STEVE CORREA
When we discuss conservation to day, we often pic ture a simple moral cause: safeguarding endangered animals, maintaining fragile ecosystems, and protecting the planet for future gen erations. It seems like an unquestionably good thing. However, as Kenyan conser vationists John Mbaria and Mordecai Ogada demon strate in The Big Conser vation Lie, much of what is considered conservation in Africa is not only failing—it is ethically flawed. The book’s critique is civ ilisational rather than mere ly African. Their argument is sur prisingly simple: modern conservation is based on a colonial misconception. It claims that nature should be protected from people, especially indigenous and local communities. This idea, now so widely accept ed that it remains largely uncontested, has led to a ‘fortress conservation’ ap proach that fences off land, employs military meth ods for wildlife protection, criminalises traditional lifestyles, and marginalises the very communities that have coexisted with ani mals for generations. This is not a marginal problem. It sits at the heart of how the world now ima gines environmental stew ardship. Modern conservation in Africa did not start as a scientific endeavour. It be gan as an imperial project. Colonial authorities estab lished game reserves for European elites, displacing local communities in the process. These spaces were never neutral wildernesses; they were political artefacts, born of land seizure and ra cial hierarchy. Today’s con servation areas often mirror the same structure, simply replacing colonial adminis trators with international NGOs and swapping sport hunting rifles for enforce ment rifles. The continuity matters. Because it reveals that con servation’s deepest prob lem is not technical. It is ethical. The dominant worldview makes three assumptions: humans are inherently de structive, local communities cannot be trusted to protect nature, and protection must be militarised. African land scapes are not pristine, they have been shaped over cen turies by pastoralism, burn ing, migration, and land ethics. These were acts of ecological intelligence, not vandalism. Erasing this his tory turns co-existence into conflict. The consequences are grave. Across Africa, com munities have been evicted from their ancestral lands, criminalised for subsistence livelihoods, and subjected to violence by armed rangers funded by Western donors. In some instances, conser vation agencies have been associated with beatings, sexual assault, and extraju dicial killings. These are not anomalies. They are struc tural outcomes of a model that views people as intrud ers rather than custodians. Meanwhile, conservation has quietly become big busi ness. Luxury safaris, trophy hunting, carbon offsets, and private conservancies gener ate billions. However, those facing the true costs—crop damage, livestock loss, dan ger—see little of this wealth. Wildlife is now an asset class; communities are ex ternalities. The irony is hard to bear. Despite decades of funding and enforcement, bi odiversity loss persists. Mili tarisation has not achieved sustainability; it has fostered resentment. Fencing has not fostered harmony; instead, it has generated resistance. Exclusion has not protected ecosystems; it has destabi lised them. Why? Because no ecolog ical system can survive on social injustice. When communities feel disconnected from conser vation, they stop cooperat ing. Poaching becomes an economic survival method, sabotage a protest form, and silence a tactic. This causes trust to break down, leading to the collapse of conservation. From an Indic perspec tive, this isn’t just policy failure but avidyā—misper ception of reality. It lies in the false division of human and nature as opposing realms, contrary to Rta’s insight that life develops through interdependence, not separation. The prevailing conserva tion approach mirrors mod ern development, prioritis ing control, extraction, and efficiency over care and re lationships. It views land as a technical object, wildlife as a commodity, and peo ple as disruptors. Instead of wisdom, it manages com plexity through force. In Dharmic terms, this is apad-dharma mistaken for eternal dharma—emergen cy logic turned into perma nent policy. What was once a crisis response to poach ing has become a worldview that no longer sees co-exist ence. The deeper wound, how ever, is human. Conservation today de humanises in three ways: it diminishes indigenous com munities’ dignity, agency, and ancestral rights; turns wildlife into tourist attrac tions and revenue sources; and dehumanises conser vation workers by forcing them into violent enforce ment roles. No amount of better data, better drones, or better do nor dashboards can heal this wound. Because the cri sis is not informational, it is relational. Mbaria and Ogada advo cate decolonising conser vation, not abandoning it, based on three principles. First, land rights: secure community land rights en courage protection, not dispossession, as commu nities safeguard land for future generations. Second, local governance: indig enous knowledge should guide ecological policies, with communities as key decision-makers, enhancing outcomes. Third, demilita risation: wildlife protection should rely on negotiation, compensation, shared deci sions, and trust, not force. Conservation is a relation ship to nurture, not a war to win. These ideas are not ideal istic. The lesson extends be yond Africa. In a global poly crisis—climate collapse, biodiversity loss, social fragmentation—the con servation debate shows that technocratic solutions can’t mend moral fractures. You can’t fix relational break downs with spreadsheets. The real crisis is not eco logical alone. It is civilisa tional. Our current way of think ing often treats control as wisdom, exclusion as safety, and domination as protec tion. Changing this perspec tive is the key to breaking free from a cycle of good intentions that sometimes lead to unintended harm. The future of conservation isn’t about drones, databas es, or donor conferences; it’s about whether we can restore dignity, agency, and justice to the people who have always been closest to the land. When we do, we open the door to a more car ing and effective approach. Because, ultimately, the choice is clear: we can ex clude humans from nature, or we can start reintegrat ing humans into ecological responsibility. One path widens the divide between humanity and the natural world. The other begins to mend it. Only one of these paths leads to life. (Steve Correa is a Leadership Coach and OD Consultant with over three decades of corporate expe rience. He is the author of, The Indian Boss at Work: Thinking Global Acting Indian.)
