The Problem with Green Militarization: The need to explore peaceful alternative approaches to wildlife conservation

art by Ed Oner (Morocco)

Ezekiel Dobelsky; Christianne Zakour; Ellery Saluck; Navashna Gajathar

Militarized anti-poaching leads to human rights abuses and further marginalization and requires alternative approaches to address these issues.

Context

To counter the rise in wildlife poaching, foreign assistance commonly flows to “green militarization”—the use of military and paramilitary actors, techniques, technologies, and partnerships as a conservation strategy.[i] Green militarization takes many forms, including the provision of military-grade weaponry and surveillance technologies to anti-poaching units.[ii] In some cases, formal security forces or private companies have been employed to protect wildlife.[iii] To justify these practices, poaching and the illegal trade of wildlife have been framed in national security terms.[iv] In 2014, the UN recognized poaching in Africa as a regional security threat.[v] The association of poaching with a security threat enables governments to dispossess local communities surrounding parks more easily.[vi]

Critics of green militarization argue it is unable to address the root economic causes of poaching; that it imposes pressure on rangers to implement “shoot-on-sight” and “shoot-to-kill” policies; that it has a tendency to lead to a perpetual arms race; and that it can breed animosity and violence between local communities and conservationists.[vii] Tension between local communities and conservationists is rooted in a history of colonization, under which communities have been forcibly displaced from their own lands or restricted from hunting and accessing resources.[viii]

Green militarization facilitates the abuse of local communities around protected areas or parks. There have been numerous examples of anti-poachers and eco-guards committing human rights abuses.[ix] There have been hundreds of allegations that park rangers in Malawi, Tanzania, and Botswana have committed murder or torture, or removed people forcibly.[x] From 2010 to 2015, South African park guards killed nearly 500 Mozambicans.[xi] In Cameroon, the indigenous Baka people were abused by WWF-funded eco-guards, a prominent example of Western finance being directly implicated in abuse linked to green militarization.[xii] The militarization of anti-poaching and “shoot-on-site” directives further fuels these abuses.

What’s been done

An alternative to green militarization is “inclusive anti-poaching” (IAP), or community-based anti-poaching. Rather than utilizing funding to pit conservation enforcement against local communities (which tend to be involved in poaching), IAP aims to win the support of local communities by involving them in anti-poaching activities. In the Mangalene region of Mozambique, IAP is being used by hiring local scouts to aid in anti-poaching efforts. These scouts, hired through the Mangalene Community Scout Program (MCSP), provide intelligence to anti-poaching units, facilitate conflict resolution within their communities, and monitor parts of the 40-kilometre perimeter fence.[xiii] The presence of the MCSP has seen reduced poaching through a combination of preventive and proactive anti-poaching activities.[xiv] Issues arise when community benefits from anti-poaching are minimal, as scouts are perceived to be interrupting a potential livelihood opportunity. When communities have ownership over wildlife, however, they are much more likely to support community scouts in their anti-poaching efforts.[xv]

Examples of IAP within communities also display a gendered dimension, like that of the Black Mambas in South Africa, an all-female anti-poaching unit. This initiative primarily seeks to prevent poaching but additionally empowers local impoverished communities, specifically young rural women who are often excluded from conservation efforts.[xvi] Zimbabwe’s “Akashinga” women-only conservation effort also displays this local empowerment of women. The unit comprises of “unemployed single mothers, abandoned wives, former sex workers, survivors of sexual and physical abuse, wives of imprisoned poachers, widows and orphans,”[xvii] all who receive formal law-enforcement training, like their male counterparts. Empowering these women has yielded positive results as women are less likely to resort to violence in tense situations; they are also less susceptible to bribery.[xviii] This notion is supported by studies on how men and women responded differently to the use of force in the Gulf War.[xix] These women-only anti-poaching units are a compelling alternative to green militarization, as rangers often utilize non-violent means of combating poaching. Female rangers are largely unarmed and make use of information gathering and tracking poachers in their efforts.[xx] 

The Mali Elephant Project is another example of a community-based approach that uses local intelligence and improves community welfare. As a result, from February 2017 through March 2018, no elephants were poached—which is unprecedented considering the prevalence of violent insurgency at the time.[xxi] This can be a very effective and peaceful alternative to green militarization.

Looking ahead

Integrating local communities into anti-poaching efforts is an effective conservation strategy; it can also lay the foundation for peace between conservation law enforcement and locals. Wildlife conservationists should employ strategies like IAP alongside demand-reduction strategies for a more peaceful and more sustainable world.

Incorporating a gendered approach is vital, as prior efforts have allowed gender stereotypes to exclude a large percentage of key community players from combating wildlife trafficking. This highlights the need for a context-specific approach to future action across the globe. A one-size-fits all “solution” such as green militarization will not work and will continue to perpetuate human rights abuses upon local communities.[xxii] It is important to consider all the reasons that poaching occurs, including the use of wildlife as a food source and the killing of wildlife to protect crops. Therefore, a context-specific approach when undertaking IAP is necessary.

The solution to wildlife trafficking does not lie in doling out more severe punishments but in rewarding positive behaviours .[xxiii] Community-led anti-poaching efforts must be supported by multilateral demand-reduction campaigns funded by countries with the highest demand. Imprisoning or killing poachers at a local level will not eradicate the demand for wildlife products in other countries.[xxiv]

[i] Lunstrum, E. (2014) ‘Green Militarisation: Anti-Poaching efforts and the spatial contours of Kruger National Park’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 104(4): 816-832. DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2014.912545.

[ii]Duffy, R. V. (2014) ‘Waging a War to War to Save Biodiversity: The Rise of Militarised Conservation’, International Affairs, 90(4): 819-834. ISSN 0020-5850.

[iii]Jooste, J. and Ferreria, S. M. (2018) ‘An appraisal of Green Militarisation to protect Rhinoceroses in Kruger National Park’, African Studies Quarterly 18(1):49-60. (https://asq.africa.ufl.edu/files/v18i1a4.pdf)

[iv]Duffy, R. V. (2014) ‘Waging a War to War to Save Biodiversity: The Rise of Militarised Conservation’, International Affairs, 90(4): 819-834. ISSN 0020-5850. 

[v]Bolton, Dr. M. (2015) ‘Using the Arms Trade Treaty to Address Wildlife Poaching in East Africa: A Human Security Approach’, Control Arms

[vi]Massé, F. and Lunstrum, E. (2015) ‘Accumulation by securitization: Commercial poaching, neoliberal conservation, and the creation of new wildlife frontiers’, Geoforum 69: 227-237. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275280779_Accumulation_by_securitization_Commercial_poaching_neoliberal_conservation_and_the_creation_of_new_wildlife_frontiers)

[vii]Duffy, R. et al. (2015) ‘Toward a new understanding of the links between poverty and illegal wildlife hunting’, (https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.12622)

[viii]Ibid.

[ix]Warren, T. and Baker, K. (2019) ‘WWF Funds Guards Who Have Tortured and Killed People’, Buzzfeed News (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomwarren/wwf-world-wide-fund-nature-parks-torture-death)

[x]Neumann, R. P. (2004). ‘Moral and discursive geographies in the war for biodiversity in Africa’, Political Geography. 23: 813-837.

[xi]Reuters (2015) ‘Nearly 500 Mozambican poachers killed in S. Africa’s Kruger since 2010- former leader’, Reuters. (https://www.reuters.com/article/mozambique-poachers-idUSL5N11R2OP20150921)

[xii]Survival International. (2017). ‘Leaked report reveals WWF knew about ‘pygmy’ abuse’, Survival International. (https://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11561)

[xiii]Massé, F., Gardiner, A., Lubilo, R. and Themba, M. (2017) ‘Inclusive anti-poaching? Exploring the potential and challenges of community-based anti-poaching’, SA Crime Quarterly. 60(60): 19-27. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317912841_Inclusive_Anti-poaching_Exploring_the_Potential_and_Challenges_of_Community-based_Anti-Poaching)

[xiv]Ibid.

[xv]Ibid.

[xvi]Agu, H. and Gore, M. (2020) ‘Women in wildlife trafficking in Africa: A synthesis of literature’, Global Ecology and Conservation. 23. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989420307071)

[xvii] Ibid.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix]Regan, P. and Paskeviciute, A. (2003) ‘Women’s Access to Politics and Peaceful States’, Journal of Peace Research. 40. (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.895.4973&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

[xx]Schmidt, F. (2020) ‘Including local communities in an anti-poaching strategy and its impact on environmental awareness: a case study with the unarmed all-female Black Mamba Anti-Poaching Unit in South Africa’, (https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/123456789/10203/Schmidt%2C_Frouwke_1.pdf?sequence=1)

[xxi]Canney, S. (2019) ‘The Mali Elephant Project: Protecting elephants amidst conflict and poverty’, International Zoo Yearbook (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334738295_The_Mali_Elephant_Project_protecting_elephants_amidst_conflict_and_poverty)

[xxii]Rosaleen, D., St John, F., Büscher, B. and Brockington, D. (2015) ‘Toward a New Understanding of the Links between Poverty and Illegal Wildlife Hunting’, Society for Conservation Biology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.12622)

[xxiii]Nataraajan, A. (2020) ‘Wildlife Trafficking: Focusing on the Entire Supply Chain’, Psychology & Marketing 37(12): 1679. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21431.

[xxiv] Ibid.