Conservation Refugees
Conserving the environment is no easy feat and some tough decisions are definitely going to be made along the way. There are even some decisions that will be made that won’t necessarily seem moral. That’s exactly what’s happening with conservation refugees. Indigenous peoples are being forced to leave the land that they as a tribe have inhabited for hundreds of years in order for conservationists to protect the environment that these people lived in. While saving the environment is an incredibly important task, the rights of others need to be put into perspective. For this reason, it is morally unacceptable for conservationists to create conservation refugees.
When these indigenous people are forced to leave their land, they are placed into worse conditions than they had before. Dowie in “Conservation Refugees” discusses a great example of conservation refugees who were forced to move to a place that is not ideal. The Batwa people were forced to leave their land after it became a national park and word got out that they were killing silverback gorillas, even though they weren’t really killing them. These people were then moved into camps where there wasn’t any running water. Basically, these people went from living a life that they were comfortable and happy in and were forced to live in a place where they couldn’t even clean themselves with running water in order to save the environment. Is it morally acceptable to force people to live somewhere where they are worse off than where they lived before? If this were to happen now in Tucson and people who lived in homes were forced to move into tents on the side of the road in order to preserve the land their house was built on, there would definitely be an upr...
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...ates takes pride in their culture. If they were forced to take up a different country’s systems of medicine and education, people wouldn’t stand for it. So why is it okay to force other people to completely change their way of life? Not only have they been moved from their home, but are also forced to start a different educational system. All of this change at once isn’t good for anyone and can lead to culture shock.
Works Cited
"Conservation Refugees." Conservation Refugees. Survival International, n.d. Web. 06 May 2014.
Dowie, Mark. "Conservation Refugees." Orion Magazine. N.p., Nov.-Dec. 2005. Web. 06 May 2014.
Rodgers, Paul. "Polar Bear Apocalypse." The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 11 June 2006. Web. 07 May 2014.
Smith, S. E. "Faces of New Colonialism: Conservation Refugees." This Aint Livin. N.p., 16 Aug. 2012. Web. 06 May 2014.
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Gibson, J. William. "The New War on Wolves." Los Angeles Times. 08 Dec. 2011: A.25. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.
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