Whose Land is it Anyway?

The Cost of Conservation

Researchers estimate over 12 million people have been alienated from their lands by conservation activities.  Those most severely affected, such as hunter-gatherers (below) and Pastoralists (right) live in perpetual poverty and face severe threats to their livelihoods and existence with little benefits.  Why are Western conservationists getting it so wrong?

“Conservationists are in denial about the existence of “conservation refugees” and ill-informed as to the poverty that often precipitates from these refugee expulsions.”                    
Prof Charles Grisler (2003)

Conservation – A Colonial Legacy?

Why have conservation organisations got it so wrong, especially in Africa?  Can’t they see that there would be nothing to conserve if it wasn’t for local peoples’ knowledge, interest and culture? 

Conservationists continue to ignore the rights and knowledge of communities. Some of the myths and misunderstandings are:

• The land was not unoccupied; Pastoralists for example are a semi-nomadic people.
  
  
• Local people do not destroy their environment, rather they introduce sustainable resource management systems based on seasonal migration and compatible with wildlife.
  
  
• Local people do not get an equitable share of revenue generated from conservation activities. Often it is derisory.
  
  
• Communities living in or around conservation areas are often poor or marginalised. Conservation usually exacerbates this injustice and increases pressure on the environment.
  
  
• Poaching and commercial hunting is done by outsiders and for an export market yet is often used as an excuse to throw people off their land.

In the name of Community Conservation

African Initiatives has documented some worrying practices carried out in the name of Community Conservation:

• Millions of people have been evicted from their lands and denied access to natural resources essential for their survival.
  
  
• People who resist eviction have been beaten and sometimes shot. Women have been raped; livestock and meagre possessions have been confiscated.; homes burned and destroyed.
  
  
• Community leaders, always men, are invited to ‘workshops’ and given large allowances and free hotels, food and alcohol.

• Corrupt local leaders are offered money and jobs to support conservation – bribery?

• Local community organisations, often desperate for funding, are co-opted by conservation agencies to implement the conservation agenda.

• Conservation agencies often confuse, lie and threaten communities with proposed changes in land legislation.

• Conservation agencies deny bad practice by hiding behind government policy.  Meanwhile they give advice and money to the same government agencies.

• Offering evidence that is unscientific, biased and culturally inappropriate.

“Conservationists come up here, do their (participatory) work and then tell us we want conservation.  Sometimes the end result can be that we have lost our land.”
Daniel ole Ngoitiko, Ujamaa Community Resource Trust

“These outsiders are very cunning. Whenever anybody says something inconvenient to them they don’t write it.  And what is favourable to them and bad for us they put in writing.”
Community leader

The Alternative : Ecosystems, Equity and Rights

The sustainable management of ecosystems and biodiversity requires more complex solutions than the “fortress Eden” approach.  Key principles for an alternative are:

• Communities’ rights to natural resources should be secured.  This includes their intellectual property rights.
  
  
• Local knowledge should be integrated into the management of ecosystems.
  

• Communities should benefit from an equitable distribution of revenue generated from their lands.
  
  
• Conservation agencies should focus more on the causes of environmental degradation such as global warming, unjust and unsustainable global trade, consumption in the rich counties, third world debt, poverty, intense industrial agriculture etc.
  
  
• Those communities affected by conservation activities must be represented in international conferences and policy making bodies.

“Human rights is political correctness … a luxury the environment cannot afford.”
Head of Africa Programme, WWF-UK

“How is it that supposed experts and ‘guardians of nature’ come here after having failed to conserve trees and wildlife in the places of origin?  The world should know that we are not people who eat the soil until it is finished.  We manage the land so that we make sure that our small cultivation disturbs neither domestic nor wild animals.  The world should learn from us how we Maasai manage our lands.  They shouldn’t see us as destroyers of the land.”
Maasai community leader

This African Initiatives’ and Ujamaa-Community Resource Trust Briefing Paper is based on research, experiences and analysis in the UK and Africa

For more information on this Briefing , please contact:

African Initiatives
T: 0117 9150001
E: info@african-initiatives.org.uk

Ujamaa –Community Resource Trust
T: +255-27-250 2300
E: ujamaa-crt@dorobo.org