BINGO complicity, necropolitical ecology and environmental defenders

Title: BINGO Complicity, Necropolitical Ecology & Environmental Defenders

Affiliations: Mary Menton, Research Fellow in Environmental Justice, Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, University of Sussex; Paul Gilbert, Senior Lecturer in International Development, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex

Abstract: Several big international non-governmental organisations (BINGOs) have been instrumental in increasing the attention brought to the lived experiences of environmental and land defenders and the atmospheres of violence they face. Among the many BINGOs who frame themselves as ‘supporters’ or ‘protectors’ of environmental and land defenders, several have been complicit in violence perpetrated by park guards and resource extraction companies. In this paper, we unpack the multifaceted nature of the role BINGOs play in shaping the atmospheres of violence with which environmental defenders contend. While BINGOs have acted as whistle-blowers and advocates providing legal assistance to at-risk defenders, they have also been complicit in ‘green violence’ perpetrated in the name of conservation, and more subtle relationships of ‘partnership’ with industries and specific corporations engaged in neo- colonial forms of extraction and violence against defenders. BINGO complicity with the violence against defenders replays the historical entanglement of some organizations with displacement and violence enacted in the name of colonial era conservation. We argue that BINGOs can, and must, work towards more radical forms of decolonial solidarity with environmental and land defenders who contend with atmospheres of violence shaped, in many cases, by conservation efforts and resource extraction activities with which BINGOs may be complicit, either directly, or through various forms of ‘partnership.’

Keywords: BINGOs, environmental defenders, necropolitical ecology, partnership

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