Fortress conservation is a conservation model based on the belief that biodiversity protection is best achieved by creating protected areas where ecosystems can function in isolation from human disturbance. Its implementation has been criticized for human rights abuses against indigenous inhabitants when creating and maintaining protected areas.
Background
Ecotourism
It is argued that money generated from ecotourism is the motivating factor to drive indigenous inhabitants off the land. The organization African Parks, whose President is Prince Harry, has as its motto "a business approach to conservation" and had at its outset that tourism is its key in making their parks financially sustainable.
Militarization
Conservation charities, the biggest of which is the World Wildlife Fund, have increasingly militarized the campaign against poaching. Such poaching is often by organized criminal gangs that prey on the endangered species and, in 2018, 50 park rangers were killed globally. African Parks has been at the forefront of militarization with training from South African, French and Israeli military personnel. Veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been recruited to teach forest rangers counterinsurgency techniques and ex–special forces operatives promote their services at wildlife conferences. This has often involved recruiting paramilitary groups who are then supplied with military grade weaponry.
Efficacy
Some conservation groups argue for the fortress conservation model with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an outcome of the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference, arguing for the 30 by 30 initiative to designate 30% of Earth's land and ocean area as protected areas by 2030. While the fortress conservation model views human as being inherently destructive to the environment, some have argued that the most efficient conservation methods involve transferring rights over land from public domain to its indigenous inhabitants, who have had a stake for millennia in preserving the forests that they depend on. This includes the protection of such rights entitled in existing laws, such as the Forest Rights Act in India, where concessions to land continue to go mostly to powerful companies. The transferring of such rights in China, perhaps the largest land reform in modern times, has been argued to have increased forest cover. Granting title of the land has shown to have two or three times less clearing than even state run parks, notably in the Brazilian Amazon. Even while the largest cause of deforestation in the world's second largest rainforest in the Congo is smallholder agriculture and charcoal production, areas with community concessions have significantly less deforestation as communities are incentivized to manage the land sustainably, even reducing poverty. Additionally, evicting inhabitants from protected areas often under the fortress conservation model often leads to more exploitation of the land as the native inhabitants then turn to work for extractive companies to survive.
Prevalence
Up to 250,000 people worldwide have been forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for conservation projects since 1990, according to the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples. Another estimate put the total number of people displaced between 10.8 million and 173 million.
Botswana
In Botswana, many of the indigenous San people have been forcibly relocated from their land to reservations. To make them relocate, they were denied access to water on their land and faced arrest if they hunted, which was their primary source of food. The government claims the relocation is to preserve the wildlife and ecosystem, even though the San people have lived sustainably on the land for millennia. Additionally, their lands lie in the middle of the world's richest diamond field. On the reservations they struggle to find employment, and alcoholism is rampant.
Cameroon
Baka people in Cameroon's Lobéké National Park have alleged abuse by park rangers funded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Democratic Republic of the Congo
In national parks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, such as Kahuzi-Biéga National Park, heavily armed park rangers come into deadly conflict with the pygmy inhabitants who often cut the trees down to sell charcoal. The conservation efforts of national parks in the country are often financed by international organizations such as the WWF and often involve removing native inhabitants off the land.