Conservation efforts threaten livelihoods of indigenous people

Land under protected areas tripled from 1990 to 2014

BANGKOK: Saw Ma Bu’s family has lived in the mountainous forests of Myanmar’s Kayin state for generations, farming and fishing in the Salween river, even as a decades-long armed conflict raged in the region.

Now, he says, they fear their way of life is under threat as the government declares swathes of forest in indigenous Karen homelands as protected areas. Saw Ma Bu and other community leaders have drawn up a plan to conserve the forest, preserve their traditions and livelihoods, and be a model for indigenous lands elsewhere in the country.

Under their proposal, the Karen people would manage the Salween Peace Park, a 5 200 square kilometre area on Myanmar’s eastern frontier with Thailand.

“The Peace Park is built on the culture and traditions of the indigenous Karen people. Conservation and coexistence with the environment is a fact of life for us, and essential for our survival,” said Saw Ma Bu.

Myanmar officials have not yet agreed to their proposal.

Saw Ma Bu has seen protected areas uprooting indigenous people elsewhere in the country, and is keeping a close watch on neighbouring Tanintharyi region, where Karen people also live.

Civil society groups there have opposed the creation of large protected areas, saying they could force people from their homes and prevent those who fled fighting from returning.

Saw Ma Bu said the Peace Park would ensure that his community retained the rights to their traditional land.

“In the government’s plans for conservation there is no recognition of the territorial rights of our customary land and forest, or our traditional agricultural methods,” he said.

His concerns are mirrored among indigenous groups around the world, according to the advocacy organisation Rights and Research International (RRI).

Indigenous and local communities owned more than half the world’s land under customary rights. Yet they only had secure legal rights to 10%, RRI said.

The rapid growth of protected areas from Peru to Indonesia was exacerbating their vulnerability: more than 250 000 people in 15 countries were evicted because of protected areas from 1990 to 2014, according to RRI.

Land under protected areas tripled between 1980 and 2005, and as much as 80% of those areas overlapped with indigenous land, RRI said.

This “creates a near-constant state of confrontation and potential for conflict and violence”, including evictions and killings, said RRI’s Janis Alcorn.

“Indigenous people and local communities have been conserving their land and forests for centuries. But the rise of ‘fortress conservation’ is forcing them from their homes, hurting people and forests alike,” she said.

In Kayin state, where the Karen National Union fought for autonomy for more than six decades, the conflict has killed hundreds and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes, human rights groups say.