A letter to the Convention’s secretariat, signed by 128 human rights NGOs including 11 based in Kenya, has warned that this drive is likely to lead to severe human rights violations and cause irreversible social harm to the remaining sustainable cultures in the world. Stephen Corry of Survival International has called the move ‘a colossal land-grab as big as Europe’s colonial era, [which] will bring as much suffering and death’. The Big Conservation Lie is an unrelentingly honest, revisionist work that Ogada and Mbaria hope ‘will unmask the true challenges that threaten the existence of Kenya’s wildlife and our ownership of our national heritage’. Its roots lie in feudal Europe, where wildlife reserves were earmarked for the sole use of the aristocracy. The peasants, to whom the land had originally belonged, were debarred as trespassers and poachers and ferociously penalised by the nobles.

Source: The Star May 10, 2021 01:52 UTC