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Researcher(s):
Sadie Kurtz
ENVS course(s): 400 Initiated: September 2016 Completed: May 2017 Go to project site
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Conservation is a deeply complex political topic in Tanzania. With conservation and the designation of protected areas such as National Parks and Nature Reserves, come benefits for the country, but also risks to indigenous communities. While neither resource conservation nor indigenous land rights is new, the conflict between them continues to draw rifts between communities, outside actors and governments. Tanzania provides a perfect example of the struggle between balancing resource conservation and indigenous rights. As international knowledge and awareness of indigenous rights have increased this thesis looks at how land use strategies have not adapted to depolarize tensions between the different sectors. Despite increased international protections Tanzania has not followed through with their international obligations to indigenous communities due to the financial and political pull of outside actors. By breaking down the polarization and working with competing value sets it’s important to allow all actors to be able to advocate for their needs and desires. This can be seen by the successful implementation of the Certificate of Customary Rights of Occupancy amongst a few indigenous communities in Tanzania.
To account for the complex nature and bipolarity of conflicts regarding conservation and indigenous rights this thesis incorporates multiple methodologies in attempt to receive a well-rounded view of the conversation. This included looking historically by comparing major events in the realms of indigenous rights, conservation and Tanzania put together on a single timeline. In order to obtain local perspectives from affected tribes an interview was conducted with Maasai elders that reside on the border of the Serengeti National Park who are currently trying to obtain a CCRO. To supplement that, I look at surveys conducted in a suburb of Arusha that shows how perspectives of conservation differ from tribe to tribe after years of being pushed to urbanize indigenous groups by the government (Homewood 2009). I also conducted an informal interview with a woman in the conservation and tourism industry. Lastly, I compiled by date the number of news articles and segments that pertain specifically to conflicts between conservation and the indigenous communities in Tanzania. Plus I look at a Google N-Gram of the number of times indigenous rights and conservation have been mentioned in books since the 1800s.
It becomes clear that overtime the international community has increased the publications on indigenous land rights throughout time. As seen through the Google N-Gram, indigenous rights, while small in comparison to conservation have dramatically increased in prevalence since 1975. But the increase in international law has not been reflective in a change of behavior from Tanzania. During the beginning of colonialism indigenous communities were allowed to interact with protected areas however, this is no longer the case in most areas. This change was partially driven by Europeans disappointment that the tribes did not live in their version of harmony seen through partitioned nature (Neumann 1998). Since then protected areas have been built to cater to various financials actors such as European and Saudi Arabian hunters (Smith 2014 and Walley 2004).
Tanzania has been successful in some ways though. In the creation of the CCRO with work from UCRT and the local communities, there is a potential for indigenous groups to have a voice in land use decisions. While the success of CCROs has been influential, only eight communities had been able to receive the title as of 2014. This in itself makes the CCRO process essentially useless in terms of getting widespread protections for all indigenous communities in Tanzania. While it has certainly increased individual protections for a select few, the number of communities that could apply for a title would most likely overwhelm the system, and potentially overwhelm the land use management system as well. While creative problem solving and the governments full cooperation would be required to solve this conflict, the CCRO process did finally give communities proper representation in land use, which is one of the rights that has been continually overlooked by the Tanzanian government.
Works Cited:
Homewood, Katherine. 2009. Staying Maasai? Livelihoods, Conservation, and Development in East African Rangelands. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, 5. Dordrecht: Springer.
Neumann, Roderick P. 1998. Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa. California Studies in Critical Human Geography ; 4. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Smith, David, and Africa correspondent. 2014. “Tanzania Accused of Backtracking over Sale of Masai’s Ancestral Land.” The Guardian, November 16, sec. World news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/16/tanzania-government-accused-serengeti-sale-maasai-lands.
Walley, Christine J. 2010. Rough Waters: Nature and Development in an East African Marine Park. Princeton University Press.