I stand, mesmerized by the panorama. Distant mountains are cloaked in each shade of inexperienced, and a transparent, nonetheless lake displays the sky. The deep amber sundown lights the golden script carved into the wood signal: Kaeng Krachan Nationwide Park.
Close by, a younger couple captures the second in a selfie—a postcard from paradise, certainly one of Thailand’s World Heritage Websites.
“Not there… there!” Kai, our information, tugs my arm, and factors to a spot by the river. “That’s the place they discovered a part of Billy’s physique.” And, identical to that, my reverie breaks.
Pholachi “Billy” Rakchongcharoen was an Indigenous Karen activist. He was amassing honey when he was arrested by park officers and vanished. 5 years later, items of his cranium surfaced in a drum underneath a bridge—proper right here in paradise. Billy was simply 30, about the identical age as these younger selfie takers.
Later, we meet Menor, his widow. Her eyes heavy with sorrow, she says, “Why do we want a World Heritage Website on our ancestral land? It by no means provides the neighborhood any advantages. It simply takes issues away from us.”
This panorama, hailed by UNESCO for its “excellent worth to all humanity,” is dwelling to a tragedy. And the Karen individuals, its true custodians, are its victims. The Karen follow rotational agriculture—the place totally different plots of land are used over successive years after which left fallow for as much as a decade. Primarily, they put together a brand new space for planting by utilizing managed fires, which enrich the soil and improve biodiversity. All of that is accompanied by rituals and ceremonies to honor the Earth, their meals supplier. Since colonial occasions, conservationists, blind to this concord, branded it pejoratively as “slash and burn.”
In 1996, the Karen of Bang Kloi village have been evicted by the federal government underneath the guise of defending the park. They resisted. Billy was certainly one of them—till his voice was silenced.
Impressed by Billy and his grandfather, the indomitable Ko-ee who died aged 107 after a lifetime of resistance, the Karen of Bang Kloi reclaimed their territory in 2020, solely to be violently expelled once more. Regardless of this grim historical past, regardless of the pleas of three United Nations particular rapporteurs to handle human rights considerations earlier than the designation, UNESCO assigned the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complicated (KKFC) World Heritage Website (WHS) standing in 2021. The accolade was within the class “pure standards,” outlined as a “vital pure habitat for in-situ conservation of organic range.”
However regardless of the beliefs of UNESCO specialists and vacationers, the Kaeng Krachan habitat didn’t happen naturally. The panorama was sculpted and nurtured by Indigenous individuals for generations. As one Karen man identified, “The WHS workers solely see the forest and animals; they don’t see the individuals. They don’t see us. It’s a sort of blindness.”
One other Karen voice added bluntly, “KKFC turning into a WHS is a critical violation of human rights.”
Since its designation as a World Heritage Website there’s been a rise in harassment and arrests, and a tightening of restrictions. Karen individuals stated that the World Heritage standing meant that makes an attempt to power everybody out of the forest “have gotten worse”.
This isn’t only a Thai tragedy. It’s a world one. Human rights investigations have documented torture, rape, and killings of Indigenous individuals in “pure” World Heritage Websites—particularly in Asia and Africa. These websites, celebrated for his or her magnificence and ecological significance, develop into battle zones for the locals. Governments and NGOs, armed with UNESCO’s blessing, push the Indigenous individuals out and blame them for the degradation of what they’ve lengthy protected.
International locations crave UNESCO’s nod. It brings status, vacationers, funding. However for these evicted, it’s a nightmare.
In my travels with Survival Worldwide, the worldwide motion for Indigenous peoples’ rights, I’ve seen these “wonders of the world.” The Serengeti’s huge plains, Odzala’s shadowy Congo forests, India’s tiger reserves, Yosemite’s grandeur—all share a darkish secret. The pristine wilderness vacationers adore is soaked with Indigenous blood, sweat, and tears. These landscapes have been their houses, sustained by their data and practices till outsiders determined they have been “wild nature,” needing safety from the very individuals who understood them greatest. It’s colonialism masquerading as conservation.
For a lot of Indigenous individuals, their lands declared as World Heritage Websites morph into alien territories, belonging to not them, however to “all of the peoples of the world”—particularly the fee-paying vacationers.
We have to put this conservation mannequin on trial, simply as we did with different unjust, outdated, and dangerous concepts—racial segregation, gender inequality. The true protectors of our shared pure heritage are Indigenous peoples. Their methods of life are sustainable, rooted in offering for future generations. For them, nature is dwelling, the muse of life and survival. They’re one of the best stewards of the pure world. As one group of Karen declared, defiant regardless of the years of oppression: “If we don’t struggle right now, there can be no future for our youngsters.”
UNESCO should abandon its assist for a conservation mannequin that annihilates Indigenous peoples. It ought to start by de-listing websites the place human rights abuses happen. Solely then can it start to decolonize itself—and genuinely defend our planet.
Fiore Longo is a Analysis and Advocacy Officer at Survival worldwide, in addition to Co-ordinator of Survival France. She works on Survival’s conservation marketing campaign and has visited many communities threatened with eviction from conservation zones in India and Republic of Congo.
This text initially appeared in Widespread Desires, September 2024.
