Im März 2022 fand im niederösterreichischen Dürnstein wieder ein Symposium statt, das sich in diesem Jahr dem Thema Klima als Seismograph für Natur und Gesellschaft widmete. In diesem Zusammenhang sollte auch zur Sprache kommen, dass Klimapolitiken der mächtigen Industriestaaten zu neuen Ungerechtigkeiten im globalen Süden führen. Ein Thema, das in der öffentlichen Debatte kaum Beachtung findet und auch die Konventionen vieler NGOs grundlegend infrage stellt. Und damit darf ich Sie auch schon bei dieser aktuellen Ausgabe der redaktionell gestalteten Sendereihe mit Biss, Politik und Zeitgeschehen auf DorfTV sehr herzlich willkommen heißen. In diesem Beitrag kommt der kenianische Ökologe Mordecai Odaga zu Wort, der mit seinem Buch die große Naturschutzlüge für großes Aufsehen gesorgt hat. Ihm zufolge verbreiten internationale Medien seit langem die Unwahrheit, dass für die Gefährdung der afrikanischen Tier- und Pflanzenwelt die schwarze Bevölkerung verantwortlich zu machen sei. Er fordert daher mehr kritisches Bewusstsein, um den Klimaschutz von derart rassistischen Narrativen fernzuhalten. Dieser wichtige Diskussionsanstuss bildete auch schon den Abschluss der zweiteiligen Serie zum Symposium 2022 in Thürnstein. of injustice in the global south. What exactly do you mean by this? I mean, it has become, we obviously have a climate crisis in the world right now, and this, everyone is keen to mitigate or stop climate change. But this has covered up a lot of injustices. For example, in Kenya, like carbon sequestration. You find forests are being fenced off from local communities because they are carbon sinks. Yet these local communities have been using them sustainably for centuries. So I think we need to scrutinize what we're doing in terms of climate change mitigation because we are creating unnatural environments. Landscapes in Africa have always had people in them. But right now, because of carbon trade and carbon sequestration, it seems they've created a requirement that there should be no people in that forest for it to be considered a carbon sink. And this is simply not true. And the environmental conservation movement has forgotten that all the biodiversity we have in Africa, that we still have in Africa today, has coexisted with human beings for millennia. Because Africa is actually the cradle of mankind. So we cannot start trying to separate them now without serious violation of human rights and violence. This includes fencing, armed patrols, displacement of communities, extrajudicial killings, etc. So concern for the climate cannot make that okay. You recently published a book called The Big Conservation Lie. In which sense are we facing the untruth in this topic? The main narrative that is untrue and that goes throughout even media and academia around the world is that African wildlife is in danger and the source of danger is black people. That narrative appears in media over and over again. For example, you'd see some of the documentaries, wildlife documentaries, maybe National Geographic Discovery Channel, David Attenborough's documentaries, they show beautiful pictures of landscapes and wildlife in HD, but they don't show black people. And that is, so the presenter, David Attenborough is not telling a lie, but he's letting the camera lie for him. Because when someone sitting in Austria watches that, he believes that we're in elephant habitats, there's no human beings, because he only sees elephants on the TV. And when you come, when someone actually comes to Africa and finds that we are sharing these habitats with wildlife, that's when injustice starts, because they want to push people away to make room for wildlife. Yet wildlife has always been there with people. And this also is driven by the tourism industry, because tourism industry also sells the image of Africa as this beautiful place with beautiful wildlife and wilderness that has no people in it. And that is just not true. And who do you think should be considered responsible for this eternally ongoing, even I guess, colonial narratives? Yeah, I think it's one of the human failings because the most responsible for this is people like Roosevelt who came hunting in Africa. Former US president. Yes, Theodore Roosevelt, who came to Africa on his hunting trip, which was actually in Kenya at the early part of the 20th century, and sent back images with all these photos of him and beautiful wildlife having been shot and beautiful landscapes, and the only black people in his photos were porters carrying his equipment. Those images stick because of the prominence of the person who did it. Even in arts, at the same time, around the early 20th century, you had the book Tarzan, written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This has an image of a noble white man stranded somewhere in Africa, communing with animals in the total absence of black people. And those things stick in imagination because these are all very powerful figures and narratives at the beginning of the 20th century. And moving on we had the colonialists who sought adventure, who sought resources and land in Africa. And all this narrative of natural resources in Africa has always excluded black people. Other things have changed, banking, business, education. All these things have changed since independence. But conservation is stuck in that 100-year-old time warp, driven by movies, books documentaries so there's no much difference in the movie Born Free from 1969 and wildlife documentaries today they still don't show black people as intellectual participants in this and we need to change that narrative the media has a very important role to play in which sense? What do you suggest? We are a small TV station here. And, for instance, to reach the public, to inform the public, to raise awareness, what can we do? Yeah, I think the best thing would be to keep putting out the real pitch, how wonderful the wildlife is and how responsible the people must be. Because if there's elephants in a place and there's people, then those people have a gift for living with wildlife. An elephant is a huge animal. If there's lions in a place and there's people living there, we should also praise the people. Imagine they're living this close to lions and they're not killing the lions and some of the lions are surviving. So we must keep the people in the picture and again expand the suggestions of places for people to go. And especially when there's talk of tourism to Africa, go to Africa and go to Masai Mara in Kenya and meet the Masai people, these amazing people who live with all this wildlife there. And what's the magic about them? There's nothing magical about lions. The magic is a person who lives and raises goats and there's lions there. That's the guy who's really special. So it's just sort of changing the focus. Show the same thing, but change the focus of the narrative. There's animals in this place and there's people as well. Those people must be pretty special. And we cannot, because the diversity of Africa is most important in the people. When we just show wildlife, a lion is the same in South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Somalia, wherever. It's just the same animal. But it's the people that are different. So when we show, when we talk about Africa, we talk about people, even in the context of the natural environment and wildlife, then we'll open the eyes of our audiences in places like Europe. Because right now what's being shown, someone actually coming from here who's watched National Geographic TV and all that, when he goes to Kenya, he actually gets shocked. Some even get disappointed. He said, I went to Masai Mara and it was wonderful, but there were so many people. If you go to Masai Mara, expect to see Masai people. If you go to Samburu National Park, northern Kenya, expect to see Samburu people. Samburu is people. Masai is people. So let's expand that thinking. Nobody goes to India and says, I saw too many Indians, or goes to China and says, I saw too many Chinese people. So let's expand that thinking. Nobody goes to India and says, I saw too many Indians, or goes to China and says, I saw too many Chinese people. So people should not come to Africa and say, I saw too many African people. So let's normalize that people as part of this debate. And then we will, I think we will be able to encourage the local indigenous African people to take care of this heritage once we give them a salute for keeping it intact. So many animals have gone extinct but in Africa so many species still survive. That's because of the people not the conservation organizations. Yeah. The next question I would like to draw our attention on the question who is speaking, who is discussing, who is taking part to find solutions. And to be honest, I've attended a lot of discussion, panel discussions, discourses in the last years concerning climate crisis and just almost with white people of the global north. And now we are facing a huge problem because a lot of people have been already affected of the consequences and the effects of climate crisis decades ago. And they are not involved in the main discourses of this world. What's about your experience in this question? Yeah, I think that's a very important question and because of the narratives, the century old narratives, they still happen today And you find the biggest conservation, global conservation organizations are based in countries with no wildlife. WWF is headquartered in Switzerland. I don't know what wildlife they have in Switzerland. WCS based in New York, et cetera. And they're all talking about Africa. For them, it's become business. If you talk about the, and that's why they give the crisis narrative. Elephants are going to be extinct by 2025, so give us money to save the elephants. Or lions are going to be extinct, whatever, give us money to save. So it's become business. And I think the donors, the private donors, because I know there are many individuals who give maybe 100 euros, 50 euros a month or something to WWF because they like wildlife and they believe these people are doing the right job. I think people must make use of this wonderful, we are in the information age. You can find out about lions in Kenya without going to WWF website. So people must make that step to make connections or get on a plane and go to Kenya and see it for yourself. And I think that's the kind of tourism we want. People are coming to see what's there. They want to learn. Not people who are coming to see what they saw in a movie. That's a movie. That's a documentary. Come see the reality. Because the reality, because the reality is even more beautiful. The reality of people living with wildlife is a really beautiful thing. And I think this will stop that narrative of just having white people in the global north talking about these things. And on the part of global climate change, carbon credits, carbon offsets, those are false instruments. And I've looked at this issue for over six years. Global use of carbon credits is a false narrative because it's capitalism. Capitalism is the reason we have the current climate change crisis. Capitalism is the reason we have the current climate change crisis. Capitalism consumption patterns. So we cannot expect capitalism to save us from this problem. Capitalism is the source of this problem. So let's localize solutions. We like to talk about global solutions. If someone does something that destroys environment in Austria, he must fix the environment in Austria. He cannot go and plant trees in Kenya to solve an environmental problem he caused in Austria, he must fix the environment in Austria. He cannot go and plant trees in Kenya to solve an environmental problem he caused in Austria. It doesn't work like that. But that is what currently we are doing with carbon offsets. Someone flies transatlantic three times a week, but he's happy because every time he flies, he gives someone some money to go plant trees or claiming to go plant trees somewhere. So this is a very dangerous thing because capitalism does not have long-term plans. It's profit now. And this money, there's a lot of money moving around the world without purchasing any goods or services. And that's called carbon credits. This money is being invested in stock markets, in industries that damage the environment, and it's being invested in violating human rights and corrupting governments. So some things like carbon trade, let's trade in real things, not trade in stories. Carbon trade is just stories, yeah. And the last question I would like to ask you to give us some hope what are your ideas just give me one or two to get things better I think things are getting better because now at a symposium like this one here in Dunstein, we have philosophers, anthropologists coming together and speaking with scientists. That is very important because ethics comes from philosophy. Ethics does not come from data. So when we get the philosophy right, we'll get the ethics right. When we have to answer to anthropologists, we will get the humanity, human dimensions right. So that's very encouraging. And then the other thing is that this being the information age and social media. Social media, I know it's a lot of falsehood spread by social media, but social media also makes it very easy to verify the truth. If someone tells you there's only 50 lions left in Kenya, you can get on the internet and find out that that's a lie very quick. So that helps. And the speed at which young people are using social media to challenge existing narratives is a very good thing. We need to democratize the conservation space, democratize the academic space. And I think it's moving very well in that direction. So young people, whether in Europe, United States, and Africa, are quickly finding out and sharing the truth very easily without having to go through those of us who are older or who are in senior positions. Because those of us who are older and in senior positions, we are the problem. They are avoiding us and that's a good thing. Thank you very much. Thank you. You're most welcome.