Paper short abstract:

This paper takes up how Mi’kmaw, Secwepemc, Piikani Blackfoot Peoples' immersive and 'total' reciprocal practices of “protection" of "all our relations" challenge us to recompose, even displace the Conservation hegemon with Inter-peoples relational politics, beyond usual State, ENGO presumptions.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing from conversations I've had with Mi’kmaw, Secwepemc, Piikani Blackfoot people in North America about what it means to “protect”, I consider decolonial moves beyond restrictive, typically modernist conceptions and practices of “Conservation”. The paper asks what it may mean to reconcieve (or dispense with) the hegemonic Conservation ethos when the proper practice ought to be the intricate enacting and protection of relations, often through ceremony, involving ancestors, yet in conversation with conventional state, international and NGO actors. For social anthropologists, this may once again call us to recuperate our Maussian parallels in thinking with “systems of total prestations”, where duty and action arise through actions of deep mutual relations of gift, gratitude and reciprocity, both in the moment, and over time and space — as a means of facing the multiple political, economic, and ecological crises of our times. This leads us to grapple with the persistent demand to honour Indigenous Peoples' practices and modes of ’relational sovereignty’ and the concomitant demand to structure political conversations around “Conservation”, and further around Inter-Peoples mutual protection and eco-social complexes.

I may also draw on a case arising from Tsilhqot’in Peoples establishment of an Indigenous-governed land protection park in their unique Title Declaration territories, raising issues of how that also moves in a different direction around practices of protection, than the conventionalized state & ENGO models of top down, centralized, and standardized policy control of protected areas.

Paper short abstract:

A better path: Securing community tenure enables sustainable livelihoods & forest conservation, where imposing protected areas destroys socio-ecologies

Paper long abstract:

Evicting those whose way of life depends on sustaining and being sustained by their forest lands leaves the forests in the hands of those who have no long-term care for the forests. Evicting forest peoples through imposed paramilitary conservation fails to secure indigenous forests. The Sengwer have been being evicted from our ancestral lands, and having our homes, belongings including school books and uniforms, regularly burnt in the name of ‘fortress conservation’ by a Kenya Forest Service whose violence has been being supported through supposed conservation projects by the World Bank, EU, WWF, and UNDP. The Sengwer offer a far better pathway, writing down sustainability bylaws and community governance structures so outsiders can see how the Sengwer conserve, and so we can be accountable to each other as we try to walk in the footsteps of the ancestors.

Paper short abstract:

The Elgon Ogiek seek to challenge a coercive conservation approach that burns homes and evicts the community. What are the immediate and deeper blocks to changing such a failed approach to conservation? How to secure the enabling conditions for community tenure based conservation?

Paper long abstract:

The Ogiek community at Mt Elgon have suffered continual evictions in the name of conservation, ever since British colonial rule, while trying to ensure conservation is no longer based on burning homes and evictions but on securing Ogiek community tenure and sustainable practices.

1. Internationally, the Ogiek

(i) have engaged in IUCN’s Whakatane process which brought Government ministries, the World Bank, national and international conservation bodies to the ground to see for themselves that the Ogiek’s presence on their lands is a benefit to biodiversity, and

(ii) have been engaged by the World Bank’s Natural Resource Management project, EU’s WaTER Tower project, and UNDP’s REDD process, which have provided pretexts for threatened evictions in the name of biodiversity conservation;

2. Nationally, the Ogiek have sought to secure their community land rights through using the Community Land Act, negotiating directly with government, and using the courts;

3. Territorially, the Ogiek have undertaken mapping, zoning, writing down sustainability bylaws, developing governance structures and community scouts to sustain the Ogiek way of life, and to try to stop the destruction of the forests by the Kenya Forest Service, which the Government’s own Taskforce has judged to be exploiting the forests. 

What are the challenges to securing the enabling conditions for community tenure based conservation in place of the failed ‘eviction and compensation’, ‘core area and buffer area’ model?

Paper short abstract:

The paper applies Andoque and Nɨpodɨmakɨ territorial concepts and a rights-based analysis to explore rights impacts of a REDD+ programme. It highlights shortcomings in safeguards and benefit sharing and presents bottom-up alternatives that respect indigenous rights, science and livelihoods.

Paper long abstract:

Researchers and human rights advocates have shown the limits, disagreements, and equivocations permeating the relationships between Western environmentalists and indigenous peoples worldwide. Elaborated at a time of great ecological and humanitarian urgency, REDD+ projects and finance render more visible the economic relations, power asymmetries, differential benefits and tensions operating between various actors and rightsholders at different levels – local, national and international. Focusing on the internationally-funded REDD+ programme “Visión Amazonía” in the Colombian Amazon, this paper describes the misgivings of the Andoque and Nɨpodɨmakɨ (Uitoto) indigenous peoples and customary landowners from the Middle Caquetá manifested through their interventions and complaints in different spaces, including an appeal for state tutelage submitted in 2018. While “Visión Amazonía” sought to elaborate a new development model based on reduced deforestation and biodiversity conservation, indigenous stakeholders denounce its violation of their collective rights, as well as its deficient elaboration and implementation process. Shortcomings are expressed from an indigenous point of view and through their conceptions of territory and indigenous relations with humans-nonhumans within and outside the territory. The paper demonstrates how the application of ‘safeguards’ in relation to land and property rights, free, prior, and informed consent, indigenous science and benefit sharing have been defective, and how extractive, colonialist, and discriminatory perspectives have informed this conservation programme. The paper summarizes lessons for conservation initiatives, including the need for closer involvement of self-governing indigenous territorial authorities at the design stage, greater respect for indigenous science and more culturally appropriate attention to livelihoods and benefit sharing.