By Chris Lang The Sengwer Indigenous People live in the Embobut Forest in the western highlalnds of Kenya. For years they have faced threats and violent evictions. The Kenya Forest Service has carried out a series of evictions of the Sengwer, supposedly in the name of conservation. In January 2018 Kenya Forest Service guards shot…
Tag: Conservation-Watch
The EU’s NaturAfrica must avoid colonialism in conservation: Protected areas should be managed by Indigenous Peoples themselves
By Chris Lang On 11 December 2019, European Commission published a Communication setting out a European Green Deal for the European Union and its citizens. The Communication referred to its Comprehensive Strategy with Africa, and mentioned an initiative called “NaturAfrica”:
Indigenous Batwa prisoners were arrested on their ancestral lands in the Kahuzi-Biéga National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo
By Chris Lang When the Kahuzi-Biéga National Park was established in the 1970s in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, about 6,000 Indigenous Batwa people were evicted. For more than 40 years the Batwa have struggled to have their rights recognised. The Batwa communities around the park have no land, and find it difficult to earn…
Tanawthari Landscape of Life: Indigenous communities in Myanmar propose alternative to top-down conservation
By Chris Lang The Ridge to Reef project is a massive, top-down conservation project in Tanintharyi Region in the south of Myanmar. It started in 2018 with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and was implemented by the UN Development Programme, toether with Myanmar’s Forestry Department and Department of Fisheries, the Smithsonian Institution, and…
UNDP investigation confirms that WWF-funded ecoguards beat up indigenous peoples in the Republic of Congo
By Chris Lang “In the past we knew no boundaries in the forest. A Baka knew that the forest belonged to him.” This is part of a statement from an indigenous Baka man explaining how the Baka live in and with the forest in the north of the Republic of Congo.