GOBA, Ethiopia — Nestled in the heart of Bale Mountains National Park in Ethiopia’s highlands is an isolated village surrounded by lush natural forest — one of the few left in the country. Covered in low-hanging clouds, a dirt road runs through the village of Rira, connecting it to the outside world. Along the sides […]
The difference between vaguely claiming an area to be a park and not actually doing anything about it and having a UNESCO designation and an intent to enforce the area as being a park is the difference of actually being a park. You could call a residential neighborhood a park, but if you let everybody live there and build houses on it as if it were a residential neighborhood, it’s a residential neighborhood.
People have been living on this land their entire lives. Kicking them out of their homes isn’t morally equivalent to shooing people off of already protected land.
The park is 857 square miles, in one of the poorest countries in the world. The government has been more concerned with maintaining and increasing supplies of food and water to avoid the previous massively deadly famines, their ongoing border disputes with Eritrea, and other serious issues. Just because something slides under the radar doesn’t mean they can get away with it permanently. Plus the government is giving them money to compensate for their illegally built houses.
Right, they’re focused on more significant problems as well they should be, but we’re still talking about actual humans versus what has been a largely theoretical park until very recently.