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Conservation refugee
Conservation refugees are people (usually indigenous) who are displaced from their native lands when conservation areas, such as parks and other protected areas, are created.
Many conservation refugees (such as the Great Lakes Twa) were already marginalized before a nature preserve was established on their territory, and are culturally dislocated and often living on the margins of urban areas or new settlements with few social or economic opportunities. Facing powerful state and international conservation interests, they rarely have legal recourse. Many conservation refugees are housed in refugee camps.[citation needed]
ENGOs (environmental non-governmental organizations) are funded by a variety of sources. Private foundations, such as the Ford and MacArthur Foundations, once provided the bulk of the funds supporting NGO conservation efforts. Funds from bilateral and multilateral sources (such as USAID and the World Bank) and corporations also support ENGOs. An increase in corporate sponsorship raises the possibility of a conflict of interest between ENGOs and the corporations which support them, leading to ethical negligence.
Although the websites of the World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International say that the groups participate with local communities, the universally-applied model of conservation (based on Western science) often clashes with traditional knowledge of the environment. The Western conservation movement may be dismissive of indigenous conservation models because they are not based on Western science, but indigenous knowledge is the result of generations of interaction with their environment.[citation needed] In his Orion magazine article "Conservation Refugees", Mark Dowie writes:
John Muir, a forefather of the American conservation movement, argued that 'wilderness' should be cleared of all inhabitants and set aside to satisfy the urbane human's need for recreation and spiritual renewal. It was a sentiment that became national policy with the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, which defined wilderness as a place 'where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.' One should not be surprised to find hardy residues of these sentiments among traditional conservation groups. The preference for 'virgin' wilderness has lingered on in a movement that has tended to value all nature but human nature, and refused to recognize the positive wildness in human beings.
Dowie's article assesses the globalization of conservation. With the removal of indigenous communities from protected land, a symbiosis between indigenous peoples and their environment is disrupted; this may have the unintended consequence of decreasing biodiversity, as those who formerly lived off the land are now prohibited from interacting with it. As a result of their expulsion, they are poor additions to the over-populated areas surrounding the park (Igoe 2005). Poaching may increase, and the soil may become degraded as refugees take up subsistence agriculture. By ignoring the human factor, the conservation model followed by large ENGOs can be ineffective and counterproductive.
In the spring of 2003, India's Adivasi were pushed out of their farmlands and relocated to crowded villages to import six Asiatic lions. Although NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund try to conserve land and animal species while training indigenous peoples for alternate work, indigenous peoples are often removed from their land and placed in communities or villages which leave them vulnerable to poverty and starvation. Not compensated for what was lost, they have difficulty adjusting to their new lifestyle. The issue of conservation refugees across India are well reported
Christine MacDonald's Green, Inc. quotes a tribal leader that "white men" told them to leave their homes in the forest because the land was not protected; they were forced into another village (which was already occupied by another group) outside the forest, and had "no choice, because they told them that they [would] be beaten and killed". Left without food and land, they were forced to work on farms established by the villagers before them.
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Conservation refugee
Conservation refugees are people (usually indigenous) who are displaced from their native lands when conservation areas, such as parks and other protected areas, are created.
Many conservation refugees (such as the Great Lakes Twa) were already marginalized before a nature preserve was established on their territory, and are culturally dislocated and often living on the margins of urban areas or new settlements with few social or economic opportunities. Facing powerful state and international conservation interests, they rarely have legal recourse. Many conservation refugees are housed in refugee camps.[citation needed]
ENGOs (environmental non-governmental organizations) are funded by a variety of sources. Private foundations, such as the Ford and MacArthur Foundations, once provided the bulk of the funds supporting NGO conservation efforts. Funds from bilateral and multilateral sources (such as USAID and the World Bank) and corporations also support ENGOs. An increase in corporate sponsorship raises the possibility of a conflict of interest between ENGOs and the corporations which support them, leading to ethical negligence.
Although the websites of the World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International say that the groups participate with local communities, the universally-applied model of conservation (based on Western science) often clashes with traditional knowledge of the environment. The Western conservation movement may be dismissive of indigenous conservation models because they are not based on Western science, but indigenous knowledge is the result of generations of interaction with their environment.[citation needed] In his Orion magazine article "Conservation Refugees", Mark Dowie writes:
John Muir, a forefather of the American conservation movement, argued that 'wilderness' should be cleared of all inhabitants and set aside to satisfy the urbane human's need for recreation and spiritual renewal. It was a sentiment that became national policy with the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, which defined wilderness as a place 'where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.' One should not be surprised to find hardy residues of these sentiments among traditional conservation groups. The preference for 'virgin' wilderness has lingered on in a movement that has tended to value all nature but human nature, and refused to recognize the positive wildness in human beings.
Dowie's article assesses the globalization of conservation. With the removal of indigenous communities from protected land, a symbiosis between indigenous peoples and their environment is disrupted; this may have the unintended consequence of decreasing biodiversity, as those who formerly lived off the land are now prohibited from interacting with it. As a result of their expulsion, they are poor additions to the over-populated areas surrounding the park (Igoe 2005). Poaching may increase, and the soil may become degraded as refugees take up subsistence agriculture. By ignoring the human factor, the conservation model followed by large ENGOs can be ineffective and counterproductive.
In the spring of 2003, India's Adivasi were pushed out of their farmlands and relocated to crowded villages to import six Asiatic lions. Although NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund try to conserve land and animal species while training indigenous peoples for alternate work, indigenous peoples are often removed from their land and placed in communities or villages which leave them vulnerable to poverty and starvation. Not compensated for what was lost, they have difficulty adjusting to their new lifestyle. The issue of conservation refugees across India are well reported
Christine MacDonald's Green, Inc. quotes a tribal leader that "white men" told them to leave their homes in the forest because the land was not protected; they were forced into another village (which was already occupied by another group) outside the forest, and had "no choice, because they told them that they [would] be beaten and killed". Left without food and land, they were forced to work on farms established by the villagers before them.