Human rights violations and abuses are unacceptable under any circumstances. The Independent Panel report makes it clear that “WWF has not fulfilled its human rights commitments.”
WWF needs to fully own their responsibility for abuses that are committed by rangers or ‘ecoguards’ working in the protected areas WWF manages or co-manages. In addition to following up on all the Review Panel’s recommendations, Greenpeace expects WWF to offer a full apology to survivors, and ensure they receive appropriate reparations.
More fundamentally, WWF and other conservation organisations and their funders need to reckon with a colonial ‘fortress conservation’ model which restricts access to customary and ancestral lands, and leads to harassment, abuse, evictions and killings of Indigenous People and other members of local communities.
Nature protection must be based on the legal recognition of peoples’ rights over their customary and ancestral land. Indigenous Peoples and local communities, who are themselves among the least responsible for the global extinction crisis, must be acknowledged as leaders in defending nature against industrial and criminal exploitation. The ongoing colonial practice of reducing them to collateral damage of conservation must end.
Irene Wabiwa Betoko, International Project Leader for the Congo Basin forest, Greenpeace Africa: “There are no more excuses for the model of fortress conservation. Eco-guards that WWF funded, equipped and collaborated with have committed crimes. WWF’s investigation must culminate not only in an apology and reparations to the victims, but a complete withdrawal from the colonial “fortress conservation” model to the detriment of human lives.”