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Decolonize That!
Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-Determination, Land, and a World in Common
Frontline voices from the worldwide movement to decolonize climate change and revitalize a dying planet.
With a deep, anticolonial and antiracist critique and analysis of what “conservation” currently is, Decolonize Conservation presents an alternative vision–one already working–of the most effective and just way to fight against biodiversity loss and climate change. Through the voices of largely silenced or invisibilized Indigenous Peoples and local communities, the devastating consequences of making 30 percent of the globe “Protected Areas,” and other so-called “Nature-Based Solutions” are made clear.
Evidence proves indigenous people understand and manage their environment better than anyone else. Eighty percent of the Earth’s biodiversity is in tribal territories and when indigenous peoples have secure rights over their land, they achieve at least equal if not better conservation results at a fraction of the cost of conventional conservation programs. But in Africa and Asia, governments and NGOs are stealing vast areas of land from tribal peoples and local communities under the false claim that this is necessary for conservation.
As the editors write, “This is colonialism pure and powerful global interests are shamelessly taking land and resources from vulnerable people while claiming they are doing it for the good of humanity.”
The powerful collection of voices from the groundbreaking “Our Land, Our Nature” congress takes us to the heart of the climate justice movement and the struggle for life and land across the globe. With Indigenous Peoples and their rights at its center, the book exposes the brutal and deadly reality of colonial and racist conservation for people around the world, while revealing the problems of current climate policy approaches that do nothing to tackle the real causes of environmental destruction.
With a deep, anticolonial and antiracist critique and analysis of what “conservation” currently is, Decolonize Conservation presents an alternative vision–one already working–of the most effective and just way to fight against biodiversity loss and climate change. Through the voices of largely silenced or invisibilized Indigenous Peoples and local communities, the devastating consequences of making 30 percent of the globe “Protected Areas,” and other so-called “Nature-Based Solutions” are made clear.
Evidence proves indigenous people understand and manage their environment better than anyone else. Eighty percent of the Earth’s biodiversity is in tribal territories and when indigenous peoples have secure rights over their land, they achieve at least equal if not better conservation results at a fraction of the cost of conventional conservation programs. But in Africa and Asia, governments and NGOs are stealing vast areas of land from tribal peoples and local communities under the false claim that this is necessary for conservation.
As the editors write, “This is colonialism pure and powerful global interests are shamelessly taking land and resources from vulnerable people while claiming they are doing it for the good of humanity.”
The powerful collection of voices from the groundbreaking “Our Land, Our Nature” congress takes us to the heart of the climate justice movement and the struggle for life and land across the globe. With Indigenous Peoples and their rights at its center, the book exposes the brutal and deadly reality of colonial and racist conservation for people around the world, while revealing the problems of current climate policy approaches that do nothing to tackle the real causes of environmental destruction.
183 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 25, 2023
About the author
Ashley Dawson
52 books26 followersAshley Dawson is a professor of English at CUNY, New York City. He is the author of Extinction, Mongrel Nation and The Routledge Concise History of Twentieth-Century British Literature, as well as a short story in the anthology Staten Island Noir.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 4, 2025
The stakes are high. The world is at an inflection point. Will we continue down a path of eco-fascism, where borders harden, militarism expands, and inequality deepens? Or will we envision a future founded on conviviality, mobility, and global solidarity?
Let's dive in.
Highly Convenient Tool: The Migrants and Refugees
The ever-present threat of deportation hanging over migrants and refugees in wealthy nations like the United States and those in the European Union is more than just a bureaucratic reality—it is a highly convenient tool for the ruling class. This looming threat disciplines immigrant labor, driving down wages and reinforcing economic precarity.
Yet, even when trapped in a state of indefinite suspension, refugees continue to serve a function within the capitalist system. Many are incorporated into circuits of credit and debt through electronic vouchers for services and humanitarian credit cards. Meanwhile, the surveillance and tracking of refugees have become highly lucrative for tech corporations and the security state, which use predictive analytics to anticipate future migration routes—often with deadly consequences.
But the logic of detention and deportation extends beyond mere economics. The machinery of migration control is a political weapon wielded by imperial nation-states to suppress dissent and neutralize political movements. The figure of the migrant or refugee, portrayed as a menacing outsider, serves to construct a myth of a civilized “homeland” under siege by chaotic, failing states. This racialized narrative has become a core feature of public discourse in capitalist strongholds like the United States and the European Union, echoing the white settler paranoia of South Africa’s laager mentality—where settlers encircled their wagons for protection against an imagined barbaric threat.
Figures like Donald Trump and his ideological counterparts on the far right capitalize on this manufactured crisis, collapsing the distinction between migrants and refugees to fuel an ethnonationalist myth of an imperiled, “pure” nation. This conveniently obscures the role of the United States and Europe in creating the very crises that drive migration—through violent invasions, clandestine wars, debt-induced instability, and other colonial and postcolonial atrocities.
“Annex II” Countries and the Climate Debt
Seven nations—the United States, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Australia—fall under what the United Nations designates as “Annex II” countries. Collectively responsible for 48 percent of historic greenhouse gas emissions, these core imperial nations have effectively colonized the atmosphere. They owe a massive climate debt to the Global South.
The case for climate reparations is undeniable. Even within the heavily corporate-influenced UN Climate Process, the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” (CBDR) has been formally recognized since the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. CBDR acknowledges that while all nations share responsibility for addressing climate change, the burden must be proportionate to historical emissions and economic capacity. The wealthiest, most polluting countries bear the duty to reduce emissions more aggressively while also financing low-income nations to leapfrog fossil-fuel-dependent development, transition to renewable energy, and adapt to the climate crisis.
Bonjour-Hi, Oh Canada: The (Shameful) Priorities of the Global North
Rather than paying their climate debt, rich nations have funneled vast resources into border militarization. A landmark report from the Transnational Institute (TNI) exposes the sheer scale of this misallocation. Between 2013 and 2018, the average annual spending on border and immigration enforcement by Annex II countries amounted to $33.1 billion—2.3 times their total climate financing.
Canada stands out as a particularly egregious case, spending fifteen times more on border and immigration enforcement than on climate financing. The United States, with the world’s largest border-policing budget, spent $19.6 billion in 2021—nearly eleven times what it allocated for climate aid.
The past fifty years have seen the construction of 63 border walls worldwide, but fortifications are no longer limited to physical barriers. Increasingly, states invest in militarized border guards and sophisticated surveillance technologies, expanding the reach of their border-security regimes far beyond national frontiers.
The Border-Security-Industrial Complex (Remember Naomi Klein’s Disaster Capitalism?)
The border-security-industrial complex has flourished over the past few decades. According to TNI researchers, between 2008 and 2020, the U.S. federal government awarded over 105,000 contracts worth $55 billion to private companies profiting from border control.
Key players include:
- CoreCivic, GEO Group (private detention facilities),
- Elbit Systems, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman (drones, surveillance technology),
- IBM, Palantir (biometric databases and predictive policing tools).
Many of these firms are deeply entrenched in the military-industrial complex. What is perhaps less well known is their direct connection to fossil fuel interests. Many of the same companies that profit from border policing also provide security for oil, gas, and extractive industries. In many cases, the same corporate board members oversee fossil fuel giants and border-security firms—monetizing both the destruction of the planet and the policing of those displaced by it.
The border-security industry thus serves a dual function: protecting the corporations responsible for the climate crisis while punishing its victims.
Last Word: Imagining Possible Worlds Beyond Borders
With the violent logic of the global capitalist system laid bare—whether through the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, or militarized border regimes—the urgent task before us is to craft new narratives of possible worlds. This is not only a question of political will but also of imagination. The crises we face today are products of a system that forecloses alternative futures in favor of profit-driven control.
Yet history offers a different possibility. There is a rich legacy of solidarity between environmental justice movements in the Global North and the Global South. Nowhere is this solidarity more critical than in the fight against the border-security-industrial complex, a struggle that intersects with climate justice, economic justice, and the fight against far-right nationalism.
Across the Global North, movements have emerged to resist the detention and deportation machine—not just out of solidarity with displaced communities but as part of the broader struggle against fascism and militarization in their own societies.
The stakes are high. The world is at an inflection point. Will we continue down a path of eco-fascism, where borders harden, militarism expands, and inequality deepens? Or will we envision a future founded on conviviality, mobility, and global solidarity?
A future beyond borders is not only possible—it is necessary.
Let's dive in.
Highly Convenient Tool: The Migrants and Refugees
The ever-present threat of deportation hanging over migrants and refugees in wealthy nations like the United States and those in the European Union is more than just a bureaucratic reality—it is a highly convenient tool for the ruling class. This looming threat disciplines immigrant labor, driving down wages and reinforcing economic precarity.
Yet, even when trapped in a state of indefinite suspension, refugees continue to serve a function within the capitalist system. Many are incorporated into circuits of credit and debt through electronic vouchers for services and humanitarian credit cards. Meanwhile, the surveillance and tracking of refugees have become highly lucrative for tech corporations and the security state, which use predictive analytics to anticipate future migration routes—often with deadly consequences.
But the logic of detention and deportation extends beyond mere economics. The machinery of migration control is a political weapon wielded by imperial nation-states to suppress dissent and neutralize political movements. The figure of the migrant or refugee, portrayed as a menacing outsider, serves to construct a myth of a civilized “homeland” under siege by chaotic, failing states. This racialized narrative has become a core feature of public discourse in capitalist strongholds like the United States and the European Union, echoing the white settler paranoia of South Africa’s laager mentality—where settlers encircled their wagons for protection against an imagined barbaric threat.
Figures like Donald Trump and his ideological counterparts on the far right capitalize on this manufactured crisis, collapsing the distinction between migrants and refugees to fuel an ethnonationalist myth of an imperiled, “pure” nation. This conveniently obscures the role of the United States and Europe in creating the very crises that drive migration—through violent invasions, clandestine wars, debt-induced instability, and other colonial and postcolonial atrocities.
“Annex II” Countries and the Climate Debt
Seven nations—the United States, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Australia—fall under what the United Nations designates as “Annex II” countries. Collectively responsible for 48 percent of historic greenhouse gas emissions, these core imperial nations have effectively colonized the atmosphere. They owe a massive climate debt to the Global South.
The case for climate reparations is undeniable. Even within the heavily corporate-influenced UN Climate Process, the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” (CBDR) has been formally recognized since the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. CBDR acknowledges that while all nations share responsibility for addressing climate change, the burden must be proportionate to historical emissions and economic capacity. The wealthiest, most polluting countries bear the duty to reduce emissions more aggressively while also financing low-income nations to leapfrog fossil-fuel-dependent development, transition to renewable energy, and adapt to the climate crisis.
Bonjour-Hi, Oh Canada: The (Shameful) Priorities of the Global North
Rather than paying their climate debt, rich nations have funneled vast resources into border militarization. A landmark report from the Transnational Institute (TNI) exposes the sheer scale of this misallocation. Between 2013 and 2018, the average annual spending on border and immigration enforcement by Annex II countries amounted to $33.1 billion—2.3 times their total climate financing.
Canada stands out as a particularly egregious case, spending fifteen times more on border and immigration enforcement than on climate financing. The United States, with the world’s largest border-policing budget, spent $19.6 billion in 2021—nearly eleven times what it allocated for climate aid.
The past fifty years have seen the construction of 63 border walls worldwide, but fortifications are no longer limited to physical barriers. Increasingly, states invest in militarized border guards and sophisticated surveillance technologies, expanding the reach of their border-security regimes far beyond national frontiers.
The Border-Security-Industrial Complex (Remember Naomi Klein’s Disaster Capitalism?)
The border-security-industrial complex has flourished over the past few decades. According to TNI researchers, between 2008 and 2020, the U.S. federal government awarded over 105,000 contracts worth $55 billion to private companies profiting from border control.
Key players include:
- CoreCivic, GEO Group (private detention facilities),
- Elbit Systems, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman (drones, surveillance technology),
- IBM, Palantir (biometric databases and predictive policing tools).
Many of these firms are deeply entrenched in the military-industrial complex. What is perhaps less well known is their direct connection to fossil fuel interests. Many of the same companies that profit from border policing also provide security for oil, gas, and extractive industries. In many cases, the same corporate board members oversee fossil fuel giants and border-security firms—monetizing both the destruction of the planet and the policing of those displaced by it.
The border-security industry thus serves a dual function: protecting the corporations responsible for the climate crisis while punishing its victims.
Last Word: Imagining Possible Worlds Beyond Borders
With the violent logic of the global capitalist system laid bare—whether through the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, or militarized border regimes—the urgent task before us is to craft new narratives of possible worlds. This is not only a question of political will but also of imagination. The crises we face today are products of a system that forecloses alternative futures in favor of profit-driven control.
Yet history offers a different possibility. There is a rich legacy of solidarity between environmental justice movements in the Global North and the Global South. Nowhere is this solidarity more critical than in the fight against the border-security-industrial complex, a struggle that intersects with climate justice, economic justice, and the fight against far-right nationalism.
Across the Global North, movements have emerged to resist the detention and deportation machine—not just out of solidarity with displaced communities but as part of the broader struggle against fascism and militarization in their own societies.
The stakes are high. The world is at an inflection point. Will we continue down a path of eco-fascism, where borders harden, militarism expands, and inequality deepens? Or will we envision a future founded on conviviality, mobility, and global solidarity?
A future beyond borders is not only possible—it is necessary.
December 20, 2023
this book is a compilation of transcribed short speeches that were given at a (virtual?) conference convened by Survival International. The 27 chapters are quite readable, and feature case studies and testimony from south Asia, Latin America, Africa, and a little bit from North America. Though there are some academics and NGO types represented, the most effective chapters (which I used for teaching) are direct testimony from those affected or even displaced by "fortress conservation" - i.e. the establishment of natural parks as people-less places, such that they can be entered into a global carbon sequestration budget. though reading it straight through gets a little repetitive after a while, that repetition also helps demonstrate this isn't just random exception, but in fact a pattern built into the relationships between the big green NGOs, the UN, and EU/US states. They also show a variety of efforts to resist these, as well as diagnoses of how and why these EuroAmerican institutions are so inured to their effects on people on the ground. Really compelling text.
June 24, 2025
ever present in my life is the dread of climate change and the helplessness that comes with that. capitalism and colonialism have made it nearly impossible to combat climate change and conserve the environment, but there is still hope. that hope does not lie in the global organizations that we traditionally believe to be the great protectors of the environment and biodiversity, but in the people who are indigenous to the lands and rely, love, and coexist with the earth. America before colonialism was described as this untouched beautiful landscape, but it was not untouched by humans. humans were the caretakers of the land, turning it into the beautiful landscape that the colonialists desired, that are still fought over today. I originally thought fortress conservation, things like national parks and protected areas, were the solution, but thats not true. humans have evolved with many of these forests and landscapes and rely on humans to be their caretakers and by leaving land untouched, we are hurting the people who are the caretakers and the forests themselves. This revealed that truth to me and showed how we are failing our brethren around the world by placing our trust and money in companies that care less about a solution to climate change and more about making money and consolidating resources.
September 11, 2026
I think this book does a great job of bringing a lot of firsthand accounts and case studies forward to illuminate the importance of topics discussed. Broadening the scope and understanding of the true impacts of conservation is crucial to achieving an equitable future, and this book illustrates that conservation as we know it today is horribly harmful to indigenous peoples, and overall just not very effective and is often actively detrimental to biodiversity and climate. Unfortunately due to its nature there is a lot of redundancy in information. I think this is a great read for anyone with a background in environmental studies/conservation to broaden their perspectives, but it is a good book to effectively skim. I also do think this book is a great collection for schools to assign individual essays as reading assignments to students. To read the book straight through is a bit of a task.
May 5, 2026
What a brilliant collection of important voices: I absolutely loved this book. Not only does it present you with stories from so many historically silenced communities, but also guides you through the fortress conservation universe of, honestly, just crime upon crime. For someone who has worked within climate justice, focusing on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities' solutions, and knowing how much amplification of their voices is needed if we don't want to continue being on the path of self-destruction, this book is such a gem -- and should be a gem for anyone reading it.
May 28, 2024
Eye-opening, important, and will change the way I do my work.
November 27, 2024
good find at new york public library
February 14, 2025
Incredible collection of accounts of the global displacement of Indigenous people from their stewarded lands by white led Western conservation orgs.
Fortress conservation does not protect biodiversity. Instead it militarizes the land and opens it for resource extraction while the marketing of it eases the conscience of Western nations, who continue to invest in fossil fuels and push us all down the path of climate change.
Indigenous people protect the land and promote biodiversity through stewardship. Humans are ecosystem engineers, keystone species, and separating ourselves from the landscape wherever we reside blocks us from our true calling as stewards.
I loved reading about the community-based models and Joint Management Agreements that further Indigenous sovereignty. I highly recommend this book!
Fortress conservation does not protect biodiversity. Instead it militarizes the land and opens it for resource extraction while the marketing of it eases the conscience of Western nations, who continue to invest in fossil fuels and push us all down the path of climate change.
Indigenous people protect the land and promote biodiversity through stewardship. Humans are ecosystem engineers, keystone species, and separating ourselves from the landscape wherever we reside blocks us from our true calling as stewards.
I loved reading about the community-based models and Joint Management Agreements that further Indigenous sovereignty. I highly recommend this book!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews