SEVENSEAS Marine Conservation & Travel Issue 12, May 2016 | Page 90

When it comes to conservation

looking backwards is the way forward

A major topic of last year’s Paris Climate Summit was indigenous peoples’ rights and their role in mitigating climate change. Studies suggest allowing native people official tenure rights over their land could result in huge carbon savings and socioeconomic benefits. Despite these studies and protests from indigenous groups, legally binding measures pertaining to these rights were excluded from the final agreement.

I lived the reality of this idea when I traveled to East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo with an NGO seeking to help a Dayak tribe obtain rights to manage their traditional land. Unfortunately, the Dayak customary tenure practices of sustainable, long-term rotational agriculture were long eclipsed by the short-term gain from logging, palm oil, and mining industries. Their spiritual connection to the forest had been all but severed in the younger generation by the wide-scale deforestation surrounding the village. Where the forest had once been at their doorstep, it was now over a 2-hour drive away.

I soon discovered the greatest challenge of this endeavor was making the protection of the forest more economically beneficial to the community than the destructive industries around it. A tourism program run by the community members offered a solution, however ultimately the profits were not dispersed widely enough through the community to garner the necessary support for the project. This exposed me both to the potential for and difficult reality of implementing concepts that read well on paper.

While Paris focused on the terrestrial environment, community involvement is an important issue in marine conservation as well. Throughout the world, coastal communities are under strain from commercial fishing, sea level rise, and protected areas that strip them of their livelihoods.

Writing and Photography by Kaelyn Lynch

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