Decolonizing Conservation

Frontline voices from the worldwide movement to decolonize climate change and revitalize a dying planet.

With a deep, anticolonial and antiracist critique and analysis of what “conservation” currently is, Decolonize Conservation presents an alternative vision–one already working–of the most effective and just way to fight against biodiversity loss and climate change. Through the voices of largely silenced or invisibilized Indigenous Peoples and local communities, the devastating consequences of making 30 percent of the globe “Protected Areas,” and other so-called “Nature-Based Solutions” are made clear.

Evidence proves indigenous people understand and manage their environment better than anyone else. Eighty percent of the Earth’s biodiversity is in tribal territories and when indigenous peoples have secure rights over their land, they achieve at least equal if not better conservation results at a fraction of the cost of conventional conservation programs. But in Africa and Asia, governments and NGOs are stealing vast areas of land from tribal peoples and local communities under the false claim that this is necessary for conservation.

As the editors write, “This is colonialism pure and simple: powerful global interests are shamelessly taking land and resources from vulnerable people while claiming they are doing it for the good of humanity.”

The powerful collection of voices from the groundbreaking “Our Land, Our Nature” congress takes us to the heart of the climate justice movement and the struggle for life and land across the globe. With Indigenous Peoples and their rights at its center, the book exposes the brutal and deadly reality of colonial and racist conservation for people around the world, while revealing the problems of current climate policy approaches that do nothing to tackle the real causes of environmental destruction.

Ashley Dawson is Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the English Department at the Graduate Center / City University of New York and the College of Staten Island (CSI). His latest books  include People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (O/R), Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso), and Extinction: A Radical History (O/R).

Fiore Longo is a Research and Advocacy Officer at Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples. She is also the director of Survival International France and Spain. She coordinates Survival’s conservation campaign and has visited many communities in Africa and Asia that face human rights abuses in the name of conservation. She has also visited Indigenous communities in Colombia and worked on Survival’s Uncontacted Tribes campaign.

Since 1969, Survival International has worked in partnership with tribal communities around the world, and together with supporters from over one hundred countries worldwide, to lead hundreds of successful campaigns for tribal peoples’ rights. The movement is helping to build a world where tribal peoples are respected as contemporary societies and their human rights protected.