‘A milestone in the fight to decolonise conservation’. This is how Survival International greets the release, announced yesterday by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), of the first guidelines for respecting human rights in nature conservation.

A document that provides an initial response to repeated complaints by organisations for the protection of native peoples of abuses and violations of human rights committed by private entities in charge of protecting nature conservation areas.

The ‘Core Human Rights Principles for Private Conservation Organisations and Funders’ lists in ten points the minimum ethical standards that should be respected.

Under particular indictment, claims Survival International, are organisations such as WWF, the Wildlife Conservation Society, African Parks and Conservation International, which are accused of taking indigenous peoples' land to make way for protected areas, in some cases stimulated by the controversial business of so-called carbon credits.

Baka pygmies threatened in Congo

Among the most active in this regard is the South African NGO African Parks, on whose board of directors sits British Prince Harry, which currently manages 21 protected natural areas.

In recent months, the indigenous peoples' rights movement has returned to denounce the violence and abuse carried out by armed monitors paid by African Parks against the Baka population in the Odzala-Kokoua park in the Republic of Congo.

A persecution that began as early as 2017, as certified also by a report by UNEP itself in reference to the TRIDOM conservation project, in the transboundary forest area straddling Cameroon, Congo and Gabon, home to around 40,000 Baka, a population of gatherer-hunters who for hundreds of years have derived their livelihood from nature.

The next to fall into the hands of African Parks could be the Manovo-Gounda St. Floris park in the Central African Republic, a UNESCO World Heritage site whose management is entrusted to the American Wildlife Conservation Society, which is finding it increasingly difficult to ensure its protection.

This is also why Survival recently accused UNESCO of complicity in violating the rights of indigenous peoples in a report analysing six World Heritage areas whose populations are seriously threatened.

Under indictment, in short, is a model of ‘fortress conservation’ that began to take hold a decade ago and that excludes from ecosystem protection programmes the populations that for millennia have lived in harmony with the forests, becoming their precious guardians.

In this sense, the guidelines issued by UNEP represent an acknowledgement and a denunciation of a model of environmental protection that is unsustainable in terms of the protection of human rights.

The Ten Principles

The 10 Core Human Rights Principles for Private Conservation Organizations and Funders in their somewhat abstract and concise formulation will have to be developed and applied to distinct situations. For example, in the Okapi Forest Reserve (Ituri - DRC), pygmies were excluded from the forest because they were falsely accused of killing the Okapi - a kind of crossbreed for the impression it gives - of a horse and a zebra, which the pygmies never did simply claim ‘because its meat is inedible’. This area is now endangered by an ‘illegal mining site established in the central sector of the reserve’.

The 10 Core Human Rights Principles for Private Conservation Organizations and Funders:

Principle One: Respect Human Rights

Principle Two: Respect the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Principle Three: Respect the Rights of All Communities, Groups, and Individuals 

Principle Four: Undertake Human Rights Due Diligence

Principle Five: Engage in Good Faith Consultation

Principle Six: Prevent Human Rights Abuses 

Principle Seven: Provide for Effective Remedies

Principle Eight: Protect Against Human Rights Violations and Abuses in Relationships

Principle Nine: Protect Against Human Rights Violations in Law Enforcement

Principle Ten: Report Regularly on Human Rights

See, Dall’ONU linee guida per il rispetto dei diritti umani nella conservazione ambientale