Deconstructing Conservation International

Part Two: Chiapas - Strategic Intelligence and the "Preserve"
by irlandesa

"This whole mythology of the Maya as the men of corn, that every Maya family has a genetic right to a piece of forest and a bag of seed corn - that's a destructive attitude."

Those were the words of James Nations, anthropologist and Conservation International's Vice President for Development and, previously, for Mexican and Central American programs. A man who "lived and worked with the Lacandón" for either 3 or 10 years, depending on which bio one is condemned to peruse. A man who clearly has a handle on the rigorous academic underpinnings of CI's drive to rid the Selva of the autonomous communities. A man who would also appear to not give a tinker's dam about finesse. Perhaps he thinks it matters not.

Of course Conservation International would like no one but the more malleable, and much fewer in number, Lacandón in "their" part of the Selva. They will go on and on about destruction of biodiversity, and some of them may believe it, but the fact is they have business there. Their main business is SIMASEL, the comprehensive environmental monitoring system of the Selva Lacandona. They implemented it, and it is being financed by Pulsar and the US Agency for International Development (AID) [why yes: are we surprised?]. While undoubtedly serving certain useful environmental functions, this program clearly serves a whole lot more. It utilizes a sophisticated geographical information system, aerial photography, overflights, satellite imaging and field observation. They themselves admit that the project allows for systematic evaluation of "population dynamics" and a "continuous monitoring of the situation in the region."

Behind the Chiapas project lies one of CI's subsidiary organizations: CABS, the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, which, among other things, oversees the monitoring of their 25 world "hotspots" [and whose director, Gustavo Fonseca, has opined that opening the forests of the Amazon to concessions would have "minimal" impact on conservation]. It is an amazingly well-funded research and development unit, providing immense data bases, an extensive mapping lab, and an abundance of tech toys. One of the more interesting - which they widely tout - is a little hand-held computer (PDA) with a GPS (that's global positioning system for the non-spies among us) receiver attachment and data-collection software. YES!!!! In laypersons terms, this apparently allows one to go into the "field"; log, itemize, scan anything around one; neatly record all the stuff with its exact geographical location automatically being noted; upload that data to one's own, or one's Master's, desktop,...and quickly get the hell out. The little toy is currently being used, among other places, at Kruger National Park in South Africa in their anti-poaching efforts. Non-ironically, I'm sure. So it would appear - in a kind of follow-up to my closing thesis in Part One - that barrels of cash are being poured into this particular project in Chiapas.

The answer to the next question - to what ends? - can only be mostly speculative at this point. Ridding the Selva of the communities seems to be primarily a side-issue for them, rather like brushing ants away at a picnic. Dr. Nation's words speak bundles to this attitude. One would almost have expected them to be followed by "let them eat cake." [though, in fact, they were followed by "They don't need more land for their people. They need a livelihood..." - so I suppose a "livelihood" is global capital's equivalent of cake]... Why all the information, then? Certainly this kind of data collection will be immensely useful for bio-companies and energy concerns, whether oil or hydroelectric, and much has already been written on this subject. This seems to be one of CI's most basic missions, this surveying and claiming, as noted in Part One.

There is another congruity of interest, however, which is striking. Let us listen for a moment to Captain Harry E. Jones, II, writing in the Jan/March '97 issue of MIPB (Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin), in an article entitled "Information Dominance for Army XXI: Battlefield Visualization": "We require the integration of seven key technology areas to refine and mature our BV [battlefield visualization, sigh] capability...accurate sensors to collect enemy force activity and friendly force locations. We need broad bandwidth networks to rapidly move data across the battlespace. BV also requires extensive databases, including high-resolution digital terrain elevation and features data..." Sounds like they need to get their hands on those CI databases, maps and handheld computers, no? Not to mention Teledesic's [see Part One] broad bandwidths.

Well, one earnest, loose-lipped Strategic Intelligence Officer by the name of Major Salvador E. Gomez has already been waxing effusive on the subject. Again, in the Oct/Dec '99 issue of MIPB, he posited: "Intelligence activities are often sensitive issues and demand very delicate handling. We must assure our allies in Latin America that we are not "spying" but merely collecting intelligence to assist and support their efforts in preserving the environment...One option is for the intelligence community to work closer with members of academia and non-governmental organizations such as Conservation International." [Pause for re-reading above, shaking head, sighing deeply, trying to remember when Intelligence Officer morphed into Witless, Give-away-the-ballgame Wunderkind]. Major Gomez was speaking directly to the issue of environmental intelligence, which has become a booming post cold war business, generating an entire universe of monographs, academic catfights and official position papers - all forging the necessary ideological underpinnings for this new, highly utilitarian, worldview. It began, more or less, as the "scarcity-conflict" axis. You know, you're hungry, you don't have any land or water or food, you go postal. Very deep-think stuff, but lately tarted up - over and over - as a justification for putting all that brilliant NASA and CIA and CI hardware and "intelligence" to play in places like Chiapas [which was, from the beginning, one of the most referenced examples of resource scarcity-conflict]. This is how "environmental security" becomes "national security" and "environmental intelligence" becomes "strategic intelligence."

Major Sal still said it best: "...Intelligence systems and operatives can greatly assist in verifying environmental agreements and in providing information about possible hostilities or actions that may lead to instability..." Or in keeping the communities out of the Selva. Or the "poachers" out of the "preserve."