. This is a story of how the "depersonalization" of Congo Basin forests by Big Conservation, with donor support, affects the rights and livelihoods of millions of poor indigenous and local communities.

Corporate Conservation Targets Communities' Forests

Across Central Africa over 450,000 square kilometers now fall into protected areas, comprising almost 11 percent of its land, an area the size of Cameroon. The total area to be zoned for conservation there is set to grow steeply as ongoing processes to designate new areas are finalized, and other priority "hotspots" are identified. These area advances are due primarily to the efforts of governmental and non-governmental conservation agencies working in Central Africa through long-term conservation efforts to establish transboundary protected areas, and other new "landscapes" to be supported through the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP) targeting Central Africa ecoregions that could double the amount of lands zoned for protection in the Congo Basin.

In Cameroon, this new approach is best exemplified by the TRIDOM project, a new transboundary conservation initiative between Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, and Gabon that will join together a tri-national "interzone" bordered by Minkebe, Boumba-Bek, Nki, and Odzala National Parks and the Dja Wildlife Reserve. The TRIDOM project will ultimately lead to a regional land use and management plan that will govern access to and use of forests upon which many communities rely.

In May 2004 the World Bank Global Environment Facility (GEF) approved a US$10.5 million Full Project Grant towards TRIDOM that, it is claimed, will protect 7.5 percent of the Congo Basin from exploitation. The project is to be implemented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) will play a key role in implementation on the ground. The GEF is providing approximately 1/4 of the total funds for this project, with the remainder coming from a combination of national and international funding sources. This project is thus a corporate venture of huge magnitude that will fundamentally affect the livelihoods of indigenous and local communities.

Conservation Damages Its Reputation

One can gain a sense of how this project is likely to be implemented by examining the way other conservation projects fundamental to TRIDOM are currently managed. This includes in particular the Dja Wildlife Reserve and Boumba-Bek National Park that, with Minkebe National Park in Gabon and Odzala in the Republic of Congo, roughly demarcate the new CBFP landscape that TRIDOM will help to establish.

The Dja Wildlife Reserve is a World Heritage site that overlaps the traditional lands of indigenous Baka who are mostly now moved out of the park. Their expulsion from the forest and continuing marginalisation in the management of the forests around them is well documented. The continuing persecution of these indigenous communities by government ecoguards as they carry out subsistence activities, contrasted against the unmolested traffic of bushmeat out of their areas by commercial operators, is one root of a profound resentment of conservation authorities.

   "They (the park managers) have the right to arrest people. But when
   they confiscate our only antelope, them, those bosses (those high
   up), what are they thinking? Do they think that they ought to take
   the antelope that I killed? The antelope that I must use to feed my
   family? They did not forbid us to eat meat!"

Around the new Boumba-Bek National Park to the east, park boundaries were predetermined by outsiders, without the knowledge or consent of locals, and hunter-gatherer Baka Pygmy communities are now threatened with exclusion from hunting and gathering areas that they have used since before colonial authorities arrived. These people are almost entirely reliant on hunting and gathering for subsistence. Remarkably, and unlike elsewhere in Cameroon, Baka around Boumba and Nki are in a majority.

Campo Ma'an National Park, which is not part of the TRIDOM project, is managed by WWF, lead implementers of the Minkebe-Dja-Odzala project. There Bagyeli Pygmy hunter-gatherers face persistent persecution at the hands of ecoguards, including over the past few years the burning of a village, illegal arrests, and the confiscation of subsistence products, whose collection is protected by Cameroon law. The Government of Cameroon previously established the Campo park through another GEF-funded initiative. It is now supported by WWF, using funds established for this purpose by an oil company, as Campo Ma'an now represents one of the environmental offset projects for the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project. In Campo Ma'an there is now no doubt that indigenous Bagyeli were marginalised from discussions over the management plan for the park, even though it is now categorically proven that their subsistence livelihoods are inextricably linked to hunting and gathering activities within it. Recently approved park management plans threaten further serious impacts against them.

Central African communities' negative experiences with conservation means that many now associate plans to protect biodiversity with forced expulsion from their lands without compensation, the elimination of their rights over their traditional lands, the progressive destruction of their livelihoods, the loss of their identities, and increasing socio-economic marginalisation. This is a serious problem that is now well documented all over Africa. TRIDOM risks repeating this error of community alienation, to the detriment of conservation agendas and reputations, as well as the rights and livelihoods of local communities.

Donors and Conservationists Are Not Adhering to Their Own Standards

GEF funds are to be used for activities aiming to protect the global environment in six focal areas, including biodiversity, the key focus of its funding to TRIDOM. The GEF's Public Involvement policy and other Operational Policies require that these activities ensure local participation and address the needs and interests of affected communities, with their prior and informed consent. The twin themes of participation and consultation run through the ethos of GEF Operational Strategies, and GEF-funded projects must also comply with the World Bank's mandatory policy on Indigenous Peoples, in addition to UNDP's good practice Indigenous Peoples Policy and guidance related to implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity for which the GEF is the financing mechanism.

Given the GEF's key role in funding 25 percent of the cost of the TRIDOM initiative, there is no doubt that these policies should have been applied during the preparation of the various project elements to which it is contributing. However, as explained above, adequate consultation with affected communities was not undertaken during TRIDOM project planning, something which FPP highlighted to the UNDP/GEF in 2002, when the project was already receiving preparatory support from the GEF, and to WWF in 2003, when project preparation was nearly completed. The project is not conforming to GEF and World Bank operational policies. In their failure to conform to their own rules, donors are not alone; conservation organisations are also failing to live up to their own standards.

FPP recently examined the degree to which conservation agencies were applying key principles protecting communities' rights in African protected areas, which were agreed at the 1992 World Conservation Congress, and put into implementation over the last 10 years by guidelines drawn up with the support of the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), the World Conservation Union (IUCN), and World Wildlife Fund International. These guidelines recognise the rights of indigenous peoples to use, own, and control their traditional territories, and protect their traditional knowledge and skills. They also espouse the development of working partnerships with indigenous peoples based upon the principle of full and informed consent, and that they gain equitable shares of conservation benefits. Many of these widely agreed principles are also embedded in the internationally binding Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), now ratified by over 170 countries, including all those in Central Africa.

Conservation guidelines were further strengthened at the Durban World Parks Congress in September 2003. The theme of the 2003 Congress was "Benefits Beyond Boundaries," and the Accord and Recommendations which were agreed set important new standards for the rights of indigenous peoples living in and around protected areas, recommending specific targets and actions for governments and protected areas. The Durban Recommendations and Action Plan call on countries to undertake reviews of existing conservation laws and policies that impact on indigenous peoples, and to adopt laws and policies giving indigenous peoples and local communities control over their sacred places.

In Central Africa, conservation policy reviews set out in the WPC Action Plan should lead to revision of old legislation that now limits indigenous communities' participation in the management of their forests, especially in and around parks. Legal harmonisation and coherence are also key components of the COMIFAC Convergence Plan, as is the establishment of several transboundary conservation zones such as the TRIDOM landscape, and support for necessary legal reforms is also included in the TRIDOM project plan. There is therefore a key opportunity now in Central Africa to reform legislation concerning forests and conservation that is incompatible with international norms of human rights.

Conservation Practices Must Change for "Landscapes" to Become Sustainable

The horrendous gap between the rhetoric of "feel good" conservation espoused by Big Conservation and the realities faced by Central African indigenous communities struggling to maintain livelihoods must be closed. Big Conservation projects such as TRIDOM that fail to adequately consider the rights and welfare of communities living in biodiverse areas are doomed to failure because they alienate local populations from participating in measures to protect their forests, and as a corollary protected areas become difficult to police. This can become further complicated as communities begin to take legal steps to counter threats to their lands and livelihoods. Even where legal challenges from communities are deemed unlikely, the increased militarization of the Congo Basin forest stemming from a "guns and guards" approach to protected area management is likely to lead to further human rights violations. This will result in increased negative publicity that will further damage the reputation of Big Conservation. This is likely to contribute to reduced donor incentives to release funds to conservation, and this could also affect the availability of funds for poverty alleviation. This would be an undesirable outcome for both conservation and communities.

Experience in Africa and elsewhere shows that indigenous communities whose rights to forests are confiscated by conservation projects will not become an ally of conservation organisations, even when they share the deep desire to protect their forests from unsustainable exploitation. Most communities will not be swayed by promises to deliver "new income sources" in order to compensate them for the loss of forest access and use if these projects do not deliver. Recent experience in Central Africa suggests that communities are right to be skeptical. Even so, they are often very willing to participate in meaningful discussions about the future of their forests.

The examples cited above serve to support the thesis that Mac Chapin set out in his "A Challenge to Conservationists" last month, and he and World Watch should be congratulated for initiating this debate in the cold light of open debate. Big Conservation needs to be reminded that indigenous communities, such as hunting and gathering Baka from the TRIDOM project area, possess rights that are protected by national law, international treaty, and international agency guidelines. The broad international support for indigenous communities' rights is leading to a greater respect for their role in national government and civil society processes by which their sustained participation in conservation in the Congo Basin will be assured. Mac Chapin is right, conservation cannot be effective without the support and involvement of local people. Conservation should take heed: neglect community rights and needs at your peril.

JOHN NELSON

Forest Peoples Programme [e-mail]