BINGO=big international non-governmental organization
The cover story of the November/December 2005 issue of Orion online is Conservation Refugees: When protecting nature means kicking people out, by Mark Dowie.
First off it is worth mentioning that we, especially Americans, but I suppose most people in general, like dichotomies: here we have the two party system. It is easier than the alternative. As a side note a great book on the subject of dichotomizing life is Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf.
This article, then, discusses as its main theme the manifestation of one of the ongoing issues, if you will, regarding the major physical isms of our day: environmentalism and socialism. By environmentalism I mean the general large-scale movement by people and groups at various sociopolitical levels to protect/enhance the state of the Earth’s environment. And similarly, by socialism I mean the movement to protect/enhance the state of the world’s people. Now how environmentalist and socialist ideals are internally similar is not up for discussion here.
The idea is basically that there is a trade-off between human needs and the needs of the environment. Any given sizeable tract of land on earth is or is not populated with people. Any place that is without people is considered “wild”. A detailed recap of this aspect of environmentalism is vast and therefore I won’t comment further on this outside the scope of the article at hand. But what is important is that the so-called dichotomy is a simplification of the reality that within the development world there is a third path, which is the middle road, the idea of “humans living in harmony with nature”.
Here it is important to point out semantics related to the article. Dowie uses the term “conservation” repeatedly. This term within has certain connotations and is, I believe, a misnomer. Dowie cite’s, for example, John Muir as a “conservationist”, just as most do. The term “preservationist” is, I believe, a more appropriate term. The difference is significant, since the actions of the BINGOs Dowie refers to are in fact acts of preservation, i.e. setting aside and “preserving” tracts of land, keeping them from human use altogether. Whereas the true conservationist would approach land and resource use with a “use, but use cautiously and sustainably” approach.
I feel at this point I should take a stance on the issue. Based on his story as presented in the article, it is difficult to disagree with Dowie’s conclusion that “if we want to preserve biodiversity in the far reaches of the globe, places that are in many cases still occupied by indigenous people living in ways that are ecologically sustainable, history is showing us that the dumbest thing we can do is kick them out”. Dowie shows that there are case studies showing both sides of the issue, where in some cases allowing indigenous people to stay works for the better of nature while in other cases allowing people to stay in “protected areas” has cause concern that those that stay will inevitably acquire more modern tools resulting in more damage in the long run. Quite frankly, my concern at this point is that the treating of indigenous people as people to be “protected” just like the gorillas or elephants the conservationists are trying to protect is doomed to fail for the very reason that the spread of ideas and the spread of modern methods of resource utilization is on a path right now that will result in further damage to already over-stressed environmental resources regardless of what people within these areas claim. I state this with no substantiation at this point–it will be the focus of future investigation. But based in my knowledge of history trusting people to lookout for the environment will work up to a point. With western ideas taking over the world, there must be a concorted effort at the level of the corporations who are trying to overuse the worlds resources to protect the non-human elements of the Earth. The western, corporate way of exploitation is unabashed at this point and it takes major, corporate-style efforts to counter their very actions.
There is the flip side to this, of course, which I will discuss in my next blog. Adieu for now.
