Conservationists have rightly faced criticism at a conference for their objection to resettlement of the Chagos archipelago
It always seemed likely that Chagos Regagn� would be a lively affair, and so it proved. The frustration of more than 40 years of exile for the Chagos islanders exacerbated by the refusal of successive British governments to find a just solution kept breaking though. One Chagossian, speaking from the floor, summed it up: "We are tired and our older people are dying. No one seems to be hearing what we want. We want something done." She received thunderous applause from the 150 or so of her compatriots, who had travelled by coach from Crawley and Manchester.
The conference at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington was organised by bestselling novelist Philippa Gregory and television presenter and adventurer Ben Fogle, ostensibly to discuss a proposal for a combined eco-village and research station that would house a small number of Chagossians and marine scientists on one of the outer islands of the Chagos archipelago. But something much bigger was going on.
A few minutes after the intervention from the floor, Philippe Sands, a professor of international law at UCL who is a legal adviser to Mauritius, launched a ferocious attack on the British government. He accused it of pursuing "a racist and colonial policy" by backing the decision of the former foreign secretary, David Miliband, to declare the Chagos archipelago part of the British Indian Ocean Territory ? a marine protected area in 2010 ? to block the islanders' right of return.
Representatives of different groups of Chagos exiles including Olivier Bancoult ? leader of the Chagos Refugees Group in Mauritius, who has doggedly pursued the legal case for the right of return of his people to their homeland through the British courts and now at the European court of human rights ? came face-to-face with conservationists from the Chagos Environment Network (CEN). This is an umbrella group that includes the Chagos Conservation Trust, Linnean Society, Pew Environment Group, Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew, the Zoological Society of London and the RSPB ? which opposes the return of any significant number of islanders. It was evident from their faces that the conservationists were clearly unsettled at being the focus of savage criticisms.
But why do CEN conservationists object to a settled population in Chagos? Simple really. They believe that people are an obstacle to the preservation of the purity of the islands and coral reefs of the archipelago.
This kind of Big Conservation ? "nature will only flourish if we keep the people out" ? is not a recent phenomenon. Indeed, it was exposed by US investigative journalist Mark Dowie, who in his 2009 book, Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Conservation and Native Peoples, calculated that over the last century at least 20 million people, 14 million in Africa alone, have been displaced from their traditional homelands in the name of conservation projects of one sort or another.
Cambridge University's Mark Spalding, a speaker at the conference and one of the world's leading reef conservation scientists, thinks that old-style "colonial" conservation is no longer credible. "I think that most conservation NGOs ? those with their sleeves rolled up doing work on the ground ? are pretty uncomfortable about doing conservation without thinking about people," he says. "I'm very sure that CEN would have lobbied other NGOs ? big global ones as well as local organisations ? to join their team but they didn't [join]." And he is in no doubt about the reasons why: the tense political situations behind Chagos ? the islanders' desire to return to their homeland as well as the desire of Mauritius to get its territory back from the UK ? are important factors. "Conservation history is littered with failures where the voices of key stakeholders have been ignored or abused," he says.
Spalding thinks that although Chagos is "a very special place", it's not unique. "There are atolls like the Tuamotos, or the Phoenix Islands in the Pacific, for example." He is also sceptical of CEN's attempt to portray an environmental catastrophe if the Chagossians return to their homeland. "Of course, people would have an impact, but this could be controlled," he says. "Many people who have never been there tend to think of Chagos as if it's Barbados ? a small island in the middle of a big blue ocean. But in fact it's a massive area ? it's over 200,000 square miles of ocean, with only 20 square miles of land." And there is the precedent set by the presence of US military personnel and civilian workers on Diego Garcia. "After all, you have the base, which houses several thousand people, and it is equipped with all manner of boats and planes. There is also heavy fishing in some areas of the lagoon. All things considered, the environmental impact has been relatively mild."
So does Spalding have a solution? He does as it happens, and it is a radical one. "The simplest answer is as a first stage for those Chagossians who want to resettle to go to Diego Garcia. There would be no additional the environmental impact. Moreover, the infrastructure is there ? harbours, an airport, shops, restaurants and even a cinema."
With the agreement between the UK and the US over the use of the Diego Garcia as a military base up for renewal in 2016 this is surely an opportune moment. The Americans are on record saying they have no objection to the presence of Chagossians, so while the UK officials are often quick to try and say they are bound to meet the Americans needs that shouldn't be an obstacle. Over to you, William Hague ? your signature is required.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/21/chagossians-chagos-archipelago-conservationists
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