From the First Nations Development Institute.

• Author: Adamson, Rebecca
• Position: FROM READERS - Letter to the Editor

Thank you for having the courage and integrity to print "A Challenge to Conservationists" by Mac Chapin. I first wrote about this issue in the Environmental Grantmakers Association News & Updates Winter 2003 ("A Caution on Soft-Eviction Strategies," www.ega.org/resources/newsletters/win2003/softevictions.html).

The issue of displacing indigenous peoples from protected areas is under heavy debate within the contemporary international conservationist movement. For any conservation organization to claim otherwise is at best disingenuous. In 2003 Dr. Kai Schmidt-Soltau and Professor Michael Cernea published a seven-year study on indigenous people who were displaced in six Congo basin countries to make way for protected areas and national parks. World Wildlife Fund and Wildlife Conservation Society were the lead NGOs involved. The total number of people displaced is estimated to be between 40,000 and 50,000, with approximately half being Pygmies. Schmidt-Soltau and Cernea found that "in contrast to the declared concept of collaborative management, none of the surveyed protected areas had adopted an official strategy to integrate local inhabitants into the park management.... Based on many discussions with park managers our findings indicate that conservationists refused to compensate indigenous forest dwellers because they thought recognition of traditional land titles would put an end to their resettlement schedules and their park" (CIFOR "Rural Livelihoods, Forests, and Biodiversity" Bonn, Germany 2003).

Just last spring, over 200 indigenous people meeting at the International Forum on Indigenous Mapping in Vancouver, British Columbia, declared that "conservation has become the number one threat to indigenous territories." And again, at the International Funders for Indigenous Peoples Annual Conference, where over 100 donors and Indigenous leaders came together, an entire session--"Environmental Conservation and Indigenous Stewardship"--was dedicated to this issue. The president of the First National Organization of Indigenous Women, Senora Dona Teresa Simbana, made a graphic presentation using an 8" by 11" piece of paper to illustrate how much conservation money went to the big NGOs versus the indigenous communities of Colombia. Speaking in her native language, she tore pieces of the paper representing money that clearly represented the amount of conservation funding that went directly to her people. Without the help of rigorous...