Meet the “Green” Berets

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Similarly, the International Ranger Federation is attempting to build global support for the idea of a multi-​national “green-helmet brigade”—modeled on the U.N.’s blue-helmeted peacekeepers—that would have a wide-ranging remit for intervention in serious environmental crises.

Some U.N. missions have had such issues incorporated into their mandates. Take Liberia, where the looting of the country’s natural resources, particularly forests, bankrolled the now-deposed regime of Charles Taylor. The current U.N. mission operates a dedicated environment and natural resources unit.

In a 2007 paper for Ethics and International Affairs, political science professor Robyn Eckersley of the University of Melbourne examined how the world could look if policies of eco-interventionism and eco-peacekeeping were adopted on a widespread, intergovernmental level. The use of armed force to intervene in environmental disputes—over water or oil reserves, for example—could increase as resources dwindle and populations expand, she argues.

“I think it’s a reality that we’ll see, out of necessity, a body at some point—call them the ‘green berets’—formed with the primary purpose of protecting ecological assets,” Eckersley says. “Not necessarily with a shoot-on-sight policy, but very much equipped as a last stand to protect forests and species.”

For now, back in Africa, the funeral of Virunga National Park ranger Kalibumba is over. Pictures of his coffin and funeral congregation have appeared on blogs. There are lots of comments and condolences; one, by an anonymous poster, reads: “Within a few years there may be no gorillas left . . . if things continue, there’s going to be no rangers left either.”

Andrew Wasley is a journalist and producer at Ecostorm, an investigative agency specializing in environmental, human rights, and animal welfare issues. Excerpted from the Ecologist(June 2008); www.theecologist.org.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print