December 2022 Newsletter
Welcome to our December 2022 newsletter!
In this issue:
COP15: Deal for nature null and void
Maasai warriors defend their land
IUCN first African Protected Areas Congress
War on self-sufficiency
The revolution will not be NGO’ised
1. COP15: Deal for nature null and void
No social licence
Since launching our campaign in January 2020, we have done as much as possible to ensure that no social licence exists for WWF’s trillion dollar land grab targeting Africa that is the New Deal for Nature (also marketed as Nature Positive).
In fact, this work had already begun in early 2019 when well-respected researcher on the non-profit industrial complex Cory Morningstar published her investigative series on leading New Deal for Nature influencer Greta Thunberg, of the Fridays For Future climate strikes organised by WWF and Greenpeace (both involved in the creation of We Mean Business).
In this interview, recorded in February 2019, Cory explains how the youth climate movement serves to save capitalism, not the planet.
Thanks to Cory’s meticulous research identifying the many influencers (e.g. Thunberg, Goodall, Attenborough) and organisations (e.g. the Capitals Coalition, Al Gore’s Climate Reality) heavily invested in securing a deal for nature, it was possible to erode the social licence significantly. To such a degree that, by the time of COP15 in Montreal, the only “activists” explicitly calling for a New Deal for Nature were Greenpeace. More on that later.
A promotional clip (yes, yet another!) from human rights violators WWF released for COP15 made clear that it had failed miserably to secure the necessary social licence for the world's largest land grab aimed at creating more militarised conservation zones, such as national parks and game reserves, while benefiting the world’s most powerful capitalist interests hellbent on maintaining and expanding global capitalist hegemony.
Undemocratic vote
December’s Biodiversity Summit had been preceded by two rounds of (physical) negotiations in Geneva (April) and Nairobi (June), both of which saw glacial progress. For this reason, it looked unlikely that agreement among negotiators from over 190 states would be reached at Montreal. Alas, events turned out different from expected.
In its official press release, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity claimed:
“nations of the world today agreed on a historic package of measures deemed critical to addressing the dangerous loss of biodiversity and restoring natural ecosystems”
The Guardian, however, reported:
"Negotiators from Cameroon, Uganda and the DRC expressed incredulity that the agreement had been put through. The DRC said it had formally objected to the agreement, but a UN lawyer said it had not."
More importantly, though, the non-legally binding nature of the agreement means that its implementation can expect to be met with fierce resistance from those on the frontlines of exclusionary fortress conservation.
In its reaction to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) adopted at COP15, the US government – whose military exploits have annihilated the natural world in Iraq, among many other places – expressed strong “science-based” support for “protecting nature”, stating:
Scientists in both the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), concluded that biodiversity is declining at a catastrophic rate and that the effective conservation of 30-50 percent of global lands and waters could preserve nature’s ability to sustain people and the planet.
Nature-based solutions, colloquially known in many parts of Africa as carbon credits – investment in which is regarded as critical for the expansion of both land and marine Protected Areas – feature in both Targets 8 and 11 of the framework.
Our campaign opposes outright the expansion of the global capitalist system “for nature” which entails turning Africa into a giant carbon sink in order to fuel growing consumption by the Global North.
Week of action
We declare the deal for nature, of which the 30x30 plan forms the centrepiece, concluded at COP15 in Montreal, null and void. To make it loud and clear to both governments and the conservation industry that no social licence exists for WWF’s deal and that no funding should go towards the creation of more militarised Protected Areas, we will be organising a week of action from January 29-February 5.
To find out more and get involved, email nodealfornature@protonmail.com.
2. Maasai warriors defend their land
Thousands of Maasai dispossessed and displaced
After months of repression faced by the Maasai in Loliondo, on June 7 the Tanzanian government sent in the military to evict thousands from their ancestral lands for elite tourism backed by the UAE Royal Family.
Many Maasai did their utmost to fight back with what arms they had at their disposal.
As a result of the military operation, thousands of Maasai together with their livestock were dispossessed and displaced, with many forced to flee over the border in Kenya to seek medical attention refused to them by Samia Suluhu’s anti-Maasai regime.
For detailed insight into the Maasai struggle against colonial conservation in Tanzania, we highly recommend the blog of Susanna Nordlund who has been following events in Loliondo for many years.
Following international outcry over the evictions, the Tanzanian government released a propaganda video entitled ‘Ngorongoro and Serengeti Shall Never Die, The Truth About It’, inspired by the 1959 Oscar-winning German documentary film ‘Serengeti Shall Not Die’ written and directed by Bernhard Grzimek.
Urgent call for support and solidarity
We recently had the honour of speaking with Paul Ole Leitura, a Maasai from Loliondo whose friends and family have been directly impacted by the state-sanctioned violence. He recounted the many hardships faced by the Maasai in the wake of June’s evictions and ongoing livestock seizures. He requested that we share the following message.
“As we talked about, the weather has caused a very dry season and the livestock has died some of the remaining livestock have been caught by conservationists and sold at the beginning of this month, more than 1700 cows were caught and sold, causing more than 20 poverty. The situation of poverty is increasing due to herders taking away their land. The result is the avoidance of hunger and children not being able to go to school due to a lack of basic needs. The best way to help herdsmen at the moment is to enable them to get food and other basic needs for children to be able to attend school, especially considering that Maasai families depend 100% on livestock to earn income and run their daily lives.”
Here are some ways of showing support and solidarity.
Provide direct support to those displaced.
Get in touch via email at nodealfornature@protonmail.com if you are able to help.
Donate to this crowdfunder.
Protest at Tanzanian embassies, consulates, etc.
Support a tourism boycott of “wild Tanzania”.
Sign Paul’s petition addressed to the Tanzanian President.
3. IUCN first African Protected Areas Congress
“Protecting nature” to expand capitalism
In July, Rwanda hosted the IUCN’s African Protected Areas Congress, an event that had previously been postponed.
As historian Guillaume Blanc has rightly stated @WWF, @UNESCO and the @IUCN "don't protect African nature. They only protect a colonial idea of Africa."
To highlight the many injustices associated with Protected Areas, we held a Twitterstorm. Thank you again to everyone who took part.
At the closing ceremony, African Wildlife Foundation CEO Kaddu Sebunya made his intentions clear, pronouncing:
"The capitalists looking to profit from conservation, we need each and every one of you."
To know more about what happened at the event, read this op-ed by Mordecai Ogada.
Half earth motion defeated
In September 2021, the Marseille IUCN Congress saw the adoption of a motion to protect 50% of the planet by 2030, inspired by E.O. Wilson's Half Earth theory. A theory based on the idea of "protecting nature" from "human interference".
A Half Earth motion was also proposed at APAC by #NatureNeedsHalf ideologues US-based WILD Foundation in tandem with Avaaz, but fortunately it failed to win enough support, even with backing from the Vatican. A small win for us!
4. War on self-sufficiency
Nature positive: expanding of global capitalism “for nature”
The Maasai evictions in Loliondo give us a taster of what a nature positive future would look like. A 2020 report from the World Economic Forum defines the nature positive concept as the creation of new markets worth some $10 trillion of global GDP growth. This would therefore expand the global capitalist system, whose activities have been the main driver of biodiversity loss.
As Cory Morningstar has repeatedly pointed out, WWF’s New Deal for Nature (also marketed as nature positive) is all about emerging markets. And those markets depend on dispossessing millions of the most self-sufficient, principally in Africa.
Countering anti-livestock propaganda
To counter the increasing assault on livestock and animal-sourced foods happening globally, one of our campaign signatories Frédéric Leroy, in collaboration with other scientists, recently launched a new international initiative called the Dublin Declaration.
In September at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the European Federation of Animal Science, Frédéric delivered a presentation entitled ‘Animal Source Foods and the Nature-Culture Divide’, in which he critiqued the ecofascist Half Earth concept aimed at undermining self-sufficiency.
5. The revolution will not be NGO’ised
Why did we set up our modest, but uncompromising, campaign three years ago? Because not a single organisation opposed WWF’s New Deal for Nature. That should tell us everything that we need to know about NGOs.
While some of them may produce useful reference material and can help garner international media attention for specific struggles, given the many capitalist vultures currently hellbent on expanding empire there is now a pressing need to work outside established structures, and instead embrace revolutionary thought and action.
Revolution is certainly not going to be led by Greenpeace who in March announced its support for the 30x30 racist, neocolonial land grab, stating:
"Greenpeace calls for action to increase land and sea protection to at least 30% by 2030 with clear funding and implementation"
For COP15, it even called on its supporters to ‘Take action for a #NewDeal4Nature’. Thankfully, the call attracted little interest.
Nor will any revolution be led by organisations that claim to represent Indigenous peoples yet partner with the likes of the IUCN and Wyss Foundation’s Campaign for Nature, both of whom have advocated for the 30x30 plan conceived by capitalist interests.
Another compromised NGO is Nia Tero, a donor to the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), whose CEO is Peter Seligmann. Seligmann sits on the board of Conservation International, and served as its CEO. He also previously worked at The Nature Conservancy. Both of these conservation NGOs not only have a track record of dispossessing rural peoples, but they also partner with the world’s biggest polluters.
In the words of Cory Morningstar, “the planet will not be saved by those that have destroyed it”.
It becomes clearer by the day that only enough upright men and women, prepared to fight by all means necessary, have the power to stop this new wave of imperialism, led principally by the European Union under the guise of green.
As Thomas Sankara said, "When the people stand up, imperialism trembles."