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African Parks unveils $1b plan for 30×30 conservation goals amid abuse claims

South Africa-based nonprofit African Parks has announced a $1 billion action plan to manage 30 protected areas by 2030. The NGO currently manages 22 protected areas across 12 African countries.

Speaking at a summit in September, African Parks CEO Peter Fearnhead said the action plan would allow the group “to scale up existing efforts to manage 30 of Africa’s most critical protected areas by the end of the decade.” This would help meet the global “30 by 30” biodiversity target to preserve 30% of land and waters by 2030, the NGO noted in a press release.

The $1 billion funding is not yet secured, African Parks media manager Helen Hancock told Mongabay in an email. But the organization has the “experience, skills, and the will of many African governments and people to deliver against this plan,” she said.

A key objective of the action plan is to focus on “anchor areas” identified by the NGO. These are African protected areas that harbor “globally significant biodiversity to provide invaluable ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, clean air and fresh water, while contributing to stability, food security and socio-economic benefits for millions of people,” Hancock said.

Of the 161 anchor areas identified by African Parks, Hancock said only 69 have management strategies while the rest face “severe threats.”

“We believe that our tried-and-tested model across 12 countries, 22 parks and 20 million hectares [49.4 million acres], together with over two decades of experience and the ability to scale, offers the best chance of making a significant impact,” she said.

However, some experts familiar with the group’s history expressed caution. African Parks faces allegations of human rights abuses against Indigenous peoples, which it claims to be investigating.

Journalist Olivier van Beemen, who published a book investigating African Parks, told Mongabay in an email that the announced plan “fits well in African Parks’ so-called ‘business approach to conservation.’”

“African Parks claims that local communities are at the core of its conservation efforts, but in reality, law enforcement and moving animals are their core businesses,” he said. “Local communities don’t even get access to the agreement between African Parks and the government.” African Parks has distanced itself from van Beemen’s book.

Moenieba Isaacs, who teaches social justice at the University of the Western Cape, said that while African Parks’ expansion plan “sounds good,” the NGO’s conservation model promotes “fortress conservation,” where wildlife is fenced in and Indigenous and local communities are restricted from accessing their lands.

“I find the model highly problematic when it comes to local people, local people’s livelihoods, local people’s cultural practices, traditional practices and also local people’s access to what they would call their traditional livelihoods and practices they will be displaced from and evicted,” Isaacs said.

Isaacs added that expansion plans toward the 30 by 30 goal need to ensure there is free, prior and informed consent from local communities that live in those areas, and not prioritize wealthy tourists over them.

Banner image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.




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