Losing the Serengeti:

The Maasai Land that was to Run Forever

Themes: Conservation, Parks, Tourism, Indigenous people

Based on field research, never publicly-seen-before documents, and an in-depth investigation into Tanzania’s land laws. This report is the first to reveal the complicity between Tanzanian government officials and foreign companies as they use conservation laws to dispossess the Maasai, driving them into smaller and smaller areas and creating a stifling map of confinement.

Escape from Protection: The Catastrophe of Conservation in Panama.

Typified by The Nature Conservancy and The World Wildlife Fund, Global Conservation as such is really an arm of colonialist foreign policy going back at least a century, and its fundamental aims have not changed.

Themes: Human rights, Indigenous people, Parks, Poverty, Conservation

Cloaked under a veneer of idealism, protected area conservation is a cynical and ubiquitous foreign policy charade, harming both the environment and its inhabitants throughout the world. Indigenous residents are displaced either as a matter of policy by force or through ecosystem degradation, depending on the protected area category set by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Swiss-based body for conservation, founded in 1947 as a lesser-known leg in the postwar international system.

Fenced out of nature.

Outside Kruger National Park, the people who once lived inside may be the key to the reserve’s future.

Themes: Conservation, Human rights, Parks, Poverty

Kruger National Park and the communities around its borders represent the global front line in the battle against rhino poaching. South Africa contains the largest remaining rhino populations in the world, and most of the killing is happening in and around Kruger. In these villages, residents are caught in the middle of an escalating fight between poachers and conservationists — one that has grown in intensity and violence as prices skyrocket. Poor and dispossessed, these villages potentially hold the key to solving this crisis in the long run, and yet distrust runs deep.

Illegal evictions of Baiga indigenous people from India’s Kanha National Park.

Themes: Conservation, FPIC, Human rights, Indigenous people, Parks

In March 2017, India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority issued a notice asking 17 states to suspend the rights of indigenous peoples and other forest dwellers in critical tiger habitats.

India's National Tiger Conservation Authority rides roughshod over the Forest Rights Act.

Themes: Conservation, Human rights, Indigenous people, Parks, Policy

An order passed by the National Tiger Conservation Authority on March 27, 2017 categorically states that the Forest Rights Act (FRA) will not apply in Tiger Reserves. By doing this, the order not only invalidates the rights of communities who live within Tiger Reserves, but also confuses the provisions of the two laws: the Forest Rights Act and the Wildlife Protection Act.

"Too scared to go into the forest.”

Complaint abandoned, but systematic human rights violations continue for indigenous Baka communities in Cameroon.

Themes: Conservation, FPIC, Human rights, Indigenous people, Parks

Legal recognition in the works for communities occupying Indonesia’s conservation areas.

Themes: Conservation, Human rights, Indigenous people, Parks

The Indonesian government plans to formally recognize the occupation and use of land inside conservation areas, including national parks, by local and indigenous communities. The program will grant these communities access to clearly defined areas within these conservation zones, in exchange for managing these areas responsibly and sustainably, and not expanding their encroachment. However, the program could clash with a 2017 presidential regulation that emphasizes resettlement as a solution to human encroachment in conservation areas.

Inuit seek full management of Tallurutiup Imanga, Canada’s largest protected area.

'This is about communities, we want communities to grow and to thrive,” says the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, which wants to oversee the ‘ecological engine’ of the Arctic.

Themes: Conservation, Human rights, Indigenous people, Parks, Fisheries