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Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine

JUST WHAT IS CONSERVATION?

December 1991

At Cultural Survival, conservation is a people issue, not a biological one. Trees don't cut themselves. Streams don't pollute themselves. the ozone layer is not self-destructing. We are the ones putting our environment in peril.

Conservation is the wise use of resources in such a way that future generations will be able to benefit from the same resources base. Conservation. however, does not mean preservation. It does not mean building fences, around the world's resources or buying significant amounts of land to preserve them. All of the world's land and resources are claimed by different peoples, and most have been used by these peoples since long before the creation of the states or legal systems that today control or regulate these riches. For indigenous peoples, conservation is nothing short of survival.

There are those who see indigenous peoples as the once and future resource managers, and there are those who see them as the main destroyers of some of the Earth's most fragile ecosystems. Many conservationists and biological scientists note that some indigenous groups are degrading their surroundings by using firearms, dynamite, and headlight hunting and by selling off timber and endangered species. Unfortunately, this conclusion plays into the hands of states and corporations that want to appropriate indigenous lands and resources, Conversely, anthropologists and human rights activists often err on the side of romanticism, praising the ways that indigenous peoples live in balance with nature.

The reality is somewhere in between: indigenous resource managements systems are in relatively sustainable balance with nature. But indigenous peoples are not do not try to tell us how to get our houses in order. Their world views and beliefs about the environment lead to specific systems of resource management - some of them sustainable, some not. Some individuals conserve more than others. None of this is terribly different from our own societies.

Indigenous peoples are also modifying their resource use in response to economic, social, population, and political pressers. For example, scientists probably conduct no more than one percent of the field trials for new crops, mixed cropping systems, or agroforestry experiments. These trials are performed primarily by indigenous peoples and poor peasants, whose living depend on such innovation.

DO PARKS AND PEOPLE MIX?

Our special issue on "Parks and People" 9 vol. 9, no. 1, 1985) explored in depth the often divergent interests of conservationists and indigenous people. Here's an excerpt from the introduction.

In the last 25 years it has become obvious that the exclusion of traditional inhabitants from conservation areas has not always had the desired ecological or conservational effects. Yet the lack of any common international vocabulary for discussing parks and the problems they create has impeded resolving the conflicts that have arisen.…

THE DEATH BLOW OF DISPOSSESSION

In 1984 a plan was announced by Nambia's Department of Nature Conservation to turn about 6:,000 km 2 of Eastern Bushmanland into a nature reserve. The area's Julwasi inhabitants; numbering about 2:,500:, were to be robbed of their land and forced to live off government handouts. Only eight of the 34 "nature guides" provided for tourists were to be Ju/wasi. It was also proposed to let one group live within the reserve area as a "tourists attractions" - provided group members lived a traditional lifestyle and did not wear Western clothes.

If the nature reserve is proclaimed, the communities and their cattle will be evicted from their waterholes and forced to move far to the west to expensive boreholes they cannot afford to maintain. Their lives will depend at best on the budget of a government - at worst on the whim of an official. They will be compelled to live in a country they do not know where bushfood and game are scarce or absent, and gifblaar is prevalent. Or they will be herded back to Tshumkwe, an area completely inadequate to support their mixed economy. Instead of setting an example of self-support they will join the dependent many. Instead of providing an answer for the future self-development of the Ju/wa people, they will become part of the problem. All hope of Ju/wa people participating as self-supporting citizens of Namibia will be lost.

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