The "People Problem": Colonialism and Conservation
How modern African conservation laws are protecting a system of oppression.
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Conservation is an issue that everyone has at least heard of, and an issue that paints a million different pictures in people's minds. What do you imagine? Is it the vast sprawl of pristine rainforests? Is it the more gruesome imagery of the poaching of animals for horns or ivory? What doesn’t likely come to mind is the indigenous people.
Conservation efforts have historically had and continue to affect the lives of indigenous people around the world and conservation’s “people problem” is one of its most overlooked yet most important issues. Indigenous people have consistently been overlooked during conservation and the struggle between balancing traditional lifestyles with protections of animals and land has been a difficult struggle, with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs citing in their environment section issues such as
- Forced resettlement
- Lack of access to resources
- Violation of land rights
- Removal of cultural rights and privileges
This is no accident, as conservation policies in many ways are inherently against the indigenous people and creates a cycle of mistrust between the people and conservation groups. The key to understanding the “people problem” of conservation is by looking at the colonial roots of conservation and how it has negatively impacted and continues to negatively affect indigenous people.
Conservation Movements and Political Ecology
Conservation movements as a whole have most generally been concerned with analyzing factors such as population and economic growth or technology over the historical context of colonialism. In Roderick Neumann’s article “The Political Ecology of Wildlife Conservation in the Mount Meru Area of Tanzania”, he finds that much of these ideas were rooted in more traditional views of ecology and the environment. It wasn’t until the 1980s with the advent of political ecology, which studies ecology from the perspective of historical dynamics and their effects on the modern day, that the historical context of conservation actually began to be analyzed (Neumann 'Mount Meru', 86). Though political ecology has become more popular since, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the old way of thought has just disappeared, particularly among the governments.
The ex British colony of Tanzania, for example, gained independence in 1961 but, as early as 1986, the Tanzanian government pinned much of the ongoing conservation issues within the nation on indigenous people, as expressed by Neumann in the quote below. This goes against the ideas of political ecology as it blames the indigenous people without looking at the colonial context behind their actions. Indigenous people are continuously blamed for degrading the land in parks either by their pastoral lifestyle or their actions of hunting. The idea of blaming the indigenous people was also a colonial idea used in the first ever conservation movements by Europeans in Africa.
“there is also an even more relentless threat, and that is the growth in the number of people inhabiting villages on the periphery of the national parks” (Neumann 'Mount Meru', 88).
It didn’t just end in the 80s however, as Abdi Dahir of Quartz Africa reported in 2018 that the Tanzanian government was still displacing the local Maasai peoples to make room for ecotourism developments. The Maasai are a people that live near the Great Lakes region in Northern Tanzania and Southern Kenya.
Maasailand
The biggest ecotourism development to hit the Maasai recently was in the region of Loliondo, in which the Tanzanian government has opened up the area for game hunting to foreign based companies. The Ortello Business Corporation of the UAE was the main corporation in the area and their actions had resulted in numerous evictions and the burning down of villages from 2007-2014 when the group was most active, as stated by the Oakland Institute’s “Losing the Serengti the Maasai Land that was to Run Forever”. Ultimately, in 2017 a civil suit ruled in favor of the Maasai and protected their land rights, ruling it unconstitutional for the Tanzanian government to evict the Maasai, as stated in an article from The Citizen, a Tanzanian news outlet.
This isn’t unique to Loliondo either, as many similar cases have risen up of indigenous people being forcibly removed from their land in the name of conservation. The colonial roots of this problem run deep, even to this day. African governments don’t work with the ideas of political ecology and instead base much of their system on the colonial rhetoric of old.
The Rhetoric and Leadup to Colonization
The story I want to tell begins in the aforementioned nation of Tanzania, a country located in East Africa. Before explaining the history however, it’s important to understand the culture.
Tanzania
Fundamentally the ideas of colonial conservation in Africa can stem from the differences in the conceptualization of nature between African and Western cultures. In Vimbai Kwashirai’s article “Environmental Change, Control and Management in Africa”, these differences are stated to be how the African view focuses much more on spirituality and how societies work with and are influenced by the nature around them, while the European/Western view denotes nature as something to be transformed by people, fundamentally separate from the people (Kwashirai, 172).
The differences between the views on nature likely influenced the European perception of African animals and people. When Europeans did eventually settle Africa, the view of the land as empty and an untouched wilderness was highly romanticized and one of the first things taken into account as stated by Thembela Kepe’s article, “Shaped By Race: Why ‘Race’ Still Matters in the Challenges Facing Biodiversity Conservation in Africa”. This influenced the view of Africa as a sort of “Edenic Wilderness” of simple people and unique creatures meant to be protected from the harms and corruption of modern life. The ideas themselves are inherently racist as they ignore the complexities of African societies and how they interacted with and changed the land, all while romanticizing the wildlife and landscape, separating it from the people.
The theme of separation is an incredibly important one in the story of colonial conservation. The indigenous people were continuously ignored in the process and were treated as a problem. It separated the people from the land and as such negating any complex relationships they may have had, seeing them just as a nuisance to conservation and not as a people that can have complex relationships with the world around them.
The Rhetoric in Action: Colonial Conservation
The influence of these original differences culminates into how they’re actually used by colonial empires. Specifically looking at the British rule in Tanzania during the postwar conservation boom, we can see the policies of conservation continuing the idea of separating the people from their land.
The National Parks of Tanzania in reference to who founded them. 4 of the 3 British Parks were founded during the period of the conservation boom and nearly half of all National Parks were initially founded by colonial empires.
The postwar conservation boom itself was the growth in game departments and national parks in Africa after the end of World War II up to the 1960s, as described by Roderick Neumann’s “The Postwar Conservation Boom in British Colonial Africa”. This wasn’t to say there weren’t parks or reserves before but there were structural increases during this time period. In the pre conservation boom era European powers, specifically the United Kingdom, were pushing for an international conservation society and standardization in the practice. The ideas were rooted in the belief of protecting Africa’s nature from the natives, or as Neumann states, the reasoning “primarily focused on what they referred to as the ‘indiscriminate slaughter’ of wildlife by Africans” (Neumann 'Postwar Conservation Boom', 24). These ideas held steady into the post war era.
In 1928 the British had designated the lands around Mt. Kilimanjaro to be national parks. Policies like this were mainly promoted by conservation societies based in London, most notoriously the Society for the Preservation of the Flora and Fauna of the Empire or the SPFFE. The group itself was made in response to the idea of standardization in conservation as expressed earlier (Neumann 'Postwar Conservation Boom', 25). This was a top down endeavor, as the idea was pushed by those outside the colony and were resisted by colonial authorities. The idea of a top down endeavor relates to how the national parks in the British era were pushed by powers and organizations outside of Africa with the local people not getting much of a say in how it was run.
The previously mentioned article from Roderick Neumann “The Political Ecology of Wildlife Conservation in the Mount Meru Area of Tanzania” discusses how the plans to create Serengeti National Park caused many issues with the local Maasai people of the region. The plans made by the British prohibited any form of human action other than tourism and research, which ended up in restrictions of rights for the Maasai, limiting their way of life on their own land.
A map of Maasai territory in Tanzania and Kenya relative to national parks and similar institutions in the countries.
As a result, the Maasai protested restrictions of their ancestral rights via revolts and uprisings. Much of this occurred in the early 1950s and was done by other tribes in the region as well (Neumann 'Mount Meru', 89). In turn certain customary rights were begrudgingly granted, though this wouldn't be the case for long. Customary rights were not liked by those in favor of the parks back in London, as Neumann notes that the rhetoric used by British authorities at the time blamed the indigenous peoples for rule breaking, with the objective of slowly removing customary rights and sovereignty, this again was done in the timeframe of the 1950s. Pro-park British authorities claimed, with little evidence as well, that the indigenous people started fires or hunted certain species with malicious intent, and painted them as agitators (Neumann 'Mount Meru', 90). This ultimately resulted in the 1960 decree of the rights of animals and the existence and protection of the national parks to be prioritized over the rights of indigenous people.
“‘The interests of fauna and flora must come first,’ a park manager wrote, ‘those of man and belongings being of secondary importance. Humans and a National Park cannot exist together’” (Neumann 'Mount Meru', 90).
This resulted in the forced resettling of indigenous people out of their land to make room for parks and laws that specifically restricted them from actions they had been doing for generations. The model for Serengeti National Park was followed while the British were developing another park, Arusha National Park in the same time frame between the 1930s up to 1960. (Neumann 'Mount Meru', 92), which killed grazing industries and restricted movement of indigenous groups, thus weakening them and preventing them from revolting again. This has caused repercussions that affect them to this day, such as the inaccessibility to land for grazing cattle or obtaining critical resources such as water. (Neumann 'Mount Meru', 92-93).
The Modern Day
In another ex British colony within the same region, Kenya, this lack of cooperation between the indigenous people and conservation groups is realized in the modern day. Kenya had gained independence in 1963, around the time the conservation boom was beginning to come to an end. The remnants of this era are still clear in the actions of the government.
Kenya
The article from Kamau and Sluyter “Challenges Of Elephant Conservation: Insights From Oral Histories Of Colonialism And Landscape In Tsavo, Kenya” discusses how the colonial laws regarding human activity in and around national parks, specifically anti-hunting laws, negatively affect indigenous farmers to this day. Much of the information given is from villagers who live nearby the national parks with stories from the 1970s and into 2014, when the research for the article was published.
The article discusses how elephants can easily exit park controlled land and enter indigenous villages, where they damage farmland or even kill people, but the local people aren’t allowed to stop them. The larger issue however, is park rangers not cooperating with the indigenous people in stopping this. The Kamau and Sluyter reading shows how human actions are banned on park land, such as bringing animals for grazing or accessing water supplies. This results in conflicts between these indigenous farmers and conservation authorities, which ultimately lead to arrest. The article cites a story from a villager that had happened around 2015.
“'When we take our animals to the park for grazing, the KWS rangers are quick to arrest us, but when wildlife come to our farms, they do not rush to drive them out. In fact, we always wonder why when an elephant kills someone, the KWS people are not in a hurry to arrive but when one elephant dies you see many cars and helicopters coming within a short time. People here suffer from elephants (Interview with a male Taveta informant in a village near Taveta town on July 22, 2015).'” (Kamau and Sluyter, 537)
The park rangers fail to realize that the only reason indigenous people break these laws is because the land they live on now lacks these resources and the park rangers themselves refuse to help them solve those issues, most notably the elephant attacks. The historical context is seen in this situation with full effect. The forced relocation of indigenous people during British rule resulted in them having less resources and land. The laws that prohibited any action on the park grounds, which was originally indigenous territory, helped perpetuate the effects of the forced resettlement in weakening the communities. This cycle of poverty is still clearly seen in the situation of the Kenyan farmers.
Using water as an example, the maps showcase the national parks in Kenya (left) and the average precipitation (right), with redder colors meaning less rainfall. Note how many, though not all but many of the national parks are in the more arid parts of the nation, specifically Tsavo East and West which are the ones discussed in the Kamau and Sluyter reading.
The power dynamic of the colonial conservationist and indigenous groups is still there but with a new set of paint. The indigenous people instead of battling authorities that listen to London are now battling authorities that listen to the government of their own country.
The ivory bonfires during the event.
Actions that the government did take haven’t changed the situation much at all. The biggest example is the expensive creation of electric fences, which have been criticized for making the elephant populations insular and decreasing genetic diversity along with overgrazing. There were also “ivory bonfires” done by the Kenyan government’s wildlife service (Kamau and Sluyter, 537). This happened in 2016 and the conservation authorities would symbolically burn confiscated poached ivory with Kenya’s then president Uhuru Kenyatta in attendance. Though the latest of these bonfires was in 2016, this has been in practice since as early as 1989 (Kamau and Sluyter, 537). These were more for show and to create international attention and as a result were highly criticized by indigenous groups who lived near the parks as they believed that the funds from the confiscated ivory could be used to better their lives.
Kamau and Sluyter on page 538 bring up ways the money could’ve been used such as:
- Improving park management
- Compensating victims of crop damages
- Funding development of poor communities that neighbor the parks
This all stems from the comparable Tanzanian situation, as the land and its people were treated as separate and not closely intertwined making the situation worse for both of them. The root of this being colonial rule which separated them in the first place. With the situation not changing much at all from the colonial era, indigenous people are hesitant to trust and work with conservation authorities. Specifically in regards to poaching, many indigenous people around the parks are familiar with who the poachers are and their techniques but refuse to give the information out. Regarding this Neumann states that the indigenous people feel that they shouldn’t support the conservation system as all it has done since colonial times was damage their societies and ways of life. They don’t want to help a system that had never helped them (Neumann 'Mount Meru', 95).
“If I saw someone shoot an animal right in front of me, I wouldn't say a word. The park doesn’t care about my problems, why should I care about theirs?” (Neumann 'Mount Meru', 95).
What Actions Are Being Taken? What Can We Do Now?
Conservation isn’t as simple as making a national park. It is incredibly important to understand the role that indigenous people play in these ecosystems and that pushing them off the land or prohibiting actions in the name of conservation kills their culture, and is based on colonial rhetoric.
Indigenous people who have lived on these lands for generations know what is happening on them and know how to deal with conservation issues, more so than foreign safari tours or agricultural investors in it for capitalist gains. This idea is supported by the United Nations United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in their 2009 report, “State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.” In the section regarding the environment and traditional knowledge, the report stresses the important role indigenous people play in negating biodiversity loss. This comes from the “(...) knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity’” (United Nations, 109). The report further states that the key to getting this done is by mending the relationship between the indigenous people and governments.
The United Nations and their Department of Economic and Social Affairs have since pushed the importance of governments working with their indigenous peoples to help overcome conservation struggles. Actions taken have included the Green Climate Fund Indigenous Peoples Policy, which was implemented in 2018, done to ensure that any potential policy supported and developed by the GCF will keep the needs of indigenous peoples in mind. The UN has also created a Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform in order to help their voices get heard. On top of all of this, The UN has continued to create reports on the state of the world's indigenous peoples and hold sessions regarding indigenous issues.
There are many indigenous-led conservation groups you can donate to, such as the ACC in East Africa and Naboisho Conservancy in Kenya. Even further than that, there are many in America as well such as Seeding Sovereignty and the Indigenous Environmental Network.
Most importantly, we as students of Globalization Studies need to understand that colonialism runs deep in many facets of society and without pointing that out, nothing can change.
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