Monday, November 17, 2014

How the Kalahari bushmen and other tribespeople are being evicted to make way for ‘wilderness’

When Botswana’s president, Ian Khama, opened a giant $4.9bn diamond mine in the heart of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in September, there were some notable absentees among the invited guests: the 700 bushmen whose hunter-gatherer families had been the traditional inhabitants of the desert, but who have been exiled to impoverished settlements on the edge of the park and are forbidden to hunt the wildlife.

According to a Survival International report, launched at the World Parks Congress in Sydney, the world’s biggest conservation meeting, the San of the Kalahari are just one among hundreds of tribal peoples who have been evicted or are under threat of expulsion from the world’s 6,000 national parks and 100,000 protected conservation areas, which together are thought to cover nearly 13% of the Earth’s land surface.

The Survival study states: “In an attempt to protect these areas of so-called ‘wilderness’, governments, companies and NGOs forming the conservation industry enforce the creation of inviolate zones free of human habitation. Tribespeople who live in them are expected to change their way of life and relocate. They are given little, if any, choice about what happens.”

Stephen Corry, director of Survival, said: “This [trend] is based on unscientific assumptions that tribal peoples are incapable of managing their lands, that they overhunt, overgraze and overuse the resources on their lands. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Maasai told to leave historic homeland by end of the year so it can become...
  2. Bono, elite frontman for the great African land grab...
  3. Cambodia: "If you take away land, you take away life"
  4. Blood sugar: Oxfam accuses Coke and Pepsi of fueling land grabs...
  5. Biofuel project funded by UK ‘leaves Africans without food’

No comments:

Post a Comment