US Senators Subcommittee Hearing.
Senator Chris Coons (D-Del) and Lindsey Graham(R-S.C) reintroduced the ‘bipartisan, bicameral legislation to create a US Foundation for International Conservation on World Wildlife Day (March 03-2023). This proposed Foundation would fund public-private partnerships to support local communities around the world in effectively managing protected and conserved areas’. This Foundation is meant to help prevent global biodiversity loss and decreases in wildlife population by ‘leveraging investments from the private and philanthropic sectors to fund as much as $2billion, for protected areas around the world and communities surrounding them over the next decade”. Sounds like a great thing, right? Great for rich organizations, very bad for the poor indigenous tribes in Africa.
According to this press release, Senator Graham claimed that the “creation of this Foundation would be a win-win since investments in conservation lead to food security and regional stability”. Has this senator ever heard of all the ‘Conservancies’ in Africa that have existed for decades and yet Africa has the worst regional instability and food insecurity? We will address that later on.
The Press release also quoted some grim statistics from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on global biodiversity loss and declining wildlife populations. The same WWF that is infamous for its inhumane conservation efforts especially in Africa? We will get to that in a minute. The press release also had statements supporting this proposal from leaders of Conservation International, World Wildlife Fund, African Wildlife Foundation, and Environment at The Pew Charitable Trusts, the ICCF Group, The Nature Conservancy and Wildlife Conservation Society. How ‘diverse and representative’ of marginalized global voices are these organizations? We shall avoid that debate for now.
It is sad to see that the US Senators did not see the need to ask community leaders or indigenous tribes for their opinion on the same issue, or human rights groups that have been reporting on the human rights violations and abuses resulting from conservation in Africa. Yet this proposed Foundation will be largely funding the same organizations that have been known to oppress these poor African tribes in the ruse of conservation.
On May 2, 2023 a Subcommittee Hearing on ‘Advancing Security and Prosperity through International Conservation’ was held with Senator Chris Coons chairing it. Senator Coons recently visited Kenya and claimed to have previously seen the efforts of nonprofit organizations around conservation in Africa. Notably, this Subcommittee Hearing invited three witnesses to drum up support for the proposed legislation. The witnesses included Chief Climate Officer, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Ms. Gillian Caldwell, CEO of African Wildlife Foundation Mr. Kaddu Sebunya and President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund Dr. Andrew Steer.
Controversy of the Bezos Earth Fund’s funding projects in Africa.
During this Hearing, Mr. Steer stated that the Bezos Earth Fund is “very interested in partnering with the United States in this new proposal”. The very young fund that was only founded in 2020! Mr. Steer further expounded that this undertaking would take “a very unusual type of partnership ranging from those who are Indigenous people in the forest to those who are trying to make a living outside the forest, to politicians at the highest level, to the business community”. This statement right here struck a nerve! Did he really mean this or said whatever sounded good for the senate to hear at the time?
Our article exposed how the Kenyan government forcefully evicted ethnic groups Ogiek of Mau Forest and Mount Elgon, and Sengwer of Embobut forests and torched their homes in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Other displaced tribes have been the Aweer of Lamu, Yaaku of Mukogodo forest in Kenya among others in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their ancestral lands were taken from them, their human rights violated and the Bezos Earth Fund did not hear about these incidents? The Bezos Earth Fund could have missed these kinds of news given its short life, but that further explains our point, that there are so many systemic issues around conservation that this fund may not fully grasp especially in Africa. We are aware that the CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund and its employees could have been working in conservation or environment areas for decades, but their silence in condemning the inhumane eviction of indigenous tribes from forests makes them complicit in these human rights violations! It also makes them ‘incompetent’ in addressing the real issues around conservation!
Bezos Earth Fund funding World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and World Resources Institute (WRI).
One of our earlier articles explained how the Jeff Bezos’ company Amazon had been accused of interfering and turning marginalized communities against each other in South Africa, as Amazon was acquiring a location for its headquarters in Africa. So how does the very young Bezos Earth Fund want to support proposal on ‘International Conservation’ while it is also accused of largely funding the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)? The infamous WWF has been criticized for its massive expansion and created ‘conservation refugees’ through forceful eviction of indigenous tribes from their lands globally. The WWF has been castigated for their human rights abuses and deception to the rest of the world about their conservation efforts, including appearing for an unprecedented Hearing by the US House Congressional Committee on Natural Resources.
We also exposed in another article how the Bezos Earth Fund has been funding foreign organizations in Africa in their efforts to ‘spearhead’ reforestation projects. One of the organizations that received $100 million for its reforestation projects in Africa is World Resources Institute (WRI). Coincidentally, Andrew Steer was the immediate former President and CEO of WRI. Also, this organization did not have an open office in Nairobi at our time of reporting, and chose to ‘piggy-back’ on an existing world renowned environmental conservation organization, that was started by the late Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai.
Another organization that has received funding from the Bezos Earth Fund is the California-based Eden reforestation Projects to ‘help’ in planting trees in Africa. This organization has falsely claimed on their website that over 90% of Kenya has been deforested. We proved this false from interviewing Kenya Forest Service and Kenyan government officials. This is the same organization that we discovered that owns a carbon trading company for ‘carbon credits’! These reforestation projects are then used as ‘carbon offset projects’ by the same foreign organizations and we showed how the climate justice financing intended to ‘compensate’ Africa ends up in the same polluting countries.
So is the young Bezos Earth Fund really the organization that should be championing the international conservation efforts? Sounds like the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing!
Exposing the CON in Conservation or Conservancies.
Our previous articles have gone into great detail in exposing the inhumane ‘fight against climate change’ in Africa and how Conservancies hoodwink the world into donating into their organizations for their ‘conservation efforts’. It is an open secret that many of these conservancies are a ‘front’ for booming tourism businesses whose revenues rarely trickle down into benefitting the communities.
We have painfully learned that we cannot genuinely rely on what large foreign Conservancies and Wildlife Foundations are reporting, without speaking to the suffering tribes. Worse still, the US senators taking the word of these organizations as ‘gospel truth’ is sickening! The international perception will be that the US is complicit in some of these crimes against humanity regarding conservation.
The Bezos Earth fund offered to help United States lawmakers to implement this proposal through creating a public-private partnership that would support efforts to manage conserved areas in Africa, and stop illegal wildlife trade globally. It is funny how when these conservancies shoot and kill animals for leisure it is called ‘Trophy-hunting’ but when Africans try to do the same they scream ‘poaching’! We exposed how African governments, wildlife agencies and these conservancies collude in large hunting adventures that are then blamed on poor Africans. It is almost impossible for a local African to just walk into the wild and start shooting animals without any prior extensive planning, high-grade weaponry/rifles and transportation means. These are very well coordinated activities by people who have the means and mode of poaching animals which is not the case with indigenous tribes. Another stunning finding from our previous interviews with pastoralists was that many local communities have no intention or motive for harming the animals. The rare occasions only occur when wildlife would attack the pastoralists’ livestock.
#SavetheElephant but shoot the Maasai.
Have you seen all those hashtags that ask you to help save the elephant, giraffe, lion, rhino, tigers you get the drift. Why hasn’t any of these causes succeeded in saving the said wildlife? Or even fighting for the native indigenous tribes in the same conservation token?
Why hasn’t the Bezos Earth Fund condemned the forceful eviction of Maasai in Ngorongoro? After all, if we are to talk about real conservation, nothing speaks conservation better than the Maasai people and their traditions. They are true conservatives and conservationists, yet their homes have become a warzone. The human rights violations and abuses are too conspicuous to ignore, and we have now learned that we cannot rely on ‘controlled’ or embellished narratives from foreign international organizations including conservancies. Having interviewed Maasai pastoralists in Kenya, we witnessed firsthand their bitter cries and calls for justice from the rogue hands of the ‘conservationists’.
One of the articles that well explains the plight of the Maasai people in Tanzania is Oakland Institute study dubbed “The Looming Threat of Eviction”. More than 80,000 people are to be displaced by the government from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) to ‘protect biodiversity’ and conservation efforts. They claim that 42,000 are expected to leave the NCA “voluntarily”. Now if you have lived in Africa, you know that the Maasai are the last people to want to leave their God-given ancestral land ‘voluntarily’ or other.
The Maasai people are known to have given Kenya’s capital city its beautiful name Nairobi (Maasai phrase “Enkare Nairobi” meaning cool Water), and they are known to leave nature undisturbed. That is why they easily pitch tents and get up the next day and leave with their herds. The Maasai people are known to coexist with wildlife. So the question remains, has the International Union for Conservation of Nature seen these forceful evictions in Africa? What are they doing about this? The same bodies meant to preserve biodiversity and nature are deafeningly silent amidst this ongoing crisis. What does conservation then mean if we can #SavetheElephant but have no problem shooting or wounding the Maasai while ‘conserving’? Worse still, how is it okay to evict the Maasai and leave them out into the Wild but fence the wildlife and game animals in? How can we talk of saving endangered species while endangering the human species? And yet we still want to talk about Climate justice? How about we address the injustice first! The Maasai are a beautiful part of Africa’s rich cultural heritage that must be protected at all costs.
The World needs to address these Human Rights Violations and Injustices.
The media and the Human Rights Watch has numerously highlighted the human rights violations in Africa surrounding the conservation. The most recent article on this topic clearly paints a heartbreaking picture of Maasai forcibly displaced for Game Reserve.
Additionally, the European Parliament posed a parliamentary question in 2009 (E-4714/09), to find out if the Commission was aware of the evictions and human rights abuses taking place in Loliondo Division, Ngorongoro District Tanzania. Since 2009, how come this situation has only gotten worse? Shouldn’t there have been more inquiries and investigations probing the nature of the complaints raised by the local communities about the Conservancies? The UN and other international bodies have not addressed the plight of the Maasai or other indigenous tribes in Africa. Having watched the UN short video on including indigenous people in decision making, will clearly let you know that it is simply a public relations stunt. We demand and need to see real action taken as soon as possible to stop African governments from carrying on with these inhumane and unethical practices. Notably, the UN Conference of Parties has been mentioning or painting the inclusion of indigenous people in broad strokes. These meetings have avoided discussing the plight of the Maasai in Ngorongoro or other indigenous suffering tribes globally.
Foreign Organizations ‘helping’ or ‘saving’ Africa have left the continent worse off!
African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) launched the flagship Maasai Steppe Heartland in the 1990s. It consists of 35000 square kilometers of protected and community-managed wildlife areas. The USAID-funded program was to invest in tourism infrastructure in Tarangire and Manyara national parks. How did that go? There are still reported incidents of poaching, trophy hunting, and violence in these areas that have been wrongly attributed to human-wildlife conflicts due to ‘climate change’. Also, with all the African groups-led conservation efforts, organizations and companies, the US senators chose these two organizations that have previously worked together as witnesses to the Subcommittee hearing?
So let’s take a look at African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) that claims to be ‘headquartered’ in Kenya and championing conservation efforts in Africa. Simply looking at the leadership team on their website, you quickly see another case of the African story ‘Westexplained’ (told by foreign Western people/organizations). Out of the 10 leaders listed, only 4 are clearly African. The other 6 have worked ‘extensively’ in Africa and feel that they can confidently spearhead Africa’s conservation. The stunning discovery on this organization was by viewing the AWF’s Board of Trustees, Trustees Emeriti and Council Members. Unbelievable! You would be forgiven to think of this as an entirely Western organization with a few field offices in Africa, maybe to leverage the funding that is heavily flowing into Africa to ‘mitigate climate change’ or for climate justice efforts!
Anyway this organization was founded in Washington DC by a wealthy judge that loved to hunt. Just the right person to start a ‘conservancy’. To his credit, his organization offered scholarships to African students to study biology and wildlife management in American universities. We could not find out why the majority of these students then don’t get to spearhead the conservation efforts or get leadership positions in organizations like AWF. With the vast number of unemployed people in Africa, and those trained by organizations like Kenya Wildlife Service, why are they deemed or perceived ‘unfit’ to spearhead the conservation efforts? This is another example of foreign organizations feeling that they have to ‘save’, rescue or ‘help’ Africa unnecessarily and it is very overbearing and overreaching.
Afribundance researchers have seen firsthand the evidence of the destruction caused by conservancies like Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) in Kenya with their expansion of carbon sequestration projects. We have joined other local organizations and activists in fighting this organization’s ‘carbon credits schemes’. This article exposed how this conservancy has used carbon offset projects to earn carbon credits that do not benefit the local communities. The pastoralists lose their land as these projects expand, not a single school, hospital or children’s park was built from carbon credit income. The local communities did not gain access to clean running water from the $14.6 million earned by NRT from their carbon offset projects, you get our drift.
Another major lie told is that African people don’t care about animals or conservation efforts. Afribundance can categorically state that that was not what we found during our research last year. Nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, we found various community-led local African groups doing a great job at conservation. It is the high time that we let Africa champion her own conservation efforts. That is the best way that Africans can derive a sense of pride and prestige from their work, earn revenue that would be wholesome in uplifting the communities and their standards of living.
Loss of Wildlife even with Large Conservancies in Africa
It is ironic for all these organizations present in Africa to claim that they help ‘protect wildlife loss’, yet we lost so many animals last year in what they mainly attributed to drought. We begged to differ. We explained in this article how water was being diverted from lakes and rivers into private dams or irrigation projects, leading to drying up of water bodies. This led to thousands of white crocodiles dying and not one organization/ conservancy raised the alarm or helped in addressing these problems. Elephants, zebras, giraffes and other wildlife died in large numbers even with these many conservancies! The local pastoralists that we interviewed claimed to have seen wazungu (‘White’ people) hunting and skinning some of these animals and leaving those carcasses exposed on the dry scorched ground. Is this another attempt to exaggerate the effects of climate change? We couldn’t verify the details to this but thought it was worth mentioning.
Conclusion
Did it occur to anyone in the US senate to invite Maasai elders, local pastoralists, human rights groups and others to have a real all-round discussion? The simple question was, why rely solely on the word of these foreign organizations? Why not speak to the Maasai pastoralists? Better still, why not welcome global diverse voices on this topic of conservation? Also we couldn’t help but notice the mockery of ‘Western Organizations’ trying to talk about conservation in Africa without consulting the real recipients of the decisions imposed on them. The Maasai and local tribes are not consulted or included in the international decision making, yet the harsh decisions imposed on them cause bloodshed, deaths and displacement of human beings causing loss of their livelihoods and their wealth. So why have Africans been left out of making decisions regarding conservation in their continent? Why is the US government okay with creating a foundation that will fund organizations that aren’t living up to their conservation missions? Always follow the money!
*Repetition of some phrases is for emphasis purposes!
- ‘Young Bezos Earth Fund