fPcN interCultural:

defenders of free tribal life

A Challenge to Conservationists - A WAKE UP CALL

As corporate and government money flow into the three big international organizations that dominate the world's conservation agenda, their programs have been marked by growing conflicts of interest-and by a disturbing neglect of the indigenous peoples whose land they are in business to protect. In June 2003, representatives of major foundations concerned with the planet's threatened biodiversity gathered in South Dakota for a meeting of the Consultative Group on Biodiversity.
On the second evening, after dinner, several of the attendees met to discuss a problem about which they had become increasingly disturbed. In recent years, their foundations had given millions of dollars of support to nonprofit conservation organizations, and had even helped some of those groups get launched. Now, however, there were indications that three of the largest of these organizations - World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation International (CI), and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) - were increasingly excluding, from full involvement in their programs, the indigenous and traditional peoples living in territories the conservationists were trying to protect. ...

>> http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/mag/2004/176/
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Readers' Responses to "A Challenge to Conservationists" >> http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/mag/2005/181/
Note: BY MAC CHAPIN

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