By Chris Lang In January 2018, the European Union suspended funding to its Water Towers Protection and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Programme in Kenya. The EU announced the suspension of the US$35 million project the day after a Kenya Forest Service guard shot and killed Robert Kirotich, an Indigenous Sengwer man, during a raid…
Tag: Conservation-Watch
Open letter to the Convention on Biodiversity: 30% target for protected areas is counterproductive, and will lead to evictions and displacement of Indigenous Peoples
By Chris Lang One of the key proposals for the next Convention on Biodiversity meeting is to increase the area of the planet covered by protected areas to 30% by 2030. The meeting was planned for October 2020, but was postponed because of the coronavirus. It is now planned for May 2021, in Kunming, China….
Kenya Forest Service evicts 300 Ogiek families from their homes in the Mau Forest. Despite the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights 2017 ruling that the Ogiek should not be evicted
By Chris Lang In May 2017, the Ogiek Indigenous People won an important land rights victory at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The Court ruled that the Ogiek have the right to live in the Mau Forest and that the government of Kenya was wrong to evict them. At the end of…
Forced evictions in the name of conservation: 28 Sengwer homes burned in Kenya
By Chris Lang On 11 May 2020, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, Fred Matiangi’i, issued a moratorium on forced evictions during the coronavirus pandemic. He made the announcement on national television. On 10 July 2020, Kenya Forest Service guards burned down 28 homes belonging to Sengwer Indigenous People in…
Fortress conservation: Disney’s offsets are paying for heavily armed park rangers in Conservation International’s Alto Mayo REDD project in Peru
By Chris Lang An article in Bloomberg last week takes a detailed look at the Alto Mayo REDD+ project in Peru. Covering an area of 182,000 hectares in the San Martín region of northern Peru, the project is run by Conservation International together with Peru’s National Service for Natural Protected Areas Protected by the State…