African Parks’ response to the book ‘Entrepreneurs in the Wild’

African Parks has recently been the subject of a book by Dutch author Olivier van Beemen, which makes a number of allegations about our organisation and our approach to conservation.

Despite our efforts to engage with the author, the book contains hundreds of factual inaccuracies and a similar number of deeply misleading statements. Many of the people interviewed have raised concerns about the author’s bias, and one widely referenced interviewee has retracted his contributions due to misrepresentation of his views. As a result, we completely distance ourselves from this book - which paints a deeply misleading picture of African Parks and the people who work here.

African Parks is unwavering in its commitment to improve how we work and we welcome scrutiny and debate. We will always seek to address any concerns that are raised with us.  However, in our view, this book represents a missed opportunity to objectively advance the conversation on how to address the devastating loss of natural resources in Africa, at a time when this is more important than ever.

Our responses to some of the chief conclusions drawn by the author are as follows:

Human Rights

Together with an external human rights and criminal justice lawyer, we have thoroughly reviewed the allegations of human rights abuses in the book and found them to be deeply flawed.  While each allegation was taken seriously, it is important to note that the author presented cases that happened prior to African Parks’s involvement in the areas in question, that were carried out by state agencies outside our control and were depicted in ways that differed substantially from witness statements and official court proceedings.

African Parks has a zero-tolerance approach towards abuse of any kind and we are committed to protecting and safeguarding human rights. We have rigorous policies in place to prevent abuses and to detect and address them, if they do occur. These include human rights training, stringent reporting requirements, grievance mechanisms, law enforcement audits and the ability to dismiss seconded staff who violate our codes of conduct or national laws. We are constantly improving our procedures and policies to prevent any potential situations of abuse.

Community Engagement

We do not accept claims in the book that we have poor relationships with local communities in and around the areas managed by African Parks. This is a complete misrepresentation of our approach to conservation. None of our work would even be possible without the active support and engagement of local communities. We assess levels of support through our Constituency for Conservation Index, which measures the attitudes of over 12,000 people every two years. Working closely with local communities and governments has been key to all our achievements to date and remains at the heart of everything African Parks does.

“Fortress conservation”

The author claims that African Parks practices “fortress conservation” in which people are forcibly removed from parks, where parks are fenced to keep people out and where international tourists are the beneficiaries. These claims are untrue. African Parks has never evicted any individual from a park: 64% of the mandated areas have people living in them, 90% of the areas allow some form of legal access to resources in line with sovereignly determined legislation and 68% of all visitors to the parks are local. Just four of 22 parks we manage are fully fenced. This is purely to prevent human wildlife conflict arising from dangerous animals moving into heavily populated areas.

Conservation Results

The author claims that African Parks has poor conservation results. Again, this is simply factually inaccurate. A recent independent evaluation by a panel of respected ecologists from Oxford, Princeton and Harvard Universities has shown that African Parks is delivering strong conservation results across a range of key performance indicators, in direct contrast to the author’s claims.

Conclusion   

Ensuring that nature survives into the future, protecting biodiversity and sustaining the ecosystem services on which humanity is dependent, is arguably the most important issue faced by the world today. This is the sole purpose of African Parks and we remain resolute in our commitment to the continent, its people and its wildlife.