The May/June issue of Foreign Policy runs a really interesting essay by Charles Geiser, a professor of rural sociology at Cornell U., that argues how “global land conservation efforts are creating a growing class of invisible refugees” (no link; subscription only). Writes Dr. Geisler:

The recent worldwide growth of parks and protected areas is impressive. According to the Switzerland-based World Conservation Union, nearly 29,000 protected areas now shield some 2.1 billion acres of land from a series of residential and economic uses. These territories compose 6.4 percent of the earth’s land, or about half of the world’s croplands, and are roughly the size of the continental United States plus half of Alaska. Most of this protection is recent. From less than 1,000 protected areas in 1950, the count grew to 3,500 in 1985 before ballooning to 29,000 today. The most ardent conservationists seek to multiply today’s base several times. If such global ‘greenlining’ continues without concern for the rights of resident populations, its gains could take an enormous human toll. [my emphasis].

For Geisler, Africa presents the perfect example of the kind of global greenlining whose social costs are prohibitive:

In 1985, Africa had 443 publicly protected areas encompassing 217 million acres of land. Facing international pressure, virtually all African countries have since increased their protected land base. Today, over 1000 protected areas account for 380 million acres of African land, with 7 countries claiming protected status for more than 10% of their land base. In 14 African countries, more land is greenlined than cultivated, and the poorer countries in Africa today have on average more land set aside for conservation than the continent’s more affluent nations [my emphasis].

“How many people,” asks Geisler, “have these conservation efforts displaced?”

A precise count of conservation refugees in Africa and elsewhere remains elusive, in part due to diverse definitions of ‘protected area,’ enforcement problems, and recidivism among refugees. In Africa, well-known cases of mass eviction have occurred in Uganda, Botswana, Cameroon, Madagascar, South Africa, Togo, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Democratic Republic of the Congo, affecting nearly half a million people. For example, Tanzania’s Masailand is now dotted with national parks that have displaced more than 60,000 farmers and pastoralists from their ancestral lands. Indirect measurements — such as multiplying the area under protection by a low range of possible human densities — yield estimates of 900,000 to 14.4 million people. If accurate, these upper bounds mean that conservation refugees in Africa could roughly equal the global refugee population of 14.5 million people currently calculated by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees.

To Geisler, “Global conservation is surely a worthy cause, but it’s sometimes insensitive implementation raises serious environmental justice questions.” To wit:

[…] Whose public interest does greenlining serve? Seldom the interests of conservation refugees, who remain invisible in conservation planning debates.

The invisibility has multiple causes. The first involves the nature of refugee reality: Authorities usually deny refugee problems until they take on crisis proportions, and the official definitions of a refugee exclude many forms of displacement. Policymakers and environmentalists periodically disregard the social and cultural impact of protected areas, perceiving conservation as the opposite of ‘development’ and portraying local residents as intruders. A final reason is class bias. Environmental refugees in Africa and elsewhere tend to be poor and powerless. It is the wealthy inhabitants of the planet who benefit most from greenlining — enjoying exotic vacation destinations, new targets or their tax-deductible largess, windfall gains in value for their high-end properties in or near protected zones, and what Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson calls ‘biophilia,’ or a deep felt loyalty to the earth’s biota. Local inhabitants are rarely so fortunate. Many live on marginal lands in marginal places with marginal rights to remain in their communities. Their contributions to the ecosystem are taken for granted and appropriated with little compensation. Simply put, conservation refugees are invisible because visibility raises the price of conservation [my emphasis].

Keep this in mind during your next debate with hardcore conservationists. Should the world’s poor be asked “to disproportionally subsidize the expansion of conservation”?

Of course not.

But sometimes when folks get galloping on their highhorses, they haven’t time to pay attention to who or what they’re trampling over…