Conservation by Force: The Hidden Violence of Protecting 'Wilderness' with Zahra Moloo

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We talk with investigative journalist and filmmaker Zahra Moloo about how conservation in Southeast Cameroon has meant the eviction of the Baka people from their ancestral forests, while logging, trophy hunting, and fortress conservation-style "protected areas" expand side by side. We trace the colonial and capitalist roots of fortress conservation, what violence associated with fortress conservation has done to the Baka people community over time, and what justice might require if conservation is going to include human rights. 
• fortress conservation and why “pristine wilderness” often means forced removals of the indigenous inhabitants
• Zahra’s reporting in Southeast Cameroon around Lobeke, Nki, and Boumba Bek parks
• Baka communities living on the roadside and the daily cost of losing forest access 
• trophy hunting zones, logging concessions, and how “sustainable development” gets justified 
• the 2019 access agreement, reduced violence claims, and why fear can still keep people out 
• sedentarization, citizenship paperwork, and how colonial land law shapes dispossession 
• violence as a tool of enclosure and discipline across parks and trophy hunting areas
• what accountability could look like beyond so-called grievance mechanisms 
• centering Indigenous knowledge as the world pushes 30x30 conservation targets 

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Transcript

Welcome And What’s At Stake

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by Global Justice Ecology Project. In Southeast Cameroon, an indigenous peoples are relegated to living on the side of roads as logging concessions, national parks, and trophy hunting now occupy their ancestral land. Traditionally, the Baca have seen the forest as a place of joy and abundance, but a history of violence in the name of conservation continues to haunt and unfold within a community our next guest has documented, photographed, and written about extensively. In her article, Violence and Enclosures in the Forest of Southeast Cameroon, a visual essay, Zara Moloo examined the effects of violence and its relationships with the enclosure of forests by conservation entities, trophy hunting outfits, and logging. Zara Moloo is an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, and researcher from Kenya, currently based in Montreal. Her work focuses on extractive industries, land rights, conservation, and security. Zara has worked as a reporter and documentary producer for the New Humanitarian, covered stories in Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, and Palestine. Zara's work has been featured in Al Jazeera, BBC, CBC, CCTV's Faces of Africa, and Jacobin. Zara is a board member of Global Justice Ecology Project. Zara Mulu, welcome to Breaking Green.

Speaker 2 1:33

Thank you so much. Thanks

Why Zara Investigates Conservation

Speaker 2 1:35

for having me.

Speaker 1:35

What brings you here today, and thank you for being here, is your work on Cameroon and the Baca people. Could you just give us a brief overview of what you're doing there?

Speaker 2 1:51

Yes, so thank you so much for having me. Yeah, so the the basically I started so I started doing research on conservation many years ago as a journalist. And most of that work was looking at uh Virunga National Park and the communities, the Bambuti forest communities that have been evicted from that park. And that park is very, very well known. You know, it has had a whole film made about it. It's uh it's you know, sort of one of the poster child of conservation in some ways. Um but what I found is that, you know, this park, there were a lot of people had been evicted, as often occurs in fortress conservation. And um I'll just quickly explain what that is. I'm sure that your listeners have listened to your other programs, but uh fortress conservation is basically this model of creating national parks, creating these areas that are supposed to be pristine wilderness uh without any people in them. And that means that the people who live there and who've lived there for thousands of years uh have to be removed often forcibly in order to create these pristine areas for other people to consume and enjoy. Uh so I began looking at DRC, but then uh in 2024 was there was a war in the east uh because of the M23 rebellion that uh that that is still still happening now. And um, so I ended up going to Cameroon to look at what's been happening around the parks in the east of the country, the southeast of the country.

Inside Southeast Cameroon’s Park System

Speaker 2 3:28

Um, and there you have three parks uh in that area that I was looking at. One is called Lobeke National Park, and Lobeke is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was created in 2001 as part of a much larger conservation area, which comprises Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. And then next to Lobeke National Park are two parks called Bumbabek and Nki. And these two make up the largest protected area in Cameroon. So I was interested in going there mostly because I had read uh some of the reports that Survival had published over many decades about the violence that had happened around those parks towards Baka people. And there were really harrowing, horrible accounts of torture, of people's homes being burned to the ground, of uh humiliating acts that Baka people were made to perform by guards protecting those parks. Uh, in some cases, people had been killed. Um, and so I was interested in what was happening there. And uh so I went there to investigate what is the relationship between conservation and this long history of violence. Why is this violence? Why did it continue for so long? Why is it of such a horrific physical nature? Um, so I really went to understand um sort of the dynamics of conservation in that area of Southeast Cameroon.

Speaker 4:59

Well, and you did uh a lot of photography too, and I was reading a paper of yours, um Violence and Enclosures in the Forest of Southeast Cameroon, a visual essay in the journal Rethinking Marxism, which is uh published by Rutledge. Um, and you have some fantastic photographs. Um they really help you see and and and maybe have more of a feeling what's going on there. Um what were your impressions of the Baca people when you got there and were able to live with and photograph them?

Roadside Life And Lost Forest Access

Speaker 2 5:37

Um Well, I I have to give a lot of credit to other, you know, people who had written about the Baca, uh indigenous people who've written about uh that area, but also other anthropologists, geographers, and so on. Um and so even before I went, I spoke to quite a few people and got a sense of what it was like. But yeah, I mean, I think what really struck me is that, you know, these are communities that had actually been moved out of their lands um quite some decades ago. In fact, there was even, you know, when I got there, I thought that they most of them live on the side of the road, on the side of major roads. They don't actually live in the parks. Um and I had thought that the reason they lived on the side of the road was because they had been moved from the parks. But actually, this was a policy by the French colonial government of moving people out of the parks for various reasons. Um, and that continued with the post-colonial government. So it was actually a government policy to remove people from the parks, from the forests, and uh sort of it allowed the state to control them a lot more, but it also allowed them to have access to uh education. So a lot of them, when I spoke to them, said they didn't want to go back to the parks in in the way that we might think they would. Um, because they still wanted access to social services, access to education, which is also very difficult for them to access because of the lack of infrastructure. There is not, there are not good roads. Um, it's a very, very uh it's an area of the country that's very neglected. So there's very few social services, there's no running water, there's no electricity, you know, it's very, but they still have access to some services by living on the side of the road. But they want to also have access to the forest, which they don't. And that is causing this huge sort of um transformation in terms of uh disconnection from their traditional cultures and their lands and the an inability to transmit this sort of very amazing rich knowledge that they have to uh younger people. Um and I was quite amazed at how some baker are able to, the few who have managed to, you know, go to school to get uh to go to university in some cases, some have become lawyers, they try to have this sort of um relationship between with the forest and at the same time do their legal work and try to advocate for the rights of other Baka people. And I was very amazed by that, you know, sort of the those two worlds that they try to occupy.

Trophy Hunting, Logging, And Restricted “Rights”

Speaker 2 8:29

Um but I think what's really what really struck me is the violence of not just conservation, but you know, you have the national parks, but right around the national parks, you have trophy hunting areas, and you see these, you know, Americans and Russians and Mexicans and, you know, for these rich hunt hunters who come to and they pay, you know, $46,000 or more actually for a hunting package. They come and they just kill all these animals, they take them as trophies. But the backer are not allowed to kill those animals. They're prevented from accessing the forest. They cannot hunt animals, but yet these very rich people can come and hunt animals on their land. Uh, and then you also have these logging concessions. So the whole forest has been carved out into these areas that are all for the means of accumulation and profit. And the backer are completely removed from this land. And if they are allowed to go back, I mean, they're there in 2019 actually, and this is a much longer story, which I can tell, but in 2019, the government signed an agreement with the Baca uh to give them access rights to the national parks. So the idea was that they should have some form of access to the forests. Um and this was an agreement that was many, many years in the making and only got signed in 2019. But but that access comes with so many restrictions and caveats. So, for example, you know, in Baca culture, you're uh you can go, there are many traditions that occur in the forest that require a long period of time. They require people to go for weeks into the forest, they require backer to be able to hunt elephants sometimes, to basically have a relationship with the forest that's not mediated and restricted by the state and by conservation. But that's the agreement that they've signed with the Bakr is. You can have this little bit of access to the forest, but only for like a few days, or only if you make sure that you sign this paper asking for permission, and only if you go as a family, and only if you kill an animal with a spear, you're not allowed to use, you're not allowed to use guns. So it's it's uh so this agreement isn't really a form of genuine access, but what a lot of Baca did say is that this the agreement they signed did result in a reduction in violence by conservation guards towards them. So that is one good thing that has occurred.

Sedentarization And Colonial Land Law

Speaker 11:01

You used the term or you referred uh to uh the saditization of the Baca during the period of French colonialism. I'm interested, uh, or could you help us understand, you know, when did the dispossession of the Baca begin?

Speaker 2 11:18

Aaron Powell I think there's a whole sort of there are many layers to that story, because in Cameroon today, the Baca are basically, one could say, at the very bottom of this so-called social hierarchy in Cameroon. Um, and that has, you know, a long history of how the nation-state of Cameroon was formed, who is considered to be part of the nation-state. And this issue of sedentarization is very much linked to um agricultural communities. So so there's a whole, there's an excellent book um by a Cameroonian historian or anthropologist about this, in which she explains how um the the government basically the belonging to the nation-state was tied up with agriculture and with sedentarization. So communities that like the Baca, who are not sedentary, who have a relationship with the forest rather than with the soil as agriculturalists, were not considered as part of the nation in the same way. So their marginalization began, you know, at that time when the when the nation-state was forming and when they were not really considered as part of this of the nation-state. And, you know, this is also tied up with a lot of bureaucratic things, like for instance, a lot of them don't have, don't have uh ID, ID, they don't have a citizenship, proof of citizenship. And so there's a whole, you know, there's there's a lot of um, there's there's backup people who are trying to, who are working with organizations to try and get uh birth certificates for them so that they can prove that they're also can that they're citizens, so they can also go to school. So there are all these sort of um uh snowball effects of not having the proper papers of citizenship. But uh in terms of conservation, you know, the other thing that carries over from the colonial period is the legal infrastructure that both the Germans and the French uh, you know, put in place these legal instruments that declared all land to be property of the colonial state. And this isn't just in Cameroon, this is in many countries, this idea that, you know, the land is a property of the colonial state. But then this legal infrastructure continued into the post-colonial period under Amadou Aido, the first president of Cameroon, who was basically put in his position by the French, and he maintained a very close relationship with France. Um, and so the land continued to be as much under state control as it was under colonialism. Um, but also at that time you had, you know, this whole push to create national parks in Africa. And so this was at the turn of the 20th century, uh, when the UK, for example, organized a conference on the preservation of wild animals, birds, and fish in Africa. Then in 1933, you had another conference for the protection of flora and fauna. Um, and both of these were organized by big game hunters in Africa who came from members of Britain's and Europe's uh aristocracy. And so from there you had these documents that started to outlaw African hunting practices, started to create a system of national parks in which hunting was prohibited, hunting by Africans was prohibited. Um, and then you had protected areas that came about, you know, in the 1930s and so on. And then later on in the 2000s, the number of protected areas really increased and almost doubled. Basically in 2015, you had national parks constituting around 88% of the territory, and trophy hunting zones uh uh constituted about 11% or 12% of the national territory. So quite a lot of Cameroon's land is now national parks. I think there are about 22 estimated national parks. And um so I so that's where sort of the legal infrastructure and the national park establishment, uh, that's sort of the the history which which underpins the reasons why the bacca are now not able to go into the into the parks or live in the parks and their marginalization from the forests.

Speaker 15:27

So that's interesting and and uh and troubling. So you have the Baca people, uh you met many living on the roadside, uh, you have them now uh trying to uh even prove citizenship. Uh they've been taking off their land. I mean, obviously their culture has been heavily impacted, uh. But you also mentioned violence. Uh could you tell us a little bit about

Violence As Discipline In Enclosures

Speaker 15:52

violence? Because violence is a big part of your article. Uh you mentioned that uh material violence is really a nodal event with a past, present, and future, and that it has ripples throughout uh people and their memory. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker 2 16:08

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, that quote came from Simon Springer, the violence having a past a past, present, and future. Um Yeah, so so so a lot of scholars have actually written about how violence is has always been part, has been an inherent part of conservation, actually. Um, and it's always been since the establishment of national parks, violence has sort of underpins the whole thing. Um, and part of that is, you know, again, going back to this term of fortress conservation, uh, beginning with the very first creation of national parks in the US, including Yellowstone National Park in 1872, which required, you know, Native Americans being removed from their land. Uh, that model has been, has become the dominant model of conservation everywhere in the world. And um, but beyond, you know, I mean, of course, dispossession and eviction and removing people from their land is extremely violent and has led to, you know, millions of conservation refugees around the world. But I think um, you know, my interest in this topic was the kind of violence that was happening in the Congo Basin in particular, that has been documented by the Rainforest Foundation, by Survival International, uh, in 2019 by BuzzFeed News that did a huge uh investigation into WWF and that organization's financing of uh eco-guards who have been extremely violent towards indigenous people in in the Congo Basin. Um, and so I think that was what was uh, you know, really struck me is why, not so much what was the reason for this violence, but is there a reason is there is there a reason why violence continued for so long and was so so so brutal? Is there a relationship between the success of conservation and violence and the way capitalism works in the forests of uh Southeast Cameroon? And so I write about this and I draw from particularly people write about enclosures and you know the idea that to enclose this area and to to maintain this area as an enclosure that people are not allowed to go into, uh you have to, violence is sort of a way to discipline people, to remain out of the forest. And a way to, you know, I mean, Marx wrote about primitive accumulation as part of um as part of the of as part of the continuous process of capitalist accumulation. But um where Marx says that primitive accumul primitive accumulation is one historical moment in that in that journey, a lot of scholars have said that primitive accumulation, which is the divorcing of the producers from the means of production, is a continuous process. So you have to continue to deter people from going into the forest. And so for me, I saw violence as acting as a form of discipline to prevent people from uh going into the parks, but also from going into the trophy hunting areas, because violence is not just limited to conservation guards protecting national parks, but is also occurs whenever the Baka go venture on into trophy hunting areas, venture into logging areas. And what I found very interesting is that uh logging companies, trophy hunting companies, and national parks collaborate in terms of uh financing these anti-poaching operations that are that end up being very brutal towards the baker. So these three seemingly contradictory activities of trophy hunting national parks and logging are actually sort of part of the same the same package of one what of what the government calls sustainable development. So where I thought it was crazy to have a trophy hunting area right next to a national park because an animal will just wander out of the national park and in front of a gun, that's that's sort of a model of development that the Cameroonian government is actually pursuing and considers sustainable. Um so violence is kind of part of this, one could say, sustainable development uh package or idea that is uh considered perfectly normal, both you know, in Cameroon, but also according to the UN, where you can have social, environmental, and economic activities altogether. And that somehow isn't

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Speaker 2 20:48

a contradiction.

Speaker 20:48

This is your host, Steve Taylor, and we will be back right after this.

Speaker 1 20:54

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UNESCO, Neoliberal Sustainability, And Dissonance

Speaker 21:22

Welcome back to Breaking Green. What is a contradiction is uh some of this parkland ha was established uh in in some way under UNESCO, and uh that's uh Yes. And you think of that as a UN uh cultural, scientific, educational organization, but here we have a whole culture that's been dispossessed, uh and now it's people living on the side of a road. It uh that seems to be well, inconsistent. Uh it's it's hard to square that circle. It's it's some dissonance there.

Speaker 2 22:02

Yeah, I mean, you know, the UN's definition of sustainable development is uh is a very neoliberal sort of idea that you can reconcile economic activities with environmental protection, that it isn't a contradiction to have, you know, uh extraction or logging, and then also conservation, and then also social programs for the indigenous people. Um and yeah, I mean, uh, for us it's a contradiction, but according to the neoliberal sort of idea of social change or of sustainable development, this is this is this is fine. And I believe Survival wrote something about UNESCO's um complicity in conservation injustices.

What The Violence Looks Like On The Ground

Speaker 22:48

I mean, what does the violence against the Baca people look like? Uh, what effect has it had on them? What's the reality that that you saw there?

Speaker 2 22:56

Yeah, so I went around to quite a lot of different places. Some were right next to the park, some were next to the logging area, some were quite far away. And so there were very different sort of experiences. But um I think you know, there were certain areas where people had lived really terrible violence. Um, and over time, you know, some of this was 2015, 2016, others were more recent. Um and so one of the interesting, I mean, of course, a lot of people were, you know, have, you know, some people have physical wounds from that time. They have trauma from those experiences of violence. Um but a lot of a lot, like I said, you know, with the signing of this agreement between the government and the Baker in 2019, the violence uh seems to have decreased. But uh the Forest People's Program actually wrote a report saying that they're not sure whether the report whether the violence has decreased because the the guards are no longer carrying out violent acts, or whether it's because the Baka people are no longer even going into the forest because of uh those many years of violence and restriction have sort of left this um this kind of trauma in which they say we just don't even go there anymore because we we expect this to happen again and we don't trust what the government says. So, and this is also because that agreement in 2019 uh was only signed between the government and a very small backa organization on behalf of all the backa. And so the a lot of backa, I mean, some of them had not even heard of this agreement. They didn't really understand what it was. Um, and they've been trying to do a lot of like educational awareness and you know, try to explain to people what it means, but there's still this fear and about going into the park and because of all these years of violence. And so it has had a very material impact on people. And in the long term, that sort of disconnection from the forest has a huge impact on in terms of people's ability to continue their their traditions, in terms of their relationship to the forest, in terms of their ancestral, you know, knowledge and and so on, and even just being able to visit areas where you know they might have a sacred area or that someone might be buried or s or something of this sort. Um so so you see that violence doesn't just end when when when the violent act itself comes to an end. It has these very long, long-ranging consequences. And and like I said, you know, yes, the violence around the national parks appears to have decreased, but the violence by the guards who protect the trophy hunting concessions has not, and that still is uh preventing people from being able to access uh the forests.

Speaker 25:58

I I keep going back to what you said uh before. People, the Baca living on the side of the road and looking for a way forward that uh for many may not even be what was, but it reminds me of the enclosure movement in in England. And uh there's that famous book, The Making of the English Working Class. Um and there was a lot that was a very violent um period as well with the the Weavers and uh the uh uh the Luddites. Uh there was there's a lot of violence, and there was a actually a changing of the population and you know, driving people from their uh uh culture more rural, more agrarian, into cities to become factory workers. Is is there some analog here or am I overreaching?

Enclosures Then And Now

Speaker 2 26:56

Aaron Ross Powell No, I think in terms of the dynamics of people being removed from their land and the land being enclosed, and then people having to find other ways to survive, certainly there's you know parallels across in so many different ways uh in in the global south as well. Um but I think uh so in my in in what I in my piece I write about what uh Kalyan Sanyal writes writes about in terms of when this happens in the global south. And you have, you know, in Marx would describe described how all these people ended up then becoming the proletariat. You know, they migrate to cities, they become laborers, they have to work for other people, they have to earn money in a cash economy, they don't have any ways to, they have no control over the means of production anymore, and they have no more land. Um, in the case of Cameroon, what's what's or and other places, um the indigenous people who've been removed from the forests do not become part of this working class proletariat. They they don't move to the cities in large numbers, and so they kind of end up being rooted in place along the side of the road, and they're they're sort of not able to uh they're not able to access this, whatever you'd want to call it, capitalist modernity, becoming, you know, a worker in the city, but they're also not able to access the forests. So they're sort of in this liminal zone, it seems, because they don't really have um access to social services, uh, access to healthcare, access to an education is very difficult. A lot of Baka students drop out of school for a whole range of different reasons. Often they can't afford the fees, uh sometimes they're bullied at school uh just because they are baka. Um and so they end up not becoming part of this sort of army of the proletariat. And so it looks very different than I think, you know, uh England and the industrial, you know, in the 18th and 1700s. And um, so a lot of bhaka end up working on the farms of Bantu people. They earn like the equivalent of a dollar or two a day. Sometimes they're paid in alcohol. Um, and so that's really on the only options that are left to them. Some of them do uh, you know, cultivate, are now becoming, you know, big uh also cultivate uh crops, uh cocoa, plantains, and so on. Um, but a lot of them also work for these very for for very little money on the farms of of other of Bantu people. So so so I suppose that's you know, it's a very different uh dynamic that has occurred as a result of you know uh changing dynamics and enclosures. Um but this idea that people that all these people then dispossessed from their land become the pro the so-called proletariat or end up going to cities and working is is not the case uh in this in this situation.

Speaker 30:03

Aaron Powell Thank you for that. Um I it it just seemed like there's parallels in your paper, you know, the mention of the enclosures and so on. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Speaker 2 30:10

No, it's definitely there are definitely enclosures. Absolutely.

Speaker 30:13

Aaron Powell What would and and I know you can't speak for the Baca, but what would some sort of justice be?

What Justice Could Look Like

Speaker 30:20

How do people want to move forward? I'm sure there's probably not a monolithic vision of the future uh with within this this this group of people, but what would justice or restoration look like?

Speaker 2 30:33

Um That's a really good question. I think I mean yes, of course I can't speak for the many, many, many Backup people that I interviewed. Um but uh I think you know what I heard from quite a lot of, you know, uh in particular, you know, a lot of people and including uh what I heard from a lot of people was that they they want to have the same access to resources, to services that everybody else has, to to, you know, uh whenever we'd go to different communities, we'd you know, have a chat with them. And afterwards they'd say, Can you please help us build a school here? Can you please help us build a road so we can get to school tomorrow, like so that it's not so far away? Can you help us to have a water source over here? They're very basic things that people just want to be able to live, you know, just live a good life. And uh and uh and and I'm just scratching the surface of all this. There's so so much to say. Um but I think that I think that a lot of people would probably want to have both the ability to access their lands and to have free access to the forests, and to have access to uh, you know, to be able to to to have some income, to also be able to go to school, to have to be able to buy a mobile phone, to be able to to live between in those two worlds. Um uh and I think and also I think there hasn't really been any sort of uh how would you say all the violence that took place over all those years, I haven't seen any sort of um uh accountability for any of that, you know. So basically after this Buzzfeed investigation, there was a whole there was a whole uh investigation done by the WWF into the conduct of these guards and and and this whole panel of experts was set up to see whether WWF held any responsibility in the violence that took place. And they didn't really, the findings were not that you know WWF was directly responsible, but that they had not done enough to protect the human rights of certain communities. That was what the panel found, which seems a little bit of a watered-down sort of, you know, finding given all the violence that took place. But and so what WWF has done is to set up a grievance mechanism. That's you know, kind of uh an interesting idea because that's what a lot of you know, multinational companies and mining companies they set up these things where you can complain and bring your human rights complaints to them. And that's great, that's good, that's good that that exists. But I didn't get the sense that, first of all, there are so many logistical issues to that. Just getting to the to a place where you can make a complaint is very complicated, finding transport to get there, and so on and so forth. But actual accountability for this violence, uh, I did not see this happening anywhere. And not just in Cameroon, but in all these countries where there's been so much violence from conservation, you know, uh they the the solution seems to be we'll put in a grievance mechanism, we'll allow some access to the forest. But the model of conservation that is practiced is still not putting indigenous people at the center. And, you know, I think that the knowledge that Baka and other indigenous people have of the forests needs to be centered in conservation for this for this kind of extremely exclusionary model of conservation to stop. Um, and so I think that's one of the things I think needs to happen going forward is to actually learn from people who've protected these areas for so long what are their conservation processes and methods, and how can they be at the center of these of conservation in general? And uh in 2022, the UN uh made a a uh an agreement with a global agreement to protect 30% of the of the earth and and seas by 2030, which we're already in 2026, but um that's that that new idea of protecting 30% of the earth, you know, a lot of people are saying, well, what is this going to look like? Is this going to be again, you know, the same kind of exclusionary conservation, or is there a way to actually put people at the center? Uh and so, you know, reconsidering this whole model and coming to terms with the very racist colonial history behind it is one of the things that I think needs to happen. Um and and yeah, and the Bakka, I think, need to have access to the forests, not in this restricted way that doesn't allow them to fully practice their traditions, but in a in a full way.

Speaker 35:40

Aaron Ross Powell, the Baca have been taken from their land. There's a history of violence, there's a lot of trauma. Obviously, uh the their culture has has been really challenged, but whatever the way forward uh there is, the Baca should be at the be at central to that, not logging, not trophy hunting, not Cameroons, you know, model. Right? Yes.

Centering Baka Knowledge And The 30x30 Future

Speaker 2 36:11

Uh I mean I think also it's it's really interesting to read the work of some of some people who've actually, you know, spent a lot of time with Bakka. Um there's one anthropologist in particular, Simon Hoyt and uh Jerome Lewis, and they've they've sort of written about the way Baka relate to and think of the forests. And for them, the forest is a place of joy and abundance, and they see um they write about how the Baka see uh logging companies and trophy hunting outfits as these uh these sort of people who don't know how to share. They just hoard everything. They hoard all they hoard the resources and they take them for themselves and they don't leave anything for people. And that's a very interesting, you know, I think just on just trying to understand and learn from Baka uh sort of ontologies and ways of understanding the forests and and seeing the forest as a place of joy and a place of spirits and a place of rather than this, you know, it's just a very different way of seeing the world than this, than the Western uh, let's say capitalist model, where the forest is a, is either a resource or it's you know, uh it's you know, it's something to be consumed, whether it's by tourists, whether it's by trophy hunters, whether it's by logging companies. And this the, you know, learn actually, if conservationists were actually to learn from Baka people about the forest, about how they see the forest, about how they understand the forest. I mean, you could, you'd have a whole other, you'd have a whole way of protecting the earth that's totally based on completely different values, um, you know, from people who've lived there for thousands of years. So it's uh um, and I think what really struck me about just visually being there is, you know, you're sitting there on the side of the road. These logging trucks are coming every few minutes. There are these massive, massive logs being taken out of the forest, and they just pass by and they spew dust all over the people who live right there on the roadside, the people who've been removed from there, so that this massive uh machine of extraction can just continue. And I think that was uh for me, that's that in itself is just so violent. The the the this the the the juxtaposition between these huge logging trucks and these communities that are just being having all this dust spewed on them. Um the people who come from from from those forests.

Speaker 38:47

Well, that says a lot. That image that image does say a

Closing And How To Support

Speaker 38:50

lot. Zara, thank you for joining us on Breaking Green.

Speaker 2 38:54

Thank you so much.

Speaker 38:56

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