Conservation, ecological justice and harm to nature - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 90

At the Grand Canyon, this close relationship between
forestry officials and business interests began to take shape
not long after the forest reserve's creation in 1893. By the
early twentieth century, the canyon's new federal managers
had reached a series of accommodations with the local
mining, railroad, and lumber companies that allowed these
businesses access to the reserve's natural resources. (Jacoby,
2001: 169)
In the twenty-first century new opportunities for conservation NGOs
to work hand in glove with transnational corporations have emerged.
Climate change, for example, has opened up new doors for profitable
offsets (for example, forest as repositories for carbon sequestration
under carbon emission trading schemes), many of which involve the
larger NGOs.
Conservationism and social division
There are those who criticise mainstream environmental and
conservation groups precisely because of their 'focus on the fate of
“nature” rather than humans' (Harvey, 1996: 386). To put it differently,
taking action on environmental issues involves choices and priorities.
Many communities who suffer from the 'hard end' of environmental
harm feel that their wellbeing ought to take priority over 'natural
environments' or specific plants and animals as such. Others feel hard
done by due to the way in which environmental movements have
moved in to take charge of their traditional lands.
Several trends are of note in regard to conservation and the
environmental social movements that support and promote it. First,
while it is the case that 'Currently, 13 per cent of land and less than 1
per cent of oceans are protected for conservation' (UNEP, 2011: 12),
there is great pressure to lock up more lands for conservation purposes
worldwide. Second, there is increasing concern about how NGOs from
'outside' (that is, the metropoles of the North) have an impact on the
status and livelihoods of those in certain parts of the world (that is,
those who actually live in the South). Duffy (2010) recounts how in
a number of cases transnational NGO action has translated into the
criminalisation of local residents and alienation from their own lands
and natural resources. There is a 'dark side' to conservation that is based
upon cultural ignorance and that can, in its own right, create more
harm than good and lead to both human misery and unsustainable
ecological solution.