The Ethics of EcoPhilanthropy

What do you do if you're extremely wealthy and share a deep love for diverse ecosystems?

You don't simply go on safari, or take a tour of the Amazon - you buy a chunk of the ecosystem that you hope to protect.

Or at least that's the action taken by some Eco-Philanthropists, such as Doug and Kristine McDivitt Tompkins who made their fortunes with outdoor retailers The Northface and Patagonia respectively. They've purchased some 2-million acres in Argentina and Chile and have already created two national parks.

They are not alone in their efforts.

Dutch philanthropist Paul Fentener van Vlissingen, for example, created South Africa's Marakele National Park by purchasing the 166, 400 acres upon which it now sits. CNN's Ted Turner, financier George Soros and Italy's wealthy Benetton Group have also purchased large tracts of land in the same region of Chile where the Tompkins have created their parks.

In the short term the benefits of these efforts is clear. Van Vlissingen was able to create Marakele National Park in a mere 2 years; it would have likely taken over a decade in bureaucracy to have the same effort done via the government. But these well intentioned efforts to 'save' these regions have brought up deeper questions of neo-colonialism, national sovereignty and sustainability.

For example, the Tompkins Pumalin Park project in Southern Chile, sprawls over 762,000 acres effectively slicing the thin nation in two and making it impassible by road, a fact that irritates many Chilean's sense of sovereignty. Points out conservative Chilean Sen. Antonio Horvath in the Los Angeles Times "I can't imagine a situation where people traveling from Washington or New York to Miami, for instance, would be obliged to do it only by ferry or air."

Dr Roberto Delgado Gallart, Director for the Centro Latinoamericano de Responsabilidad Social (Latin American Centre for Social Responsibility - CLARES), in a March CNN article "if a millionaire who is concerned about deforestation acquires thousands of square kilometers of tropical forest in a country to prevent its destruction by loggers or farmers and allows indigenous communities to continue living on the land, 'his conduct may seem impeccable.'

On the other hand, points out Dr.Gallart: Still others believe that by acquiring large extensions of land, in reality what they are doing hurts the country, since ownership of the land is lost and is passed on to foreigners."

This latter thinking has much traction, particularly when one considers the underlying causes of forest destruction in Latin America a curious mix of macroeconomic strategies which provide a strong incentive for short-term profit making instead of long term sustainability, entrenched social structures which create inequalities in land tenure, discrimination against indigenous peoples, subsistence farmers and poor people in general, as well as overconsumption by consumers - such as the Eco-philanthropists themselves - in high-income countries which is the major underlying cost of deforestation/land destruction.

Not one of these issues is dealt with by simply purchasing a large parcel of land and declaring it out of commission.

Is it no wonder, then, that many people who live close to these large land grabs feel that the efforts are really nothing more than a way for rich foreigners to appropriate a common good?