Salvaging Nature:
Indigenous Peoples, Protected Areas and Biodiversity Conservation.
by Marcus Colchester 

UNITED NATIONS RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
WORLD RAINFOREST MOVEMENT

Abstract

Wilderness and Preservation

Indigenous Peoples and their rights

Protecting Biodiversity

Social Impacts of Wilderness Preservation

The Politics of Parks

Society and Biodiversity

Parks for People: management alternatives

Conservation outside Protected Areas

From National Parks to Global Benefits: Conservation of the Global Commons

Conclusions

References

This publication brings together several themes of research and advocacy that I have pursued over the last twenty years. It builds in particular on field research in Amazonia in the 1970s and 1980s, funded by the Social Science Research Council, the Ruggles-Gate Trust and the Emslie-Hornimann Foundation. As a researcher with the Fundacion la Salle de Ciencias Naturales in Caracas, I was intimately involved over a long period with efforts to secure indigenous land rights and protected area status for the Upper Orinoco. Later, as Projects Director of the human rights organisation Survival International, I became all too familiar with the clash between indigenous peoples' aspirations and the impositions of conservation planners. My work for the Forest Peoples Programme of the World Rainforest Movement, mainly funded by Novib, has allowed me to make field visits to many more indigenous communities and special efforts were made to visit and research some more recent protected area projects for this publication. A Pew Conservation Scholarship has provided funds to finalise this work.

I am especially indebted to the many NGOs, community groups and indigenous representatives with whom I have discussed their lives and perspectives during these years. I am grateful to Dorothy Jackson and Louise Henson of the World Rainforest Movement, and Nick Hildyard, Sarah Sexton and Larry Lohmann of The Ecologist for their help with the bibliographic research, and to Janis Alcorn, Robert Hitchcock, Brian Morris and Chris Elliott for drawing my attention to some critical areas of debate. I should also like to thank Janis Alcorn, Robert Hitchcock, Sandra Charity, Krishna Ghimire, Ricardo Carrere, Patrick Anderson, Michel Pimbert and Mike Roselle for making comments on the first draft of this paper. There are, of course, not responsible for what I have written. Finally, I would like to thank the UNRISD team for inviting me to carry out the study.

Concepts of wilderness and biodiversity conservation have evolved within a traditional view which sets mankind apart from nature, and sees nature both as a threat to the social order and as a refuge from the stresses of civilised life. Within this world view, quite different from that of most indigenous peoples, wilderness preservation seeks to institutionalise this dichotomy, by establishing protected areas free from human occupation but available for recreation. However, most protected areas are inhabited, many by indigenous peoples. International law recognises the collective rights of indigenous peoples to land, natural resources and self-government and establishes strict conditions under which they can be resettled in the national interest.

Conservation, which has emerged as a powerful global force dominated by Northern technical institutions, increasingly seeks to limit human activities in biodiversity-rich areas, especially in the South. Mainstream conservationists have sought to impose their culturally-bound vision of natural resource management on indigenous peoples without taking into account their rights under international law or their different priorities and perceptions. Forced relocation, impoverishment, cultural destruction and the undermining of traditional systems of natural resource management have been common results. Conflicts between indigenous peoples and conservation agencies have resulted, making protected areas unmanageable and inoperative. Mainstream conservationists are exercising a political choice to secure the power of the State over local resources at the expense of indigenous political institutions. However, States often lack both the capacity and the political interest to effectively control and manage protected areas. Repressive State agencies often abuse their power in the name of conservation and human rights violations are widespread.

The extent to which indigenous societies are 'conservationist' is contentious. Many indigenous peoples live in relatively undegraded environments, they have extensive knowledge of their environment, they have complex practices for regulating resource use and strong ties with their lands. Internally and externally generated changes, most obviously the intrusion of the market, threaten to undermine these relatively stable societies. Maintaining balance requires secure land rights and functioning of indigenous political institutions as much as the preservation of their knowledge. Recognising these problems, conservationists have experimented widely; creating buffer zones, profit-sharing schemes, joint management and by recognising indigenous territorial rights. The main problems have related to the locus of power, between conservationists and the local people, as well as in choosing which local institutions are representative. Coercive systems have rarely been effective, but the power of the State can and needs to be recruited to secure indigenous management.

Outside of protected areas, conservationist impositions have also generated problems, due to inadequate priority being given to indigenous land rights and control over decision-making. The Biodiversity Convention and the Global Environment Facility reinforce these top-down tendencies, strengthening the power of States and intergovernmental institutions at the expense of indigenous peoples. New areas of conflict are now emerging over the assertion of intellectual property rights over indigenous knowledge and biotechnologies, including indigenous peoples' own genes.

Though conservationists have become keenly aware of the need to accomodate indigenous interests, they increasingly act as consultants and agents for international development agencies and this is affecting their management style. Conservation agencies need to be made much more accountable to indigenous peoples if they are to become more socially sensitive and to cede power to local communities. This is most likely to be achieved by effective indigenous mobilisation. There are encouraging examples which suggest that conservationists and indigenous peoples can reconcile their interests.

'And in future what a splendid contemplation... when one... imagines them as they might be seen, by some great protecting policy of government preserved in their pristine beauty and wildness, in a magnificent park, where the world could see for ages to come, the native Indian in his classic attire, galloping his wild horse, with sinewy bow, and shield and lance, amid the fleeting herds of elks and buffaloes... A nation's Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature's beauty!'

(George Catlin, 1841, The Manners and Customs of the North American Indians, Penguin, Harmondsworth (1989) p.vii).

The idea that humankind, or to be more accurate mankind, is apart from nature seems to be one that is deeply rooted in western civilization. In contrast to the 'animistic' religions of many indigenous peoples, which, to use our terms, see culture in nature and nature in culture (Hultkrantz 1967; Lowie 1970; Eliade 1972; Colchester 1981; 1982). Judaeo-Christian traditions tell of an origin in which man was given dominion over the beasts. Indeed, even the most ancient of the world's epics, the Tale of Gilgamesh, recounts the primordial struggle between kingly civilisation and the forests, the source of all evil and brutishness (Sinclair 1991).

In ancient Greece, untamed nature was perceived as the domain of wild, irrational, female forces that contrasted with the rational culture ordered by males. In this world view, not only was nature a dangerous threat to the city state, but the wilderness beyond was peopled by barbarians, the epitome of whom were the Amazons - long haired, naked, female savages who represented the antithesis of Greek civilization (Just 1981).

These precepts endure to this day. In Europe's middle ages the image was sustained of an ordered world of culture managed by civilised men, bounded by a chaotic wilderness peopled with savages, the abode of pagan warlocks and witches who drew their power from the dangerous, evil forces of nature, the realm of Beelzebub himself (Duerr 1985). Similar images continue to sustain the views of fundamentalist Christian missionaries who perceive the shamanism of indigenous peoples as 'devil worship', and believe that as 'Commandos for Christ' they have a God-given role to 'reach the lost until they have reached the last', in 'Satan's last stronghold' (Stoll 1982; Colchester 1982:386 ff; Hvalkof and Aaby 1981; Jank 1977; Lewis 1990).

Pioneering Christian fundamentalists brought these same views of nature to the New World where they found them strongly reinforced. Beset from the first by naked, long haired 'salvages' [footnote: the word, which is cognate with the French 'sauvage' and Spanish 'selvaje', means, literally forest-dweller. Its pejorative notion derives entirely from the prejudice against such people.] who knew nothing of Christ or modesty, their precarious frontier world depended on a taming of nature as they sought to wrest a living from a hostile wilderness. As one local poet wrote in 1662, the forests of the New World were:

'A waste and howling wilderness,
Where none inhabited
But hellish fiends and brutish men
That devils worshipped.' (in Sinclair 1991:50)

The notion that their society had a 'manifest destiny' to tame the wilds became a fundamental truth and political imperative (DiSilvestro 1993).

Dissenters from this society, alienated by its crassness and greed, sought refuge in its antithesis. For romantics such as the artist George Catlin, the noble Indians whose guiltless lives were being undermined by disease, firewater and land-grabbing, were perceived as a part of wild nature itself - not evil, but unstained, part of an ancient world as yet untainted by the whiteman (Catlin 1989). The ascetic recluse Thoreau likewise found that 'In wildness is the preservation of the world' (in DiSilvestro 1993:25). These views echo an equally long counter-tradition, that sees human civilisation as flawed and unfulfilling. Just as Gilgamesh, epic king of the first city of Mesopotamia lamented 'in the city man dies with despair in his heart' (Sinclair 1991:6), so Thoreau was to write nearly four millennia later 'Our lives need the relief of [the wilderness] where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams... little oases in the desert of our civilization' (cited in Ussher nd).

There thus emerged in late C19th America, as a counterpoint to a view of the wilds as evil and opposed to society, a new tradition of wilderness as a refuge from the ills of civilization, as something to be preserved for the recreation of the human spirit. John Muir, one of the main forces in the national parks movement in the United States, argued vehemently and successfully that wilderness areas should be set aside for recreation to fulfil an emotional need for wild places. In the view of these conservationists, as they have come to be known, wilderness is 'primitive and natural' (DiSilvestro 1993) a resource that is not for use but to be preserved untouched (Redford and Stearman 1993b:428).

As well as laying the basis for the national parks programme in the States, these views of nature powerfully shaped the global pattern of conservation. In the States this view of conservation and nature remains as deeply embedded as ever. Wilderness is still revered by Americans as a place to rediscover the purpose of life, while for many 'wildness' is biodiversity (DiSilvestro 1993:xvii). The notion that nature and human society are inherently antagonistic and incompatible rationalises the intense sense of alienation that underlies many American versions of 'deep ecology' and motivates many members of groups such as Earth First! (Taylor 1991). For such 'deep ecologists', 'wilderness means extensive areas of native vegetation in various successional stages, off limits to human exploitation'. They justify such exclusion on the grounds that 'most of the Earth has been colonized by human only in the last several thousand years' (Wild Earth 1992:4).

The Yosemite State Park and the Yellowstone National Park were the first results of this approach and the same philosophy of national Parks as excluding humankind were eventually given a basis in law. As Gomez-Pompa and Andrea Kaus (1992:271) have noted, according to the 1964 US Wilderness Act, wilderness is a place 'where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.'

Since the concept of a 'National Park' was first born it has spread throughout the world and with it the basic premise that nature must be preserved free from human interference. Bernard Grzimek, whose campaigns to conserve wildlife in East Africa made the Serengeti Plains into one of the most well-known protected areas on the planet, was single-mindedly dedicated to excluding the indigenous Maasai cattle herders from their lands. 'A National Park' he argued 'must remain a primordial wilderness to be effective. No men, not even native ones, should live inside its borders' (Adams and McShane 1992:xvi). By the 1970s, this vision of protected area management had come to dominate the conservation movement. According to the IUCN, a national park was narrowly defined as a large area:

'1. where one or several ecosystems are not materially altered by human exploitation and occupation, where plant and animal species, geomorphological sites and habitats are of special scientific, educative and recreative interest or which contains a natural landscape of great beauty;

'2. where the highest competent authority of the country has taken steps to prevent or eliminate as soon as possible exploitation or occupation of the whole area and to enforce effectively the aspect of ecological, geomorphological or aesthetic features that have led to its establishment.' (cited in West 1991:xvii).

One curious aspect of this view of nature, is that even where such lands are inhabited by indigenous people, they are sometimes still considered to be wilderness. The contradiction can be sustained because of a common perception that indigenous people are 'of nature' - wild, natural, primitive and innocent. When Europeans contacted indigenous people in North America, the long haired Indians fitted perfectly the European notion of wildness, as unruly, uncontrolled, feminine forces in league with the devil (Amselle 1978). The image, though modified, was maintained in the era of 'romanticism', where indigenous peoples were considered natural and blameless 'savages', lost to civilisation in the wild woods - sans dieu, sans loi et sans roi (godless, lawless and kingless) (Hemming 1978). To some extent these images are retained to this day and lie behind conservationist policies of 'enforced primitivism', whereby indigenous people are accommodated in protected areas so long as they conform to stereotype and do not adopt modern practices (Goodland 1982).

In the Old World, the roots of the protected area movement have rather different origins. Game reserves for royal hunts first appear in recorded history in Assyria in 700 BC (Dixon and Sherman 1991:9). By 400 BC royal hunts were established in India under Ashoka (Gadgil and Guha 1993). The Moguls reinforced this tradition in India where the idea gained a wider currency among the ruling elite. The Normans introduced same idea to England in C11th and enforced the concept of royal forests with such enthusiasm that the by the reign of Henry II near 25% of England was classified as royal hunts. Local people bitterly objected to the restrictions on their rights that these royal forests imposed (Westoby 1987) and it is presumed by many that the myth of Robin Hood has its roots in popular resistance by Saxon yeomen to the impositions of Norman rulers.

However, while the definition of areas as royal forest served to reinforce social inequities, it did not imply either the wholesale extinction of local ownership or other rights (Rackham 1989). On the contrary, these traditional rights were too long recognised and deeply vested for the conquerors to be able to ignore, and the royal forests were thus defined as yet another layer of special rights that did not completely extinguish the complex web of prior rights of use, access, transit and ownership.

The way National Parks have been established in Britain owes much to this long tradition of overlapping rights. What has emerged in Britain is a practise of landscape conservation rather than wilderness preservation, which respects the long-established order of land tenure (Harmon 1991). Recognising that landscapes are not only overlain with existing rights but are also a joint creation of natural growth and human cultivation, British conservationists accepted a vision of nature as part of a process of 'continuity and gradual change, with man at the centre and integral to the rural landscape' (Blacksell 1982 cited in Harmon 1991:34). National parks in Britain thus not only fully recognise existing rights but also seek to maintain the established farming system. Moreover, in their management, British National Parks formally involve local government bodies and have special mechanisms to ensure that local residents have a direct influence over decision-making.

Conservation notions spread oversees with the extension of the colonies, but brought with them little of this respect for traditional rights and uses. Though partly to counter the excesses of colonialism, the colonial State sought ever greater control of natural resources. As early as the 18th century the French began experiments to regulate forest use on Mauritius and the English began similar initiatives in Tobago. Environmental concerns also played their part in the push to create forest reserves in India, when it was recognised that excessive forest loss, largely resulting from forest clearance for cash cropping, was not only leading to the silting up of Malabar in India but was also responsible for local climate change (Grove 1992; Haeuber 1993). Other less noble sentiments also lay behind the annexation of land for forest reserves. The need to secure supplies of timbers for the imperial infrastructures - for railway sleepers and navies - (Guha 1989b, Fernandes and Kulkarni 1982; Shiva 1987), resulted in huge areas of India and later other colonial territories being set aside as Reserved and Protected Forests under the control of the colonial Forests Department. Restrictions were progressively tightened so that by 1900 local people were even denied access to these areas to hunt unless they could get hold of a hunting license (Tucker 1991).

The establishment of protected areas for wildlife conservation in India was founded on the forest department's experience, reinforced by the concerns of colonial sportsmen and native aristocrats, who wished to preserve game for hunting. The model for wildlife conservation that was adopted in India was thus based on the US experience, treating the local people as 'poachers' and 'encroachers' rather than as local owners with prior rights to the areas. The tribal residents of many of the areas favoured for wildlife preservation were held responsible for the decline in local fauna, particularly as some were by then involved in a lucrative trade in game birds and feathers and shifting cultivation was held in opprobrium (Tucker 1991). As one textbook for trainee foresters argued:

'Forest dwelling communities are invariably inveterate hunters and have in most areas practically annihilated game animals and birds by indiscriminate hunting and snaring. It is surely time to instill in the tribal mind a respect for the basic game laws of the country' (Stracey 1963 cited in Tucker 1991:50).

It thus transpired that despite the very different historical trajectories of the conservation movement, the needs and rights of indigenous peoples were to receive short shrift. National Parks and other protected areas have imposed elite visions of land use which result in the alienation of common lands to the State. What is equally clear is that the conservationists' concept of wilderness is a cultural construct not necessarily shared by other peoples and civilizations which have quite different views of their relationship with what we call nature.

Indigenous peoples are thus perplexed by western views of what conservation means (Alcorn 1993:425). For example, Ruby Dunstan of the Nl'aka'pamux people of the Stein Valley in Alberta, Canada, who have been fighting to prevent the logging of their ancestral lands, has remarked:

'I never thought of the Stein Valley as a wilderness. My Dad used to say 'that's our pantry'. We knew about all the plants and animals, when to pick, when to hunt. We knew because we were taught every day. It's like we were pruning everyday... But some of the white environmentalists seemed to think if something was declared a wilderness, no-one was allowed inside because it was so fragile. So they have put a fence around it, or maybe around themselves' (cited in Ann Ussher nd).

There are no commonly accepted definitions of who indigenous peoples are. In its most literal sense the term 'indigenous' only implies long term residence in a given area. Yet in international law the term has begun to be used in a more precise way to apply to culturally distinct ethnic groups, who have a different identity from the national society, draw existence from local resources and are politically non-dominant (ICIHI 1987). In a like vein, the World Bank identifies as indigenous peoples 'social groups with a social and cultural identity distinct from the dominant society that makes them vulnerable to being disadvantaged by the development process' (World Bank 1992c). The International Labour Organisation (ILO), whose Conventions treat both indigenous and tribal peoples, place more emphasis on the notion of prior residence in an area, before conquest, colonisation or the establishment of present state boundaries. However, the ILO notes clearly that:

'self-identification as indigenous or tribal shall be regarded as a fundamental criterion for determining the groups to which the provisions of this Convention shall apply' (ILO 1989, Article 1).

For their part, many ethnically distinct and marginal peoples are increasingly adopting the term 'indigenous' to describe themselves because of the rights that they believe are associated with such a term - rights to their lands and territories, to the recognition of their right to be different, to maintain their cultural traditions, religions, languages and practices, to exercise their customary law, to govern themselves through their own institutions, to represent themselves through their own organisations, to control their own natural resources, to self-determination.

Estimates of the numbers of people classified as 'indigenous' vary widely, not only because definitions vary but because census data are often poor or absent in the remote areas such people inhabit. Figures from organisations such as the International Labour Organisation, Survival International and the International Working Group on Indigenous Affairs range between 300 and 500 million worldwide. More importantly, 'indigenous' people speak the vast majority of the world's languages and represent the majority of cultural diversity (see map and table).

Government policies towards indigenous peoples vary widely. On the one hand, many state policies seek to eradicate indigenous lifestyles and cultures and integrate them into the national mainstream. On the other hand, other policies seek to isolate indigenous people and keep them apart from the national majority. In both cases the underlying prejudice is that indigenous peoples are inferior and must either be elevated to a more modern cultural level or kept apart from their superiors (Bodley 1982). Policies of integration received the sanction of international law, with the promulgation of the ILO's Convention 107 on Tribal and Indigenous Populations, but more recently, such policies have been rejected by the ILO as inappropriate and current policies stress the need to respect 'the aspiration of these peoples to exercise control over their own institutions, ways of life and economic development and to maintain and develop their identities, languages, religions, within the framework of the States in which they live' (ILO 1989).

What most indigenous people themselves demand is the right to self-determination in accordance with the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Social, Cultural and Economic Rights. Whereas the ILO's Convention specifically avoids deciding whether or not indigenous peoples have such rights (ILO Convention 169, Article 1.3), the latest draft of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, being developed by the UN's Human Rights Commission, notes in Article 3:

'Indigenous Peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right, they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.'

International law also clearly accepts the right of indigenous peoples to the use and ownership of their traditional lands. Article 11 of ILO Convention 107 of 1957 states:

'The right of ownership, collective or individual, of the members of the populations concerned over the lands which these populations traditionally occupy shall be recognised.'

The law established the principle that 'aboriginal title' is to be derived from immemorial possession and does not depend on any act of the state. Moreover as Gordon Bennett's (1978) study of the travaux preparatories of the Convention show, the Convention considers land to be generic and to include the woods and waters upon it. The law has important implications for conservationists. Indigenous peoples have established ownership rights to their lands and resources. Although this convention may not be recognised by all national governments it sets clear standards that intergovernmental and international agencies cannot reasonably ignore.

Convention 107 also established firm principles regarding the forced relocation of indigenous and tribal peoples. Under article 12 of the Convention indigenous people cannot be relocated except according to national law for reasons of national security, economic development and their own health. If they are relocated, 'as an exceptional measure', they shall be 'provided with lands of quality equal to that of the lands previously occupied by them, suitable to provide for their present needs and future development... Persons thus removed shall be fully compensated for any resulting loss or injury'. As noted below, these are conditions which conservationists have repeatedly breached since these laws were promulgated.

In 1989, the ILO developed a revised convention which further elaborates indigenous rights to land and territories and natural resources. In addition to recognising indigenous peoples' rights to land ownership, Article 14 states that 'measures shall be taken in appropriate cases to safeguard the right of the peoples concerned to use lands not exclusively occupied by them, but to which they have traditionally had access for their subsistence and traditional activities. Particular attention shall be paid to the situation of nomadic peoples and shifting cultivators in this respect.' Article 15 of the Convention also notes:

'The rights of these peoples concerned to the natural resources pertaining to their lands shall be specifically safeguarded. These rights include the right of these people to participate in the use, management and conservation of these resources.'

The latest draft of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is also forthright about indigenous peoples' rights to land. In Article 26 it notes:

'Indigenous peoples have the right to own, develop, control and use the lands and territories, including the total environment of the lands, air, waters, coastal seas, sea-ice, flora and fauna and other resources which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used. This includes the right to the full recognition of their laws, traditions and customs, land-tenure systems and institutions for the development and management of resources, and the right to effective measures by States to prevent any interference with, alienation of or encroachment upon these rights.'

International law also goes some way towards defining how States and outside institutions should go about interactions with indigenous peoples. ILO Convention 169 notes in Article 2 and 4 the need to respect and safeguard indigenous peoples' customs and institutions, while Article 6 obliges States to:

'a) consult the peoples concerned, through appropriate procedures and in particular through their representative institutions, whenever consideration is being given to legislative or administrative measures which may affect them directly.

c) establish means for the full development of the peoples' own institutions and initiatives, and in appropriate cases provide the necessary resources for this purpose.'

International law regarding indigenous people is unique in a number of respects, perhaps the most important being that it recognises collective rights. It thus asserts the authority of the indigenous group to own land and other resources, enter into negotiations and regulate the affairs of its members in line with customary laws which may be quite different to national laws. Indigenous peoples are, thus, to some extent recognised as autonomous seats of power within the State. Outsiders dealing with indigenous peoples need to recognise the political nature of their interaction with them.

The examination of the relationship between conservationists and indigenous peoples, summarised below, takes these internationally agreed legal norms as its starting point. Unfortunately, conservationists have in the past had a very different starting point and, in general, still have a long way to go before a respect for these rights is incorporated into their programmes.

Indigenous people are particularly indignant of the fact that it is exactly because the areas that they inhabit have not been degraded by their traditional resource use practices that they are now coveted by conservationists who seek to limit their activities or expel them altogether from their customary lands. As one Karen facing eviction from the Thung Yai wildlife sanctuary in Thailand noted:

'When we moved into these forests over two centuries ago, Bangkok was just a small village surrounded by lush vegetation. Over these many years, we Karen have protected our forest lands out of respect for our ancestors and our children. Maybe if we had cut down the forests, destroyed the land, and built a great city like Bangkok, we would not now be faced with possible eviction.' (cited in Thongmak and Hulse 1993:167) 

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