본문 바로가기

기후 비상/Global News

<Scientific American> REDD 논쟁

반응형

Scientific American Magazine -  August 27, 2009

Conflicted Conservation: When Restoration Efforts Are Pitted against
Human Rights
Saving Earth might mean trampling indigenous societies

By Madhusree Mukerjee

Even as industrial civilization reaches into the farthest corners of the
globe to extract resources such as oil, timber and fish,
environmentalists are striving to mitigate its deleterious effects on the biosphere.
Projects to reduce pollution, prevent climate change and protect
biodiversity, however, are drawing criticism that they could drive
indigenous people off their lands and destroy their livelihoods.

Conservationists have historically been at odds with the people who
inhabit wildernesses. During the last half of the 20th century, millions
of indigenous people in Africa, South America and Asia were ousted from
their homelands to establish nature sanctuaries free of humans. Most
succumbed to malnutrition, disease and exploitation, recounts
anthropologist Michael Cernea of George Washington University. Such
outcomes-coupled with the realization that indigenous groups usually
help to stabilize ecosystems by, for instance, keeping fire or invasive weeds
at bay-have convinced major conservation groups to take local human
concerns into account. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) now describes
indigenous peoples as "natural allies," and the Nature Conservancy
pledges to seek their "free, informed and prior" consent to projects impacting
their territories.

Recent incidents, however, have made some observers wonder. "They're
talking the talk, but are they walking the walk?" asks Jim Wickens of
the advocacy group Forest Peoples Program, based in Moreton-in-Marsh,
England. Wickens cites a "huge cry of concern" by 71 grassroots groups
protesting a WWF effort to set up a certification scheme for shrimp aquaculture.
Shrimp farms have often been established along tropical coastlines by cutting
down mangroves, and their effluents have damaged neighboring fisheries
and farmlands. The Mangrove Action Project, an advocacy group based in Port
Angeles, Wash., considers intensive shrimp aquaculture impossible to
make sustainable.

The WWF counters that less than one third of shrimp manufacturers
worldwide are currently achieving the standards that it hopes to set. As
such, certification should "certainly make shrimp farming cleaner," says
Jason Clay, WWF's vice president of markets. Geographer Peter
Vandergeest of York University in Toronto worries, however, that the endeavor will
falter unless the communities that are affected by shrimp farms have a
say in setting standards and enforcement. Given the remoteness of many
shrimp farms, he explains, auditors' checks will be rare, and "you can easily
put on a show."

Perhaps more worrisome to advocates for indigenous peoples, however, are
so-called carbon-offset schemes that seek to protect standing forests.
Several of the large environmental or gani zations hold that the carbon
saved by preventing defores tation could be sold as offsets, thereby
generating funds for conservation and communities. A scheme re ferred to
as REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) may be
introduced this December into the United Nations Climate Change
Convention, and it could be partly financed by offsets. The Nature
Conservancy hopes that three billion tons of such credits, valued at $45
billion, can be generated by 2020.

But Marcus Colchester of Forest Peoples Program comments: "We see a risk
that the prospect of getting a lot of money for biodiversity could
lead to indigenous peoples' concerns falling by the wayside." In particular,
increasing the financial value of forests could lead to "the biggest
land grab of all time," claims Tom B. K. Goldtooth of the Indigenous
Environmental Network, based in Bemidji, Minn. Interpol has warned that
unscrupulous entities plan to profit from REDD: their methods could
include expelling an indigenous people from their forest to acquire
legal title over it. The Nature Conservancy, which supports indigenous
peoples' efforts to acquire legal rights to their territories, counters that
"increasing the value of forests through REDD can only provide them
benefits."

Concerns of displacement are particularly acute in Indonesia, where
villagers opposing logging operations and paper, pulp and palm oil
plantations on their territories have experienced violent attacks.
Some 20 carbon forestry projects are already in the works there. Colchester
warns that the government's regulations on REDD do not adequately protect
in digenous peoples. In the Kampar Penin sula, for instance, a forestry
company proposes to clear-cut a ring of swamp forest and plant it with
acacia-so as to protect the forest in the core area and thereby earn
REDD credits. The project would limit the access of the Melayu people to
their traditional fishing creeks and hunting grounds; they have protested by
preventing company staff from entering the area.

Similar fears of dispossession color attempts to protect coral reefs. In
May six nations in Southeast Asia, with technical support from the
Nature Conservancy, WWF and Conservation International, committed to the Coral
Triangle Initiative, which will protect 75,000 square kilometers of
coastline, coral reefs and ocean. M. Riza Damanik of KIARA, the
Fisheries Justice Coalition of Indonesia, worries that the richest fishing grounds
will be zoned off as protected areas.

Environmental psychologist Lea Scherl of James Cook University in
Australia, who has studied the region's marine protected areas, believes
that such concerns are justified. In the largest conservation
organizations, she explains, scientists design projects on the macro
level-as if the map contained only natural features-and factor in
culture afterward. "The people rarely have a meaningful voice at the very
outset," she says. Furthermore, efforts to mitigate a project's impacts on local
communities are underfunded and often unsystematic, compared with the
scientific aspects.

In the end, it is those who have intimate details of the land and the
seas, accumulated over generations, who hold key insights to
conservation. As Scherl puts it: "You lose that knowledge when you take the people
away."

반응형