The OECD is pursuing a complaint that WWF has funded abuses against the indigenous forest-dwelling Baka or 'Pygmy' peoples of Cameroon, after determining that its human rights guidelines do apply to WWF owing to the 'commercial nature' of its conservation activities.
WWF’s support for 'fortress conservation' has led to serious human rights abuses for indigenous peoples, writes Lewis Evans, and nowhere more so than in Cameroon, where the Baka are considered trespassers and poachers in their own ancestral forests. A formal complaint against WWF's behaviour is now in process.
As ever more companies and governments pledge to 'go green' and protect forests, the world's tribal peoples should be among the main beneficiaries, writes Amy Dickens. Yet the reverse is the case. All too often the promises are purest greenwash, used to conceal the human and environmental tragedy of land-grabbing for plantations, mines, logging and even 'conservation'.
When Martin Cradick and Su Hart travelled to West Africa in 1992, little did they know the journey would set their lives on a whole new direction, writes Matthew Newsome. Inspired by the Baka people of Cameroon's rainforest and the joy that resonates through their music, they are now dedicated to saving this vulnerable people using their magical music to reach into people's hearts.
As we celebrate 'World Wildlife Day' today, there's little for nature's best defenders to be glad of, says human rights lawyer Gordon Bennett. Indigenous Peoples around the world are routinely attacked, starved and cut off from the lands and wildlife they have protected for millennia under a flawed and brutal model of 'conservation'.
