Displacement and discrimination devastating forest dwellers
Across the forests of central Africa, forest peoples have lived by hunting and gathering for millenia. But in the past few decades their homelands have been devastated by logging, war and encroachment from farmers.
With expansion of protected areas in response to these problems, their livelihoods have become increasingly impossible and their strong ties to their forests are under strain.
Much of the land traditionally lived in by Pygmy communities is rich in timber and minerals.
There is a race between the loggers and the conservationists to lay claim to the remaining forests.
The rights and needs of the forest peoples have been overlooked in the scramble for the central African forests.
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| © Salomé/Survival |
In Congo, multinational logging companies rushed in at the first signs of peace to extract valuable timber.
Local communities are often tricked into signing away their rights to the land, losing their cultural heritage, the source of their livelihoods and their food security in exchange for a handful of salt, sugar or a machete.
The results are devastating to the people, the forest, the climate and the future of this desperately unstable country.
In the wake of the loggers come thousands of settlers, eager to farm on the newly accessible land, hostile to the forest peoples whose lands have been destroyed.
There has been a vicious cycle of forest peoples, deprived of their forests and therefore their means of survival, being further impoverished by outsiders taking advantage of their situation.
With increasing poverty has come decreasing ability to defend their rights. Vast plantations, owned by multinationals are spreading into forested areas.
In Cameroon, Bagyeli communities on one edge of Campo Ma’an National Park have been squeezed between the conservation area and land which has been handed over to multinational companies for exploitation.
Oil palm and rubber tree plantations are no-go areas for the Bagyeli, and there has been no compensation for the loss of their land, no jobs, healthcare or other benefits.
Their health is deteriorating as mosquitoes are rife among the plantations, increasing malaria in the area, and the nutrition of the Bagyeli has decreased radically without access to forest foods.
Outsiders who have come to work in the plantations discriminate against the Bagyeli and hunt the local animals, depriving the Bagyeli of their major source of protein.
In 1991 Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda was declared a National Park. The Batwa were evicted and banned from hunting and gathering; few were compensated.
They were not consulted. Most now live as ‘squatters’ on other peoples’ land, always fearful of being moved on, without access to the forest and without land of their own.
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| Pygmies are experts of the forest. Here they are pictured in the Democratic Republic of Congo. © Kate Eshelby/Survival |
Elders report that they cannot teach their children the traditional skills – collecting honey, hunting, herbal medicine – because they cannot go into the forest.
The Batwa have been excluded from the parks, but are mistreated and exploited by the farmers on the outside.
Farmers who had encroached the forest with their farms received compensation when the conservation areas were designated. Displaced Batwa did not.
The tourism revenues from some of the major National Parks in this area are substantial. Foreign visitors pay hundreds of dollars for a day’s trek to see the gorillas in Bwindi.
This money goes to the Ugandan government. It is the local forest peoples who have born the highest costs.
Twa communities have been evicted from parks across the region, including Volcanoes National Park (Rwanda), Mgahinga (Uganda) and Kahuzi-Biega in DRC.
As forest-dwelling peoples, they have suffered exceptionally from their lands being converted into conservation areas from which they have been evicted.
Living in poverty ‘squatting’ on the edges of the land that was once theirs, they have become dependent on begging and labouring for others for meager wages.
In 1999 the Campo Ma’an National Park was demarcated in ‘compensation’ for the environmental damage caused by the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline.
Not only did the Bagyeli hunter-gatherers lose their land but they have also been barred from accessing the area and forced to settle and take up farming – without consultation.
Regarding Cameroon’s Lake Lobeke and Boumba-Bek Parks, the Global Environment Facility – a funder of the parks – recently found that several Baka communities were displaced and 8000 people suffered loss of income as they had previously gathered resources in the area.
