Scandal. The World Wide Fund for Nature provides equipment to anti-poaching units that drive indigenous people (natives) out of nature parks.
Is the environmental organisation in the right trenches?
Armed paramilitaries, torture by waterboarding, brutal evictions: the most abhorrent methods of warfare are openly being applied not only in conflict-stricken regions, but also in nature conservation.
Judging by what was published by the American online platform BuzzFeed, a question arises: should these methods be employed by staff working for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) - the world’s most influential nature conservation organisation with an annual income of over 750 million euros? The green empire with the panda logo has been criticised for years: once it was the hunting down of poachers in collaboration with the South African secret service, another time it was dubious palm oil certificates, and then, time and again, its overly close ties to the manufacturing industry. It seems that the latest accusations have shaken the confidence of the Foundation’s leaders, based at their headquarters by Lake Geneva. They commissioned a London law firm to investigate the reasons for the allegations and the essence of the matter. As stated by the WWF itself, the issue of human rights is of the highest priority.
BuzzFeed’s reports show a different picture: World Wide Fund for Nature staff in Africa and Asia have organised operations against poachers with the help of brutal “shock troops”. These “anti-poaching” gangs are responsible not only for torture but also for the deaths of indigenous people (natives) living near national parks supported by the WWF. For an entire year, BuzzFeed researchers interviewed witnesses in six countries and examined thousands of pages of documents.
The accusations were serious; they undermined the myth surrounding the WWF’s founding goals, the postulate of pristine nature that experienced conservationists protect from local poachers. Ultimately, colonial thinking led to a situation where indigenous tribes, who had lived in African forests for centuries, were turned into criminals. Conversely, the "white hunters" who organise big game hunts honour themselves as defenders of nature. For example, the long-standing WWF honorary president Juan Carlos (Spain) enjoys participating in elephant hunts.
The very behaviours of poachers were, as seen, demonstrated by the “anti-poaching groups” operating in nature conservation projects supported by the WWF. Author and filmmaker Wilfried Huismann, who worked intensively on investigating the WWF, calls this a “racist model of nature conservation”. Too intense and too open.
In 2012, the organisation, disputing certain statements in V. Huismann’s “The WWF Black Book”, attempted to ban the book’s sale by exerting strong pressure on online book retailers. V. Huismann, incidentally, openly demonstrated the cooperation between conservationists and the manufacturing industry and described how the WWF helped arrange questionable labels for so-called “sustainable” soy and palm oil.
This was an attack on the WWF’s business model, which is based on partnerships with corporations such as McDonald’s, Edeka, or Coca-Cola: in the last financial year, through such partnerships alone, the German branch of the WWF raised more than ten million euros.
Walking hand-in-hand with profit is a tradition of the World Wide Fund for Nature. Soon after the organisation (WWF) was founded, European financial aristocrats felt that their hunting grounds in Africa were being threatened. Therefore, they began sponsoring national parks, and the first WWF president – Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands – presented the oil company Shell as the first major patron. Since then, hardly any “inconvenient donation” has failed to reach the World Wide Fund for Nature: the name of the now-deceased arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi “surfaced” in internal donor lists, and one can also find the name of the former dictator of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko.
In the business sphere, the World Wide Fund for Nature has fared well so far. In the last eight years alone, its global income has grown from 500 to 750 million euros. Various governments have also granted the organisation significant funds: from German ministries and lower-tier institutions, such as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the conservationists received twelve million euros in the last financial year. V. Huismann considers this a form of “selling indulgences”. “Governments are glad that an international and influential organisation takes seemingly sovereign tasks off their shoulders”, such as marine protection or the development of eco-labels.
German taxpayers’ money is also ending up in questionable projects, for instance in the Messok Dja nature reserve in Congo. On the World Wide Fund for Nature website, one can read that the German branch supports nature guards in Congo with funds from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. “For years”, says Fiore Longo of Survival International – an organisation that advocates for the rights of indigenous people – “the WWF has been lobbying for the national park and now it has almost reached its goal”. For about 6,000 people of the Baka tribe, who have lived as semi-nomads for centuries on the produce of local forests, the creation of the park would mean a ban on entering the forest. “As early as 2008, a base for nature guards was set up there with the help of the World Wide Fund for Nature”, informed F. Longo. “As soon as these guards caught Baka people in the forest, they would ‘torture them or beat them with belts’. The Baka people were no longer allowed to collect cassava because, apparently, the elephants eat it. Baka huts were destroyed, and one girl is said to have lost her life after a conflict with the nature guards.”
In this regard, the World Wide Fund for Nature points to initiatives and projects intended for the indigenous people – usually planned on the outskirts of the aforementioned park. “In this colonial model of nature conservation, which will be shown to tourists, the local natives are assigned the role of impoverished extras”, says Stephen Corry, director of Survival International. And what about the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development? Has it contacted the World Wide Fund for Nature even once to “clarify the circumstances of the matter”? When there is a national park, the number of nature guards, which Germany has been supporting financially until now, will certainly increase significantly.
(Translation from https://magazin.spiegel.de/SP/2019/11/162787663/index.html)