For the past two-and-a-half years I’ve been running a website called Conservation-Watch. I recently did an interview with the Big Green Politics Podcast, about the impact of conservation on indigenous peoples – the podcast went live yesterday.
Category: Republic of Congo

Exposed by Buzzfeed News: WWF’s lies about Indigenous People being “supportive” of its proposed Messok Dja National Park in the Republic of Congo
Messok Dja is a 1,456 square kilometre area of dense rainforest in the northwest of the Republic of Congo. For years, WWF has been working to persuade the government to establish a new Messok Dja National Park. On its website, WWF states that the forest is “highly threatened by intense elephant poaching and ivory trafficking”….

The Brazzaville Declaration: Words not action on peatland protection in the Congo Basin. And the strange case of the Congo Basin Blue Fund and the Brazzaville Foundation
Last week, the third meeting of the Partners of the Global Peatlands Initiative took place in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. After the meeting, the United Nations Environment Programme, one of the organisers and funder of the meeting, put out a press release announcing that a “historic agreement” had been signed “to protect…

WWF scandal (part 8): WWF and the loggers in the Congo Basin
“For WWF, partnering with Indigenous Peoples is an essential part of our conservation work.” This sentence comes from WWF’s latest newsletter from its international forest and climate team. The article is written by Jolly Sassa Kiuka and Flory Botamba who work for WWF in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Conservation efforts in the Congo Basin are “mostly failing” says new Rainforest Foundation UK report
“Conservation efforts in the Congo Basin are mostly failing to protect forests and biodiversity, having serious negative impacts on local populations, and for these reasons are probably unsustainable.”