Probleme und Lösungen > What about NGOs?
This is the English version of a German essay (“Die Sache mit den NGOs”) on our mainly German-speaking website, changed a bit for international readers.
Some people who have never learnt to think in cybernetic system connections, when speaking about pasture and biodiversity put their main focus on conservationist NGOs. But no, this one-dimensional thinking is unworthy of an intelligent person.
Here I’ll explain the issue with some expertise due to a university study in both ecologically focused science and social science, due to researches during practical activities and due to communications with other people working in pastoralism, including those in distant regions of the Earth.
In advance: In the work-sharing society there are loads of valuable activities like fire brigade, weaving, tiling, foreign language lessons, ship construction or pastoralism. Mutual appreciation and solidarity are basic pillars of the society. When do we ever hear NGOs praising the working population?
One of the fascinating sides of pastoral economy is that we experience directly that also in ecological aspects humans do not only destroy but also create something valuable: ecosystems with a lot of biodiversity – of course depending on the intensity of grazing and other ecologically relevant factors. And not with NGO show business financed by alms but with productive work which feeds people. Humans as an integral part of the ecosystem! Great! Therefore a positive image of humanity and the pastoral economy are good partners.
Unproductive projects of ecosystem management can make sense on a small scale, for instance for purposes of research. But on a large scale the landscape management can only be realistic together with economic uses. Otherwise we waste a lot of potential of land and must get our food from sheds with little space for the livestock or from chemical laboratories – or we must import it from distant places. And that is definitely not why we practice pasture grazing.
NGOs, according to their original self-understanding, are non-governmental organisations. Nowadays some of them are intimately intertwined with governments and/or political parties, what means an increasing focus on importation of foods and non-food products. They often have a certain power and represent more and more the unempathetic dog-eat-dog society. And that means: “Divide et impera!” “Divide and rule!” Do we want such a splitting of humanity forced upon us from power people?
I consider it alarming that the conservationist and environmentalist movements are increasingly dominated by misanthropic ideologies. I hardly met such attitudes in those who worked with me in practical conservationism saving ten thousands of common toads and common frogs from being run over by cars (by then not yet killed by fences that are meant to protect livestock from wolves). The fight against the German nuclear power-station in Wyhl was successful thanks to an amazing cooperation among people with very different backgrounds and motivations. It is more the alienated office conservationists who instead of doing something for nature fight against humanity and against solidarity and cooperation. More and more there’s a divide within NGOs between the volunteers who do all the work with love and commitment, and the professionals who receive all the money and social acknowledgement and show no appreciation for those they owe their wealth to.
Many NGOs were created with ideals but as time went by, turned into an end in itself. They now, in order to justify their existence, must present problems and thus cannot stand solutions offered by others. Some NGOs like one very self-righteous German NGO with a Nazi past and on an international level the Global Landgrabbing Alliance, sorry, the Global Rewilding Alliance, even fight to take over the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists instead of leaving it to those it has been created for. Especially pastoralists who know too much for them, are not wanted.
Why do people pay alms to conservationist and environmentalist NGOs? Is that a trade of indulgences for environmental sins? Why then not rather spend the money on ecological produce and pasture produce? That is more efficient and more focused on results and on a desirable future.
That does not mean we need to reject just any cooperation with NGOs. We need to refuse submitting ourselves as working people to NGOs. Cooperation only makes sense with people who treat their partners on a par. Many NGOs treat others like their inferiors. The Global Rewilding Alliance and the mentioned German NGO from their offices feel like explaining nature to pastoralists. They feel like explaining work to working people. Such an arrogance is unacceptable for anyone with any dignity. Often NGOs are not even able to stand criticism. They tend to play victims: How dare anyone criticize them!
If NGOs are really interested in the conservation of nature and in animal wellbeing, they’ll ask advice from pastoralists. Why don’t they usually do that? Obviously they don’t have the knowledge to appreciate their great experiences.
The pastoralists show how empathy for animals works. They organize their lives according to the needs of their herds. Very much unlike zoos or even pig-sheds with little space or many animal sanctuaries, where the humans’ needs are virtually all that matters while the animals have no choice. Of course, pastoralists also have their benefits from their livestock. That is a symbiosis, which has proved beneficial to both sides for 10,000 years.
By the end of the last millennium the conservationist NGOs (at least the two predominant ones in Germany) still backed small-scale agriculture and pastoral economy. From today’s NGOs we can wait forever till they tell people to buy lamb from migrant shepherdry, till they tell people to respect grazing livestock, till they criticize the appropriation of climate change mitigation by the imitate industry and praise pastoralists for their great contributions to all ecological values. They rather try and put obstacles so others don’t act in favour of nature and the environment because they consider it their privilege. That way economic activities and conservation are increasingly separated, humans and nature are increasingly separated. That forces agriculture to intensify. For extensive production we need lands. And their management is better off in the pastoralists’ hands than in the NGOs’ ones.
A symptom of the disrespect towards the fellow humans is the uncritical mystification of the wolf by quite a few NGOs, even where its number has surpassed any ecological carrying capacity. It’s known that the wolf is the symbol of those who feel a need to take revenge on humanity. With a single emblematic animal it is easy to gain the population’s financial support because those who do not understand anything of ecological interactions, are likely to accept a conspicuous species as the centre of the biodiversity debate. Ecologically untrained laypeople can be blinded by the scientific-sounding term “apex predator” because they don’t know that this is a concept of the wilderness, only demagogically used also for the cultural landscape. Of course, the wolf as one single species does not make biodiversity. When surpassing certain limits, it can do away with pastoral economy (and as a consequence reduce the biodiversity), what is beneficial for NGOs looking for land. A German NGO sends a wolf-mystic woman to events on pasture grazing only in order to disturb. That reveals their hidden agenda. When masses of shepherds give up their beloved profession after loads of sheep have been killed or heavily wounded by wolves, that very NGO shows no empathy at all but even humiliates the livestock keepers who have fallen victims. Seems like they enjoy the shepherds’ desperation and the threat for extensive breeds to go extinct. Those people show a considerable shortage of social competence. Is it astonishing that that NGO is considered the enemy number 1 by many pastoralists in Germany and neighbouring countries?
The rewilding business denies the great worth of human-made (technical term: anthropogenic) ecosystems and even wants to turn ecologically valuable pasture landscapes into wilderness (a concept defined according to economic strategies)! Because of hatred against their fellow humans and greed for money. No doubt, I enjoy the wilderness. I am happy when I see wild reindeer, when I pass breeding blue-footed boobies, when I see tree-ferns in the rainforest, when I spot a catfish from a ship, when while diving I come across a school of barracudas, when in the Laurisilva I find a Canary bellflower. That is wilderness, not rewilding forced upon nature.
In the language of the rewilding NGOs biodiversity is a code term for single conspicuous species. In ecology biodiversity means a diversity of species, genetical diversity among livestock breeds and diversity of ecosystems. These include the ecosystems of both wilderness and cultural landscapes. These latter do not need an “enrichment” with a few symbolic mammal species to be forced upon them. Two species of antelopes put out into nature by the Global Rewilding Alliance may not bring any harm, still they don’t make biodiversity. Biodiversity includes a diversity of geophytes, hemicryptophytes, thorny phanerophytes, butterflies and moths, wild bees, grasshoppers, collemboles, nematodes, birds, lichens and many others. Such diversity is created by pastoral economy. Dear rewilding profiteurs, can’t you find any better occupation than destroying what near-to-nature food producers have created within generations with a lot of commitment? If you dream of a world without humans, why not start with yourselves? I don’t share your hatred towards humanity.
For people who do an office job reluctantly, commitment and joy at work are often a provocation. I am not the only one who experienced that with a German group that falsely claims to be in favour of pastoralism. Since our reports from the pastoral world invite to get in touch with the reality beyond the comfort zone, they reacted impertinently and defamatorily. One should think they’ve got goals in common with organic farmers and pastoralists. But for this association agriculture is not an activity associated with joy but a mere theoretical construct that is only of interest as far as it gives money. For us the pastoral economy is an amiable activity in harmony with nature and fellow humans. We see it as our very lives, as an activity to get addicted to, as a valuable confrontation with the animals’ features. It does not come as a surprise that the armchair dreamers don’t feel this emotional connection. But that they get aggressive from our reports? Dreaming, wealth-spoiled consumerists who have never left their comfort zones, who know food only from the supermarket and who have no relationship whatsoever with the working-world, are obviously utterly afraid to be confronted with the reality beyond their dreams.
Why do the most misanthropic groups tell us we should refrain from visiting certain countries for ethical reasons? Does it harm their agenda if we experience that everywhere there are loads of nice people? National splitting is a widespread method of “Divide and rule”. When travelling, I make great experiences with people again and again. I’ve even written articles on that issue for magazines. However, that requires a readiness to leave one’s comfort zone, to cope with foreign cultures, to perceive humans as such. We pastoralists urgently need more international solidarity!
When I’m wandering through the mountains with a herd of goats, being myself a part of nature, I have got the feeling that everybody loves us herdspeople, even though they don’t know that those recreational landscapes with their biodiversity are to be thanked to our herds and us. When I’m selling pasture produce, especially cheese, I’ve got the feeling that everybody loves our products and us, even though they don’t know that with their purchase they support the biodiversity. One may be told things like: “You are a marvellous man. If just I didn’t have one already …” In the mountains as “our cheesemaker” I was allowed to ride for free on the cable-car. Such acknowledgements are earned with constructive work and a positive way of approaching our fellow humans. The enthusiasm of our customers when in a Norwegian cheese dairy’s café I talk to them in their Italian or Catalan mother-tongue, is enough of an award for my committed work of learning languages.
If the NGOs get rid of their presumptuousness, treat others with the due appreciation and integrate themselves into society, a cooperation with them will be possible.
Gereon Janzing
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