Botswana is often held up as a model African nation. Gaining independence in June 1966, the arid nation had few natural resources and analysts regarded it as having even fewer prospects for economic success. Then, barely a year later, a large deposit of diamonds was discovered in the town of Orapa and the revenue that was produced has helped elevate Botswana from a poor agricultural country to a middle-class nation with an economy centered on mining and tourism.
In addition to its economic success and political stability, Botswana has been held in high regard for its efforts in the field of conservation. Since most of Botswana’s tourism is focused on the nation’s vast and numerous national parks, the government has invested heavily in this particular area. However, conservation efforts have often come at the expense of the indigenous San people who inhabit the land in and around many national parks.
The San are among the oldest inhabitants of the area that now comprises Botswana (rock art attributed to them in the Tsodilo Hills region dates back over 24,000 years) and yet the government has consistently treated them as though they were intruders.
Prior to 2006, many San had been evicted from their land, had their houses burnt and had their schools closed. The reasoning was that the San’s traditional lifestyle of seminomadic hunting posed a threat to the local ecosystem, despite the fact that they had lived sustainably in the region for generations. A 2006 High Court ruling decided that the decision to evict the San was unconstitutional and many of those who were evicted were allowed back on their land. Nonetheless, the government has continued to make their lives difficult by implementing policies such as restrictions of movements and access to water.
Most recently, Botswana has followed in the footsteps of certain Indian municipalities and enacted a so called “shoot on sight” anti-poaching policy. In August, this policy resulted in San hunters being shot at with a government helicopter. According to indigenous rights group Survival International, the San were subsequently “arrested, stripped naked and beaten.” Perhaps the greatest irony is that while these indigenous peoples who rely on hunting non-endangered species are banned from doing so, big game hunting conducted by foreigners is still strongly encouraged by the government so long as it’s done sustainably.
These policies derive from a mindset that sees conservation and human habitation as completely opposed to one another and combines that mindset with extant prejudices against various indigenous groups. As a result, indigenous peoples have been mistreated for decades in areas from Ecuador to India in the name of environmentalism. Evictions and harassment have only served to increase poverty and conflict in environmentally sensitive regions and have had negative results with regards to conservation.
Environmentalists supporting these positions fail to take into account the fact that most indigenous people rely on the land they inhabit for their livelihoods and therefore have a vested interest in maintaining a sustainable ecosystem. Additionally, these people usually know far more about the local ecosystem than conservationists from outside the region. If they truly care about protecting the environment, the government of Botswana as well as others which have enacted harsh conservation measures need to re-orient their policies and work with indigenous communities instead of against them.
Benjamin Goldberg is a junior majoring in Africana studies and history.