Om urfolk, biologisk mangfold og avskoging

Denne uka hadde jeg en forelesning på UMB på Ås, på et masterkurs om tropisk økologi ledet av Torbjørn Haugaasen. Her kommer sitater fra ulike studier som peker mot konklusjonen: Urfolk er de beste skogvokterne.

Regnskog vs. soyaplanytasje i Mato Grosso, Brasil. Foto: Torkjell Leira

FN (2010) State of the world’s indigenous peoples:

“is also estimated that they  [indigenous peoples] represent as many as 5,000 different indigenous cultures, and the indigenous peoples of the world therefore account for most of the world’s cultural diversity, even though they constitute a numerical minority.

The areas they inhabit often coincide with areas of high biological diversity, and a strong correlation between areas of high biological diversity and areas of high cultural diversity has been established.”

Nelson & Chomitz (2011)

"Strict PAs [Protected Areas] substantially reduced fire incidence, but multi-use PAs [hvor lokalbefolkningen kan bruke ressursene] were even more effective."

"In Latin America, where indigenous areas can be identified, they are found to have extremely large impacts on reducing deforestation."

Porter-Bolland et al. (2011)

"We found that as a whole, community managed forests presented lower and less variable annual deforestation rates than protected forests."

Nepstad et al. (2006)

"Reserves significantly reduced both deforestation and fire."

"No strong difference in inhibition of deforestaion or fire was found between parks and indigenous lands."

"However, uninhabitated reserves tended to be located away from areas of high deforestation and burning rates. In contrast, indigenous lands were often created in response to frontier expansion, and many prevented deforestation completely despite high rates of deforestation  along their boundaries."

"The inhibitory effect of indigenous lands was strong after centuries of contact with the national society, and was not correlated with indigenous population density."

Del 1 av denne serien finner du her

Her er artiklene:

• Nelson & Chomitz (2011) Effectiveness of Strict vs. Multiple Use Protected Areas in Reducing Tropical Forest Fires: A Global Analysis Using Matching Methods

• Porter-Bolland et al (2011) Community managed forests and forest protected areas: An assessment of their conservation effectiveness across the tropics
• Nepstad et al (2006) Inhibition of Amazon Deforestation and Fire by Parks and Indigenous Lands