March 2022 Newsletter
Welcome to our first newsletter!
Due to increasing censorship on social media, we hope this will be a more effective means to keep all those interested in our campaign updated.
Since launching our campaign, we have learned a great deal about colonial conservation and how it leads to widespread human rights abuses towards the best guardians of the natural world.
Should governments agree on doubling Protected Areas via 30x30, which would constitute the biggest land grab in history and thus the biggest expansion of capitalism in history, as part of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, this model of conservation would expand massively in Africa and Asia. This framework is now expected to be finalised at the COP15 biodiversity summit during the third quarter of 2022.
Special shout-out to Survival International former director Stephen Corry for writing several engaging articles exposing what lies behind WWF’s marketing spin and for debunking conservation mafia myths such as overpopulation, wilderness and more. We have also learned much from Survival researcher and Decolonise Conservation campaign co-ordinator Fiore Longo, who has met with countless victims of conservation in Africa and Asia, and communicates the issues with great clarity and passion. We are also grateful to Kenyan carnivore ecologist Dr Mordecai Ogada for sharing his invaluable insights from the African continent, the conservation industry’s main target.
Thanks to enough public outrage (more would be welcome, of course!) against this unprecedented expansion of capitalism in the name of protecting nature, WWF’s plans have been delayed on no fewer than four occasions.
Nature financiers also still struggle to secure the necessary funding, US$ 722-967 billion each year over the next ten years according to the Paulson Institute. These funds, sought from governments as well as the private sector, would be used to expand fortress conservation, which has led to serious human rights abuses such as rape and torture of the best guardians of biodiversity.
In this issue:
Decolonising our minds
Urgent action to stop 30x30
Expanding the global capitalist system “For Nature”
Second scramble for Africa?
Leading influencers lose momentum
Help us fight the propaganda
1. Decolonising our minds
Ultimately, the biggest land grab in history cannot happen without a social licence. This is sought first and foremost in the Global North, particularly in Western Europe and among the youth.
So we don’t end up demanding the conservation industry’s “solution”, which would destroy the livelihoods of millions of land-dependent peoples who protect most of the world’s biodiversity, we need to decolonise our minds (and hearts) from the dominant system.
A system reliant upon manufactured movements to gain consent for the further expansion of global capitalism, calling on us to panic and demand salvation from “leaders” by marching for “climate action”. A system comprising corporate-captured governments who interpret such a broad demand as an opportunity to raid our collective piggybanks. A system teetering on collapse, but reinventing itself through a reset to natural, social and human capital, at the expense of the natural world which includes us.
This Organic Radicals piece encapsulates brilliantly the approach we need to adopt if we are to defeat the system.
The colonizer remains essentially the same since Fanon’s days in Algeria – it is that system, complex, phenomenon, culture that we variously term capitalism, imperialism, industrialism, the West.
And if we are to defeat that system, to break free from its deathly embrace, we need to go through a decolonisation of our minds, seek out a complete rupture with its whole mindset, all its deeply embedded assumptions.
The first step in decolonising our minds has to be the understanding that the same system which has destroyed the natural world cannot possibly save it.
Business #ForNature?
If we swallow this lie, if we allow ourselves to forget that business can no more be “for nature” than a war can be “for peace”, then we have fallen victim to the same colonization of the mind that Fanon identified in native peoples.
In the Western world, more of us also need to be aware of the powerful, yet often subtle, propaganda influencing how we perceive Indigenous and other land-dependent peoples, how we perceive Africa and Asia, and how we perceive "nature".
To help decolonise minds, we highly recommend this recent Talking Africa interview with Fiore Longo on the dark side of wildlife conservation, as well as Death in the Garden interviews with Fiore and Mordecai Ogada (Part 1, Part 2).
2. Urgent action to stop 30x30
For the month of February, Survival ran a highly informative social media campaign called #DearHumanity to raise awareness about the dangers associated with Protected Areas.
Because of how the IUCN classifies these areas, the concept is not well known or understood in Europe, where the creation of areas preserved for nature such as woodlands and national parks does not entail evicting their original inhabitants as is the case in Africa and Asia. To understand the historical context of IUCN Protected Areas, we recommend this article by French researcher and author Guillaume Blanc.
March 2 – declared Human Diversity Day – saw the launch of a specific email action ahead of biodiversity negotiations taking place in Geneva from March 14-29.
We have a problem. Governments, conservation organizations and the most polluting companies, predominantly from the global north, are promoting a dangerous plan. They say it will help solve both the climate and biodiversity crises, but it won’t.
Survival is asking us to email negotiators calling on them to scrap the 30x30 target.
You can find a pre-written email at this link which you are invited to adapt. To make sure this action has maximum impact, please share with as many as possible over the coming days along with the short video below explaining why we need to stop 30x30.
3. Expanding the global capitalist system “For Nature”
The current draft Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework being negotiated in Geneva this month includes 21 targets for 2030.
The 30x30 target (Target 3), heavily pushed by the EU in particular, forms the cornerstone of WWF's proposed New Deal for Nature (recently rebranded Nature Positive, and also referred to as a global deal or global goal for nature, or global nature pact).
Concretely speaking, conservation NGOs would like to see the current number of Protected Areas doubled, to 30% by 2030. In Africa and Asia, where fortress conservation – a practice which sees humans as separate from nature – remains the norm, this proposal if implemented would lead to some 300 million people losing their homes.
Protected Areas – protected from whom?
As Stephen Corry explained in a Feburary 2020 article, Protected Areas are not only ineffective at preventing biodiversity loss, but actually provide a means for capitalist interests to exploit land for their own benefit.
Protecting “nature” by fencing it off from the locals simply hasn’t work. It doesn’t help that many PAs aren’t really protected at all. They include industrial exploitation — mining, logging, plantations, trophy hunting concessions, or extensive, usually high-end, tourist infrastructure — but that’s the reality. The locals are thrown out as the land is grabbed by one or other industry, partnering with one or other big conservation NGO.
To gain an insight into what these areas mean for Indian rural populations, check out this short presentation from Indian campaigner Arindam Singh.
In this short video, Mordecai Ogada briefly explains the origins of colonial conservation and why the creation of a Protected Area is a “fallacy”.
In a recent article published by the Green European Journal, University of Antwerp researchers Vijay Kolinjivadi and Gert van Hecken sharply critique the white saviour mentality fuelling the push for more Protected Areas in the Global South.
Beyond a matter of skin colour, “whiteness” refers fundamentally to belief systems rooted in Western European aesthetics and unequivocal faith in logics of modern progress that have historically shaped (neo)colonial strategies of resource exploitation and dehumanisation. In its current globalised form, whiteness is materially manifested through a homogenous ecology of capital production, ruthlessly erasing any types of diversity not regarded as profitable assets. This ecology of homogenisation has taken shape through structural inequalities constructed over the past five centuries.
Make sure to check out Survival’s Big Green Lie campaign and take action to stop the push for more Protected Areas here.
Our Land, Our Nature
In September 2021, Survival along with others organised a counter event to the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille.
Our Land, Our Nature, the first-ever conference to decolonise conservation, brought together voices from the frontlines of fortress conservation in Africa, Asia and beyond. If you want a crash course on colonial conservation, this event is for you!
Fiore Longo, head of Survival’s Decolonize Conservation campaign, said at the event:
“Most governments and NGOs these days are good at producing nice-sounding rhetoric about respecting Indigenous rights. But the same people are promoting a massive drive to create new Protected Areas on Indigenous lands as part of the 30×30 plan that constitutes the biggest land grab in world history.”
Speakers agreed on the Marseille Manifesto which opposes both the creation of new Protected Areas via 30x30 and nature-based solutions.
To understand more about nature-based solutions, we highly recommend this article by Fiore Longo.
Imagine you're a Baka, a hunter gatherer in the Congo Basin forest. That land has been your home for generations. You know every stone and every tree there. Your grandparents are buried on that land. You and your people have nourished it, taken care of it and loved it. Now imagine that you're evicted and your house destroyed because, as someone explains to you, a white man living very far away, thinks that your forest has to become a Protected Area where only elephants are allowed to live. He likes elephants, they tell you. White men like elephants. Apparently he went up to space and realized that he likes your forest, and he is worried about climate change. That man created a company that produced 60.64 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year—the equivalent of burning through 140 million barrels of oil. But, they tell you, if your forest is protected, he can feel better about his emissions of CO2. You might wonder why he doesn't stop his emissions instead of destroying your life. The answer to that is money. You might also wonder how anyone can believe he's doing good. And the answer to that is the topic of this article.
4. Second scramble for Africa?
Is a second scramble for Africa on the cards?
Going by the conservation industry’s comments at a 2019 event, it would appear so!
"Nature can provide great economic benefits, especially in Africa, which has the greatest concentration of natural resources in the world."
Plans for Africa also became clear to Mordecai Ogada at last September’s IUCN Congress in Marseille. Read his account of events here.
The biggest thing out of Marseille was the European Union’s grand plan to capture Africa’s natural heritage through a program called NaturAfrica. Since they know that they have selected partners in Africa to whom prostitution comes easily, they drowned the announcement in noise about doubling of funding for conservation on Twitter.
IUCN Africa Protected Areas Congress postponed
The conservation industry clearly fears public criticism of its plans. Which is why shortly after independent radio show Talking Africa aired an interview with Stephen Corry, in which he exposed the many issues with Protected Areas in Africa, the IUCN decided to postpone its Congress in Rwanda where the expansion of such areas is to be discussed. If you are on Twitter, make sure to give Talking Africa a follow.
And after politely countering propaganda from the event organisers, we were even blocked by the APAC Twitter account.
Further proof of how much the trillion-dollar conservation industry fears criticism!
To help shed more light on what is planned for Africa, on April 9 we are organising an online event. If you would like to be involved, please get in touch with us via email at nodealfornature@protonmail.com.
5. Leading influencers lose momentum
On launching our campaign, we knew we faced an uphill struggle to stop the conservation industry's plans.
However, through relentless exposure of the leading influencers chosen by WWF for its Voice For The Planet campaign – namely, David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg and Jane Goodall, three white saviours fittingly representing the Global North’s capitalist interests, WWF still struggles to mobilise sufficient public support.
Marking three years since her first school strike in September 2021, Fridays For Future founder Greta proclaimed: “In one way, of course, I haven't achieved anything.”
Ahead of the next wave of Fridays For Future climate strikes on March 25, we encourage you to reach out in person/via email/via social media to youth climate activists in your area, informing them of the links between Fridays For Future and human rights violators WWF.
6. Help us fight the propaganda
Every day, we face an onslaught of propaganda exploiting genuine environmental concerns. We know it frustrates the nature financiers and the conservation industry greatly when we counter their narratives effectively, especially when our content reaches a larger audience.
If this propaganda also gets on your nerves and you fancy helping us fight it, drop us an email at nodealfornature@protonmail.com.
Huge thanks to everyone who has been spreading the word about our campaign, both on- and offline. Our voices are definitely making a difference with narratives changing regularly in response to our criticisms.
Let's keep shouting from the rooftops until the conservation industry realises it is fighting a losing battle.
To quote Rosa Luxemburg, “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”