Using ‘security issues’ to seize community lands for ‘conservation’

This paper is number 2. of the briefing series Transforming Conservation: from conflict to justice.

From Eastern Congo to the coast of Kenya, “security” crises are used to evict forest peoples, creating greater insecurity in the process. We compare this practice in relation to the Batwa in present day Kahuzi-Biega (DR Congo), the Ogiek in 1980s Mt Elgon (Kenya), the Benet Mosopisyek bopth at Mt Elgon in 2008 (Uganda), and the Aweer in Lamu County from 1963 to 1967 (Kenya).

Forest peoples’ lands are often designated by the state as “protected areas”. As a consequence, forest peoples are evicted from their ancestral lands and forbidden to return to them or have access to them, and “management” of these lands is passed to conservation authorities.

Read the paper in English --- Lisez le document en français --- Soma karatasi kwa kiswahili

Forest peoples’ lands may include areas where there are security concerns. Many of the places where forest peoples are trying to protect their rights to their traditional lands are also used and contested by other more powerful actors. Some are on or near national borders, some are rich in natural resources that attract economic interests, (often due to the many centuries of effective community custodianship before their disposession), some are in countries or regions where governance is weak – and many are affected by all of those factors simultaneously.

The security issues are not a result of forest peoples’ activities or actions. Serious security challenges are posed by armed groups who are unconnected with forest peoples and are financed and supported by economic or political interests that are nothing to do with the communities on the ground.

National and conservation authorities use security concerns as an excuse to contest forest peoples’s legitimate claims to their ancestral lands. A security crisis is often used as an excuse to assert state and conservation authority control cover forest peoples’ ancestral lands and to justify their eviction and mistreatment.

Key points:

1. States often designate forest peoples’ land as protected areas, giving conservation authorities the right to control and manage the land.  
2. Genuine security concerns are used by government and conservation authorities as an excuse to effect violent evictions that otherwise might not be able to happen.  
3. After the security crisis calms down and the situation is normalised, the communities are never allowed to go back to their lands.  
4. In these four cases, the real motives for evicting communities pre-exists and has nothing to do with - the particular security crisis.  
5. Such evictions neither conserve security nor secure conservation.

About this briefing series:

In 2003, at the 5th World Parks Congress in Durban, the conservation world made commitments to return lands to  indigenous peoples that had been turned into protected areas without their consent, and to only establish new protected areas with their full consent and involvement. Those commitments have not been realised. This series offers case studies, testimony, research, and analysis from FPP and from our partners that examine the current state of play of the relationship between conservation and indigenous peoples, and local communities with collective ties to their lands. It will expose challenges and injustices linked to conservation operations, showcase practical, positive ways forward for the care of lands and ecosystems, led by indigenous peoples and local communities themselves, and reflect on pathways to just and equitable conservation more broadly.