Full Transcript for Conservation by Force: The Hidden Violence of Protecting 'Wilderness' with Zahra Moloo

is basically this model of creating national parks, creating these areas that are supposed to be pristine wilderness uh without any people in them. 00:02:51.599 --> 00:03:05.840 And that means that the people who live there and who've lived there for thousands of years uh have to be removed often forcibly in order to create these pristine areas for other people to consume and enjoy. 00:03:05.840 --> 00:03:18.639 Uh so I began looking at DRC, but then uh in 2024 was there was a war in the east uh because of the M23 rebellion that uh that that is still still happening now. 00:03:18.639 --> 00:03:28.639 And um, so I ended up going to Cameroon to look at what's been happening around the parks in the east of the country, the southeast of the country. 00:03:28.639 --> 00:03:34.319 Um, and there you have three parks uh in that area that I was looking at. 00:03:34.319 --> 00:03:40.080 One is called Lobeke National Park, and Lobeke is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:49.759 It was created in 2001 as part of a much larger conservation area, which comprises Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. 00:03:49.759 --> 00:03:55.120 And then next to Lobeke National Park are two parks called Bumbabek and Nki. 00:03:55.120 --> 00:03:59.120 And these two make up the largest protected area in Cameroon. 00:03:59.120 --> 00:04:12.000 So I was interested in going there mostly because I had read uh some of the reports that Survival had published over many decades about the violence that had happened around those parks towards Baka people. 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:28.399 And there were really harrowing, horrible accounts of torture, of people's homes being burned to the ground, of uh humiliating acts that Baka people were made to perform by guards protecting those parks. 00:04:28.399 --> 00:04:31.360 Uh, in some cases, people had been killed. 00:04:31.360 --> 00:04:34.720 Um, and so I was interested in what was happening there. 00:04:34.720 --> 00:04:43.279 And uh so I went there to investigate what is the relationship between conservation and this long history of violence. 00:04:43.279 --> 00:04:44.639 Why is this violence? 00:04:44.639 --> 00:04:46.560 Why did it continue for so long? 00:04:46.560 --> 00:04:50.079 Why is it of such a horrific physical nature? 00:04:50.079 --> 00:04:58.800 Um, so I really went to understand um sort of the dynamics of conservation in that area of Southeast Cameroon. 00:04:59.680 --> 00:05:16.480 Well, and you did uh a lot of photography too, and I was reading a paper of yours, um Violence and Enclosures in the Forest of Southeast Cameroon, a visual essay in the journal Rethinking Marxism, which is uh published by Rutledge. 00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:20.000 Um, and you have some fantastic photographs. 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:27.600 Um they really help you see and and and maybe have more of a feeling what's going on there. 00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:36.800 Um what were your impressions of the Baca people when you got there and were able to live with and photograph them? 00:05:37.360 --> 00:05:52.959 Um Well, I I have to give a lot of credit to other, you know, people who had written about the Baca, uh indigenous people who've written about uh that area, but also other anthropologists, geographers, and so on. 00:05:52.959 --> 00:06:00.720 Um and so even before I went, I spoke to quite a few people and got a sense of what it was like. 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:13.279 But yeah, I mean, I think what really struck me is that, you know, these are communities that had actually been moved out of their lands um quite some decades ago. 00:06:13.279 --> 00:06:19.920 In fact, there was even, you know, when I got there, I thought that they most of them live on the side of the road, on the side of major roads. 00:06:19.920 --> 00:06:22.079 They don't actually live in the parks. 00:06:22.079 --> 00:06:29.040 Um and I had thought that the reason they lived on the side of the road was because they had been moved from the parks. 00:06:29.040 --> 00:06:37.199 But actually, this was a policy by the French colonial government of moving people out of the parks for various reasons. 00:06:37.199 --> 00:06:41.519 Um, and that continued with the post-colonial government. 00:06:41.519 --> 00:06:55.360 So it was actually a government policy to remove people from the parks, from the forests, and uh sort of it allowed the state to control them a lot more, but it also allowed them to have access to uh education. 00:06:55.360 --> 00:07:03.439 So a lot of them, when I spoke to them, said they didn't want to go back to the parks in in the way that we might think they would. 00:07:03.439 --> 00:07:13.040 Um, because they still wanted access to social services, access to education, which is also very difficult for them to access because of the lack of infrastructure. 00:07:13.040 --> 00:07:15.360 There is not, there are not good roads. 00:07:15.360 --> 00:07:20.079 Um, it's a very, very uh it's an area of the country that's very neglected. 00:07:20.079 --> 00:07:31.680 So there's very few social services, there's no running water, there's no electricity, you know, it's very, but they still have access to some services by living on the side of the road. 00:07:31.680 --> 00:07:35.360 But they want to also have access to the forest, which they don't. 00:07:35.360 --> 00:07:55.519 And that is causing this huge sort of um transformation in terms of uh disconnection from their traditional cultures and their lands and the an inability to transmit this sort of very amazing rich knowledge that they have to uh younger people. 00:07:55.519 --> 00:08:23.360 Um and I was quite amazed at how some baker are able to, the few who have managed to, you know, go to school to get uh to go to university in some cases, some have become lawyers, they try to have this sort of um relationship between with the forest and at the same time do their legal work and try to advocate for the rights of other Baka

people. 00:08:23.360 --> 00:08:29.279 And I was very amazed by that, you know, sort of the those two worlds that they try to occupy. 00:08:29.279 --> 00:08:57.200 Um but I think what's really what really struck me is the violence of not just conservation, but you know, you have the national parks, but right around the national parks, you have trophy hunting areas, and you see these, you know, Americans and Russians and Mexicans and, you know, for these rich hunt hunters who come to and they pay, you know, $46,000 or more actually for a hunting package. 00:08:57.200 --> 00:09:00.399 They come and they just kill all these animals, they take them as trophies. 00:09:00.399 --> 00:09:02.799 But the backer are not allowed to kill those animals. 00:09:02.799 --> 00:09:05.039 They're prevented from accessing the forest. 00:09:05.039 --> 00:09:12.799 They cannot hunt animals, but yet these very rich people can come and hunt animals on their land. 00:09:12.799 --> 00:09:15.840 Uh, and then you also have these logging concessions. 00:09:15.840 --> 00:09:23.440 So the whole forest has been carved out into these areas that are all for the means of accumulation and profit. 00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:27.759 And the backer are completely removed from this land. 00:09:27.759 --> 00:09:42.559 And if they are allowed to go back, I mean, they're there in 2019 actually, and this is a much longer story, which I can tell, but in 2019, the government signed an agreement with the Baca uh to give them access rights to the national parks. 00:09:42.559 --> 00:09:47.840 So the idea was that they should have some form of access to the forests. 00:09:47.840 --> 00:09:55.039 Um and this was an agreement that was many, many years in the making and only got signed in 2019. 00:09:55.039 --> 00:10:00.080 But but that access comes with so many restrictions and caveats. 00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:08.960 So, for example, you know, in Baca culture, you're uh you can go, there are many traditions that occur in the forest that require a long period of time. 00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:21.759 They require people to go for weeks into the forest, they require backer to be able to hunt elephants sometimes, to basically have a relationship with the forest that's not mediated and restricted by the state and by conservation. 00:10:21.759 --> 00:10:24.879 But that's the agreement that they've signed with the Bakr is. 00:10:24.879 --> 00:10:41.039 You can have this little bit of access to the forest, but only for like a few days, or only if you make sure that you sign this paper asking for permission, and only if you go as a family, and only if you kill an animal with a spear, you're not allowed to use, you're not allowed to use guns. 00:10:41.039 --> 00:10:57.840 So it's it's uh so this agreement isn't really a form of genuine access, but what a lot of Baca did say is that this the agreement they signed did result in a reduction in violence by conservation guards towards them. 00:10:57.840 --> 00:11:00.879 So that is one good thing that has occurred. 00:11:01.840 --> 00:11:09.919 You used the term or you referred uh to uh the saditization of the Baca during the period of French colonialism. 00:11:09.919 --> 00:11:18.320 I'm interested, uh, or could you help us understand, you know, when did the dispossession of the Baca begin? 00:11:18.399 --> 00:11:33.200 Aaron Powell I think there's a whole sort of there are many layers to that story, because in Cameroon today, the Baca are basically, one could say, at the very bottom of this so-called social hierarchy in Cameroon. 00:11:33.200 --> 00:11:42.000 Um, and that has, you know, a long history of how the nation-state of Cameroon was formed, who is considered to be part of the nation-state. 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:50.000 And this issue of sedentarization is very much linked to um agricultural communities. 00:11:50.000 --> 00:12:10.799 So so there's a whole, there's an excellent book um by a Cameroonian historian or anthropologist about this, in which she explains how um the the government basically the belonging to the nation-state was tied up with agriculture and with sedentarization. 00:12:10.799 --> 00:12:23.039 So communities that like the Baca, who are not sedentary, who have a relationship with the forest rather than with the soil as agriculturalists, were not considered as part of the nation in the same way. 00:12:23.039 --> 00:12:33.200 So their marginalization began, you know, at that time when the when the nation-state was forming and when they were not really considered as part of this of the nation-state. 00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:44.320 And, you know, this is also tied up with a lot of bureaucratic things, like for instance, a lot of them don't have, don't have uh ID, ID, they don't have a citizenship, proof of citizenship. 00:12:44.320 --> 00:12:58.799 And so there's a whole, you know, there's there's a lot of um, there's there's backup people who are trying to, who are working with organizations to try and get uh birth certificates for them so that they can prove that they're also can that they're citizens, so they can also go to school. 00:12:58.799 --> 00:13:06.559 So there are all these sort of um uh snowball effects of not having the proper papers of citizenship. 00:13:06.559 --> 00:13:23.200 But uh in terms of conservation, you know, the other thing that carries over from the colonial period is the legal infrastructure that both the Germans and the French uh, you know, put in place these legal instruments that declared all land to be property of the colonial state. 00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:30.480 And this isn't just in Cameroon, this is in many countries, this idea that, you know, the land is a property of the colonial state. 00:13:30.480 --> 00:13:46.240 But then this legal infrastructure continued into the post-colonial period under Amadou Aido, the first president of Cameroon, who was basically put in his position by the French, and he maintained a very close relationship with France.

00:13:46.240 --> 00:13:52.879 Um, and so the land continued to be as much under state control as it was under colonialism. 00:13:52.879 --> 00:13:59.360 Um, but also at that time you had, you know, this whole push to create national parks in Africa. 00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:10.080 And so this was at the turn of the 20th century, uh, when the UK, for example, organized a conference on the preservation of wild animals, birds, and fish in Africa. 00:14:10.080 --> 00:14:15.200 Then in 1933, you had another conference for the protection of flora and fauna. 00:14:15.200 --> 00:14:24.159 Um, and both of these were organized by big game hunters in Africa who came from members of Britain's and Europe's uh aristocracy. 00:14:24.159 --> 00:14:37.519 And so from there you had these documents that started to outlaw African hunting practices, started to create a system of national parks in which hunting was prohibited, hunting by Africans was prohibited. 00:14:37.519 --> 00:14:43.919 Um, and then you had protected areas that came about, you know, in the 1930s and so on. 00:14:43.919 --> 00:14:49.600 And then later on in the 2000s, the number of protected areas really increased and almost doubled. 00:14:49.600 --> 00:15:02.720 Basically in 2015, you had national parks constituting around 88% of the territory, and trophy hunting zones uh uh constituted about 11% or 12% of the national territory. 00:15:02.720 --> 00:15:05.919 So quite a lot of Cameroon's land is now national parks. 00:15:05.919 --> 00:15:09.279 I think there are about 22 estimated national parks. 00:15:09.279 --> 00:15:27.279 And um so I so that's where sort of the legal infrastructure and the national park establishment, uh, that's sort of the the history which which underpins the reasons why the bacca are now not able to go into the into the parks or live in the parks and their marginalization from the forests. 00:15:27.679 --> 00:15:31.840 So that's interesting and and uh and troubling. 00:15:31.840 --> 00:15:42.080 So you have the Baca people, uh you met many living on the roadside, uh, you have them now uh trying to uh even prove citizenship. 00:15:42.080 --> 00:15:44.159 Uh they've been taking off their land. 00:15:44.159 --> 00:15:47.919 I mean, obviously their culture has been heavily impacted, uh. 00:15:47.919 --> 00:15:49.679 But you also mentioned violence. 00:15:49.679 --> 00:15:52.399 Uh could you tell us a little bit about violence? 00:15:52.399 --> 00:15:54.960 Because violence is a big part of your article. 00:15:54.960 --> 00:16:06.159 Uh you mentioned that uh material violence is really a nodal event with a past, present, and future, and that it has ripples throughout uh people and their memory. 00:16:06.159 --> 00:16:07.679 Could you tell us a little bit about that? 00:16:08.159 --> 00:16:08.720 Yes, absolutely. 00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:16.080 Yeah, that quote came from Simon Springer, the violence having a past a past, present, and future. 00:16:16.080 --> 00:16:28.000 Um Yeah, so

so so a lot of scholars have actually written about how violence is has always been part, has been an inherent part of conservation, actually. 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:35.600 Um, and it's always been since the establishment of national parks, violence has sort of underpins the whole thing. 00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:53.440 Um, and part of that is, you know, again, going back to this term of fortress conservation, uh, beginning with the very first creation of national parks in the US, including Yellowstone National Park in 1872, which required, you know, Native Americans being removed from their land. 00:16:53.440 --> 00:17:00.240 Uh, that model has been, has become the dominant model of conservation everywhere in the world. 00:17:00.240 --> 00:17:14.640 And um, but beyond, you know, I mean, of course, dispossession and eviction and removing people from their land is extremely violent and has led to, you know, millions of conservation refugees around the world. 00:17:14.640 --> 00:17:44.799 But I think um, you know, my interest in this topic was the kind of violence that was happening in the Congo Basin in particular, that has been documented by the Rainforest Foundation, by Survival International, uh, in 2019 by BuzzFeed News that did a huge uh investigation into WWF and that organization's financing of uh eco-guards who have been extremely violent towards indigenous people in in the Congo Basin. 00:17:44.799 --> 00:18:03.119 Um, and so I think that was what was uh, you know, really struck me is why, not so much what was the reason for this violence, but is there a reason is there is there a reason why violence continued for so long and was so so so brutal? 00:18:03.119 --> 00:18:13.920 Is there a relationship between the success of conservation and violence and the way capitalism works in the forests of uh Southeast Cameroon? 00:18:13.920 --> 00:18:35.680 And so I write about this and I draw from particularly people write about enclosures and you know the idea that to enclose this area and to to maintain this area as an enclosure that people are not allowed to go into, uh you have to, violence is sort of a way to discipline people, to remain out of the forest. 00:18:35.680 --> 00:18:48.240 And a way to, you know, I mean, Marx wrote about primitive accumulation as part of um as part of the of as part of the continuous process of capitalist accumulation. 00:18:48.240 --> 00:19:04.799 But um where Marx says that primitive accumul primitive accumulation is one historical moment in that in that journey, a lot of scholars have said that primitive accumulation, which is the divorcing of the producers from the means of production, is a continuous process. 00:19:04.799 --> 00:19:09.279 So you have to continue to deter people from going into the forest. 00:19:09.279 --> 00:19:32.559 And so for me, I saw violence as acting as a form of discipline to prevent people from uh going into the parks, but also from going into the trophy hunting areas, because violence is not just limited to conservation guards protecting national parks, but is also occurs whenever the Baka go venture on into trophy hunting areas, venture into logging areas. 00:19:32.559 --> 00:19:50.799 And what I found very interesting is that uh logging companies, trophy hunting companies, and national parks collaborate in terms of uh financing these anti-poaching operations that are that end up being very brutal towards the baker. 00:19:50.799 --> 00:20:08.319 So these three seemingly contradictory activities of trophy hunting national parks and logging are actually sort of part of the same the same package of one what of what the government calls sustainable development. 00:20:08.319 --> 00:20:25.279 So where I thought it was crazy to have a trophy hunting area right next to a national park because an animal will just wander out of the national park and in front of a gun, that's that's sort of a model of development that the Cameroonian government is actually pursuing and considers sustainable. 00:20:25.279 --> 00:20:46.559 Um so violence is kind of part of this, one could say, sustainable development uh package or idea that is uh considered perfectly normal, both you know, in Cameroon, but also according to the UN, where you can have social, environmental, and economic activities altogether. 00:20:46.559 --> 00:20:48.559 And that somehow isn't a contradiction. 00:20:48.880 --> 00:20:53.839 This is your host, Steve Taylor, and we will be back right after this. 00:20:54.160 --> 00:20:59.599 If you're enjoying this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. 00:20:59.599 --> 00:21:06.400 The interviews heard here are often ignored by mainstream media, and without your support, these stories would not be covered. 00:21:06.400 --> 00:21:10.000 Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues. 00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:18.720 You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org. 00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:24.160 Welcome back to Breaking Green. 00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:36.640 What is a contradiction is uh some of this parkland ha was established uh in in some way under UNESCO, and uh that's uh Yes. 00:21:36.640 --> 00:21:52.160 And you think of that as a UN uh cultural, scientific, educational organization, but here we have a whole culture that's been dispossessed, uh and now it's people living on the side of a road. 00:21:52.160 --> 00:21:55.279 It uh that seems to be well, inconsistent. 00:21:55.279 --> 00:21:59.519 Uh it's it's hard to square that circle. 00:21:59.519 --> 00:22:01.759 It's it's some dissonance there. 00:22:02.880 --> 00:22:29.200 Yeah, I mean, you know, the UN's definition of sustainable development is uh is a very neoliberal sort of idea that you can reconcile economic activities with environmental protection, that it isn't a contradiction to have, you know, uh extraction or logging,

and then also conservation, and then also social programs for the indigenous people. 00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:40.559 Um and yeah, I mean, uh, for us it's a contradiction, but according to the neoliberal sort of idea of social change or of sustainable development, this is this is this is fine. 00:22:40.559 --> 00:22:48.319 And I believe Survival wrote something about UNESCO's um complicity in conservation injustices. 00:22:48.720 --> 00:22:51.519 I mean, what does the violence against the Baca people look like? 00:22:51.519 --> 00:22:53.519 Uh, what effect has it had on them? 00:22:53.519 --> 00:22:56.160 What's the reality that that you saw there? 00:22:56.720 --> 00:23:01.599 Yeah, so I went around to quite a lot of different places. 00:23:01.599 --> 00:23:07.119 Some were right next to the park, some were next to the logging area, some were quite far away. 00:23:07.119 --> 00:23:11.039 And so there were very different sort of experiences. 00:23:11.039 --> 00:23:19.359 But um I think you know, there were certain areas where people had lived really terrible violence. 00:23:19.359 --> 00:23:26.000 Um, and over time, you know, some of this was 2015, 2016, others were more recent. 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:35.920 Um and so one of the interesting, I mean, of course, a lot of people were, you know, have, you know, some people have physical wounds from that time. 00:23:35.920 --> 00:23:39.920 They have trauma from those experiences of violence. 00:23:39.920 --> 00:23:52.799 Um but a lot of a lot, like I said, you know, with the signing of this agreement between the government and the Baker in 2019, the violence uh seems to have decreased. 00:23:52.799 --> 00:24:27.440 But uh the Forest People's Program actually wrote a report saying that they're not sure whether the report whether the violence has decreased because the the guards are no longer carrying out violent acts, or whether it's because the Baka people are no longer even going into the forest because of uh those many years of violence and restriction have sort of left this um this kind of trauma in which they say we just don't even go there anymore because we we expect this to happen again and we don't trust what the government says. 00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:39.200 So, and this is also because that agreement in 2019 uh was only signed between the government and a very small backa organization on behalf of all the backa. 00:24:39.200 --> 00:24:44.319 And so the a lot of backa, I mean, some of them had not even heard of this agreement. 00:24:44.319 --> 00:24:46.160 They didn't really understand what it was. 00:24:46.160 --> 00:25:00.480 Um, and they've been trying to do a lot of like educational awareness and you know, try to explain to people what it means, but there's still this fear and about going into the park and because of all these years of violence. 00:25:00.480 --> 00:25:03.519 And so it has had a very material impact on people. 00:25:03.519 --> 00:25:30.240 And in the long term, that sort of disconnection from the forest has a huge impact on in terms of people's ability to continue their their traditions, in terms of their relationship to the forest, in terms of their ancestral, you know, knowledge and and so on, and even just being able to visit areas where you know they might have a sacred area or that someone might be buried or s or something of this sort. 00:25:30.240 --> 00:25:39.200 Um so so you see that violence doesn't just end when when when the violent act itself comes to an end. 00:25:39.200 --> 00:25:42.480 It has these very long, long-ranging consequences. 00:25:42.480 --> 00:25:57.759 And and like I said, you know, yes, the violence around the national parks appears to have decreased, but the violence by the guards who protect the trophy hunting concessions has not, and that still is uh preventing people from being able to access uh the forests. 00:25:58.720 --> 00:26:01.680 I I keep going back to what you said uh before. 00:26:01.680 --> 00:26:17.680 People, the Baca living on the side of the road and looking for a way forward that uh for many may not even be what was, but it reminds me of the enclosure movement in in England. 00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:22.400 And uh there's that famous book, The Making of the English Working Class. 00:26:22.400 --> 00:26:35.519 Um and there was a lot that was a very violent um period as well with the the Weavers and uh the uh uh the Luddites. 00:26:35.519 --> 00:26:51.920 Uh there was there's a lot of violence, and there was a actually a changing of the population and you know, driving people from their uh uh culture more rural, more agrarian, into cities to become factory workers. 00:26:51.920 --> 00:26:56.319 Is is there some analog here or am I overreaching? 00:26:56.480 --> 00:27:13.039 Aaron Ross Powell No, I think in terms of the dynamics of people being removed from their land and the land being enclosed, and then people having to find other ways to survive, certainly there's you know parallels across in so many different ways uh in in the global south as well. 00:27:13.039 --> 00:27:25.599 Um but I think uh so in my in in what I in my piece I write about what uh Kalyan Sanyal writes writes about in terms of when this happens in the global south. 00:27:25.599 --> 00:27:32.640 And you have, you know, in Marx would describe described how all these people ended up then becoming the proletariat. 00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:45.359 You know, they migrate to cities, they become laborers, they have to work for other people, they have to earn money in a cash economy, they don't have any ways to, they have no control over the means of production anymore, and they have no more land. 00:27:45.359 --> 00:27:58.079 Um, in the case of Cameroon, what's what's or and other places, um the indigenous people who've been removed from the forests do not become part of this working class proletariat. 00:27:58.079 --> 00:28:23.759 They they don't move to the cities in large numbers, and so they kind of end up

being rooted in place along the side of the road, and they're they're sort of not able to uh they're not able to access this, whatever you'd want to call it, capitalist modernity, becoming, you know, a worker in the city, but they're also not able to access the forests. 00:28:23.759 --> 00:28:38.240 So they're sort of in this liminal zone, it seems, because they don't really have um access to social services, uh, access to healthcare, access to an education is very difficult. 00:28:38.240 --> 00:28:42.480 A lot of Baka students drop out of school for a whole range of different reasons. 00:28:42.480 --> 00:28:49.119 Often they can't afford the fees, uh sometimes they're bullied at school uh just because they are baka. 00:28:49.119 --> 00:28:56.559 Um and so they end up not becoming part of this sort of army of the proletariat. 00:28:56.559 --> 00:29:03.759 And so it looks very different than I think, you know, uh England and the industrial, you know, in the 18th and 1700s. 00:29:03.759 --> 00:29:09.119 And um, so a lot of bhaka end up working on the farms of Bantu people. 00:29:09.119 --> 00:29:12.720 They earn like the equivalent of a dollar or two a day. 00:29:12.720 --> 00:29:15.039 Sometimes they're paid in alcohol. 00:29:15.039 --> 00:29:19.759 Um, and so that's really on the only options that are left to them. 00:29:19.759 --> 00:29:29.759 Some of them do uh, you know, cultivate, are now becoming, you know, big uh also cultivate uh crops, uh cocoa, plantains, and so on. 00:29:29.759 --> 00:29:37.279 Um, but a lot of them also work for these very for for very little money on the farms of of other of Bantu people. 00:29:37.279 --> 00:29:50.720 So so so I suppose that's you know, it's a very different uh dynamic that has occurred as a result of you know uh changing dynamics and enclosures. 00:29:50.720 --> 00:30:03.359 Um but this idea that people that all these people then dispossessed from their land become the pro the so-called proletariat or end up going to cities and working is is not the case uh in this in this situation. 00:30:03.440 --> 00:30:04.640 Aaron Powell Thank you for that. 00:30:04.640 --> 00:30:10.000 Um I it it just seemed like there's parallels in your paper, you know, the mention of the enclosures and so on. 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:10.319 Trevor Burrus, Jr. 00:30:10.400 --> 00:30:12.640 No, it's definitely there are definitely enclosures. 00:30:12.640 --> 00:30:13.359 Absolutely. 00:30:13.440 --> 00:30:19.839 Aaron Powell What would and and I know you can't speak for the Baca, but what would some sort of justice be? 00:30:19.839 --> 00:30:21.279 How do people want to move forward? 00:30:21.279 --> 00:30:32.640 I'm sure there's probably not a monolithic vision of the future uh with within this this this group of people, but what would justice or restoration look like? 00:30:33.200 --> 00:30:35.039 Um That's a really good question. 00:30:35.039 --> 00:30:41.680 I think I mean yes, of course I can't speak for the many, many, many Backup people that I interviewed. 00:30:41.680 --> 00:31:10.160 Um but uh I think you know what I heard from quite a lot of, you know, uh in particular, you know, a lot of people and including uh what I heard from a lot of people was that they they want to have the same access to resources, to services that everybody else has, to to, you know, uh whenever we'd go to different communities, we'd you know, have a chat with them. 00:31:10.160 --> 00:31:13.039 And afterwards they'd say, Can you please help us build a school here? 00:31:13.039 --> 00:31:18.240 Can you please help us build a road so we can get to school tomorrow, like so that it's not so far away? 00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:21.440 Can you help us to have a water source over here? 00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:28.240 They're very basic things that people just want to be able to live, you know, just live a good life. 00:31:28.240 --> 00:31:34.480 And uh and uh and and I'm just scratching the surface of all this. 00:31:34.480 --> 00:31:36.079 There's so so much to say. 00:31:36.079 --> 00:32:04.319 Um but I think that I think that a lot of people would probably want to have both the ability to access their lands and to have free access to the forests, and to have access to uh, you know, to be able to to to have some income, to also be able to go to school, to have to be able to buy a mobile phone, to be able to to live between in those two worlds. 00:32:04.319 --> 00:32:25.519 Um uh and I think and also I think there hasn't really been any sort of uh how would you say all the violence that took place over all those years, I haven't seen any sort of um uh accountability for any of that, you know. 00:32:25.519 --> 00:32:46.880 So basically after this Buzzfeed investigation, there was a whole there was a whole uh investigation done by the WWF into the conduct of these guards and and and this whole panel of experts was set up to see whether WWF held any responsibility in the violence that took place. 00:32:46.880 --> 00:32:58.720 And they didn't really, the findings were not that you know WWF was directly responsible, but that they had not done enough to protect the human rights of certain communities. 00:32:58.720 --> 00:33:08.160 That was what the panel found, which seems a little bit of a watered-down sort of, you know, finding given all the violence that took place. 00:33:08.160 --> 00:33:14.720 But and so what WWF has done is to set up a grievance mechanism. 00:33:14.720 --> 00:33:27.440 That's you know, kind of uh an interesting idea because that's what a lot of you know, multinational companies and mining companies they set up these things where you can complain and bring your human rights complaints to them. 00:33:27.440 --> 00:33:30.799 And that's great, that's good, that's good that that exists. 00:33:30.799 --> 00:33:36.000 But I didn't get the sense that, first of all, there are so many logistical issues to that. 00:33:36.000 --> 00:33:43.200 Just getting to the to a place where you can

make a complaint is very complicated, finding transport to get there, and so on and so forth. 00:33:43.200 --> 00:33:50.880 But actual accountability for this violence, uh, I did not see this happening anywhere. 00:33:50.880 --> 00:34:03.519 And not just in Cameroon, but in all these countries where there's been so much violence from conservation, you know, uh they the the solution seems to be we'll put in a grievance mechanism, we'll allow some access to the forest. 00:34:03.519 --> 00:34:09.840 But the model of conservation that is practiced is still not putting indigenous people at the center. 00:34:09.840 --> 00:34:26.400 And, you know, I think that the knowledge that Baka and other indigenous people have of the forests needs to be centered in conservation for this for this kind of extremely exclusionary model of conservation to stop. 00:34:26.400 --> 00:34:44.719 Um, and so I think that's one of the things I think needs to happen going forward is to actually learn from people who've protected these areas for so long what are their conservation processes and methods, and how can they be at the center of these of conservation in general? 00:34:44.719 --> 00:35:10.239 And uh in 2022, the UN uh made a a uh an agreement with a global agreement to protect 30% of the of the earth and and seas by 2030, which we're already in 2026, but um that's that that new idea of protecting 30% of the earth, you know, a lot of people are saying, well, what is this going to look like? 00:35:10.239 --> 00:35:17.280 Is this going to be again, you know, the same kind of exclusionary conservation, or is there a way to actually put people at the center? 00:35:17.280 --> 00:35:27.920 Uh and so, you know, reconsidering this whole model and coming to terms with the very racist colonial history behind it is one of the things that I think needs to happen. 00:35:27.920 --> 00:35:40.719 Um and and yeah, and the Bakka, I think, need to have access to the forests, not in this restricted way that doesn't allow them to fully practice their traditions, but in a in a full way. 00:35:40.800 --> 00:35:43.119 Aaron Ross Powell, the Baca have been taken from their land. 00:35:43.119 --> 00:35:45.920 There's a history of violence, there's a lot of trauma. 00:35:45.920 --> 00:36:09.280 Obviously, uh the their culture has has been really challenged, but whatever the way forward uh there is, the Baca should be at the be at central to that, not logging, not trophy hunting, not Cameroons, you know, model. 00:36:09.280 --> 00:36:10.079 Right? 00:36:10.079 --> 00:36:10.719 Yes. 00:36:11.039 --> 00:36:20.719 Uh I mean I think also it's it's really interesting to read the work of some of some people who've actually, you know, spent a lot of time with Bakka. 00:36:20.719 --> 00:36:32.800 Um there's one anthropologist in particular, Simon Hoyt and uh Jerome Lewis, and they've they've sort of written about the way Baka relate to and think of the forests. 00:36:32.800 --> 00:36:51.920 And for them,

the forest is a place of joy and abundance, and they see um they write about how the Baka see uh logging companies and trophy hunting outfits as these uh these sort of people who don't know how to share. 00:36:51.920 --> 00:36:54.239 They just hoard everything. 00:36:54.239 --> 00:37:01.039 They hoard all they hoard the resources and they take them for themselves and they don't leave anything for people. 00:37:01.039 --> 00:37:38.639 And that's a very interesting, you know, I think just on just trying to understand and learn from Baka uh sort of ontologies and ways of understanding the forests and and seeing the forest as a place of joy and a place of spirits and a place of rather than this, you know, it's just a very different way of seeing the world than this, than the Western uh, let's say capitalist model, where the forest is a, is either a resource or it's you know, uh it's you know, it's something to be consumed, whether it's by tourists, whether it's by trophy hunters, whether it's by logging companies. 00:37:38.639 --> 00:37:48.000 And this the, you know, learn actually, if conservationists were actually to learn from Baka people about the forest, about how they see the forest, about how they understand the forest. 00:37:48.000 --> 00:38:00.239 I mean, you could, you'd have a whole other, you'd have a whole way of protecting the earth that's totally based on completely different values, um, you know, from people who've lived there for thousands of years. 00:38:00.239 --> 00:38:09.119 So it's uh um, and I think what really struck me about just visually being there is, you know, you're sitting there on the side of the road. 00:38:09.119 --> 00:38:12.320 These logging trucks are coming every few minutes. 00:38:12.320 --> 00:38:28.159 There are these massive, massive logs being taken out of the forest, and they just pass by and they spew dust all over the people who live right there on the roadside, the people who've been removed from there, so that this massive uh machine of extraction can just continue. 00:38:28.159 --> 00:38:33.760 And I think that was uh for me, that's that in itself is just so violent. 00:38:33.760 --> 00:38:42.880 The the the this the the the juxtaposition between these huge logging trucks and these communities that are just being having all this dust spewed on them. 00:38:42.880 --> 00:38:46.400 Um the people who come from from from those forests. 00:38:47.119 --> 00:38:48.159 Well, that says a lot. 00:38:48.159 --> 00:38:50.159 That image that image does say a lot. 00:38:50.159 --> 00:38:53.760 Zara, thank you for joining us on Breaking Green. 00:38:54.079 --> 00:38:55.280 Thank you so much. 00:38:56.239 --> 00:39:01.760 You have been listening to Breaking Green, a Global Justice Ecology Project podcast. 00:39:01.760 --> 00:39:08.639 To learn more about Global Justice Ecology Project, visit globaljusticeecology.org. 00:39:08.639 --> 00:39:13.760 Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you. 00:39:13.760 --> 00:39:21.280 Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forests, defend human rights, and expose false solutions. 00:39:21.280 --> 00:39:30.559 Simply text Give G I V E 2 1716 257 4187. 00:39:30.559 --> 00:39:36.880 That's 1716 257 4187.