For an entire week, the verdant landscapes surrounding Tanzania’s renowned Ngorongoro crater has been speckled with the scarlet shuka fabrics of numerous Maasai herdsmen fighting against their dispossession from ancestral lands all in the name of preservation.
This is not the premiere instance that the Maasai have suffered eviction to facilitate tourist viewing of the untouched wilderness abundant with wildlife, as glamourised in several films and documentaries.
In the 50s, the British colonial regime dislodged thousands of Maasai from the Serengeti by designating the expansive terrain as a national park. The Maasai were then granted residence in the proximate Ngorongoro Conservation Area, which was subsequently declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the 70s.
The succeeding conservation efforts progressively imposed constraints on the Maasai. Today, the Tanzanian authorities are planning to deport scores of them from Ngorongoro to extend the lands for conservation, high-end tourism, and big game hunting.
Denis Oleshangay, a Maasai lawyer, recounted to Thomson Reuters Foundation from his Arusha office in northern Tanzania the incidents of the Maasai experiencing intimidation, violence, arrest, fines, and military beatings by conservation officers. Describing it as a cultural extermination and a brutal act against humanity, Oleshangay shared the story of his own family’s eviction from the Serengeti.
Human rights organizations have emphasized the risk of world conservation techniques that vow to safeguard world biodiversity, but potentially marginalize Indigenous inhabitants residing within preservation sites.
In 2022, at the UN Cop15 nature summit in Montreal, Tanzania was one of the 195 nations to accept a global contract to preserve a minimum of 30 per cent of the earth’s lands and seas by 2030, known as 30×30. However, the 30×30 model clearly states the necessity of Indigenous populations’ involvement in biodiversity conservation.
Despite multiple attempts for comments, the Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism remained unresponsive. The government, however, had previously stated that relocations were conducted voluntarily to shield Ngorongoro from overpopulation and cattle grazing related hazards.
Notably, Oleshangay argued that the environmental damage by the Maasai is significantly less than that caused by luxury hotels, safari sites, and lodges that are proliferating in and around the conservation zones.
In 2022, approximately 70,000 Maasai were driven out to accommodate trophy hunting lodges in Loliondo, the ancestral lands of the community. Furthermore, Oleshangay reported that another 100,000 are currently experiencing harassment and maltreatment from authorities in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, demanding their relocation under the guise of conservation.
“Conservation isn’t the issue, we’re all for it. We’re objecting to the biased implementation of conservation, which bears a militaristic quality,” clarified Oleshangay.
This week, tens of thousands of Maasai held a nonviolent protest on the Ngorongoro-Serengeti highway, bearing placards, obstructing tourist traffic in opposition to the expulsion from the 8,288 sq km Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority issued a statement ensuring that the region remains open and safe for tourists, maintaining that the protests are proof that no human rights abuses were being perpetrated in the region.
Nevertheless, human rights organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have recorded incidents of alleged coercion, violence, along with restrictions on Maasai rights to food, healthcare, education and housing. Oleshangay commented, “They’re making life so unbearable that nobody would want to remain.”
Tanzania isn’t the only nation favouring what rights groups term as “fortress conservation”, which views local inhabitants as a hindrance to ecological protection.
From 1990 to 2014, upwards of 250,000 citizens across 15 nations were ordered to relocate to establish protected regions, as per information gathered by the Rights and Resources Initiative, an organisation focused on local development and forest management. Recent instances of green conservation initiatives portraying indigenous people as environmental enemies include evictions of forest-dwelling populations in Thailand, Kenya, and the Congo Basin, alongside farmers in Cambodia, all executed in the name of carbon credits.
Gran groups have praised the 30×30 conservation commitment as the most substantial global conservation promise ever made. Countries are set to review progress on these promises at Cop16 in Colombia, scheduled for the end of October this year.
However, Cop16’s nature discussions need to bolster the protection of indigenous communities, stated Jennifer Corpuz, Nia Tero’s Policy Managing Director, a global non-profit organisation collaborating with indigenous people and their movements.
The allocation of funds should be directed towards Indigenous groups as recommended by Corpuz. This could be achieved through the use of “indicators” for observing and safeguarding Indigenous rights, which would encompass confirming land ownership as well as the participation of these communities in conservation strategy development. Corpuz also advocates for the engagement of community-based monitors for these indicators.
Simultaneously, the attention focused on human rights infringements in the pursuit of conservation could influence the destination of funding, points out Juliana Nnoko, a leading researcher on land and women’s rights at Human Rights Watch. Nnoko noted some donors’ refusal to fund projects aimed at Tanzanian conservation initiatives in reaction to these rights violations.
Regarding the unfolding of the 30×30 framework, Oleshangay asserted that community chiefs would persist in their struggle to include Maasai voices in their conservation plans. While he commended the 30×30 pledge on a theoretical level, he emphasised the necessity for its operationalisation to include these groups, rather than displacing them as custodians of the land, according to the Thomson Reuters Foundation. – © Copyright Thomson Reuters 2024