Community-Based Conservation and Maasai Livelihoods in Tanzania

Nelson, Fred; Gardner, Benjamin; Igoe, Jim; Williams, Andrew

doi:10.1007/978-0-387-87492-0_8

Community-Based Conservation and Maasai Livelihoods in Tanzania

Fred Nelson⁴,
Benjamin Gardner⁵,
Jim Igoe &
Andrew Williams⁶

Chapter

1999 Accesses
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Part of the Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation book series (STHE,volume 5)

Keywords

Wildlife Conservation
Game Reserve
Wildlife Management Area
Village Land
Ngorongoro Conservation Area

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Notes

1.
¹ We use the term ‘pastoralist’ to mean people who herd cattle as a central part of their livelihood, but who may also varyingly complement their livelihoods with farming and other activities.
2.
² The Maasai themselves have occupied the region for only about 200–300 years, however.
3.
³ These include community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), community-based conservation (CBC), integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs), adaptive co-management (ACM), participatory forest management (PFM), and community-based wildlife management (CWM).
4.
⁴ This latter undertaking has for many years been reneged upon, both through successive amendments to the law increasingly extinguishing customary rights and also through extra-legal actions taken by the managing Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (Shivji and Kapinga, 1998).
5.
⁵ The depopulation of west Liwale District was only brought to an end when it was realized during the mid-1940s that the remaining human population comprised a useful labour reserve for what was to become the ill-conceived and infamous ground-nut scheme (Neumann, 2001, pp. 658–660; see also Iliffe, 1979, pp. 440–442).
6.
⁶ Created in about 1937 (Jennings, 1994).
7.
⁷ ‘Ujamaa’ means community-hood and is used to circumscribe Tanzania's collectivist and socialist socio-economic policies of 1967–1986.
8.
⁸ Maa for permanent settlements.
9.
⁹ Game Controlled Areas (GCAs) were originally established during colonial times as a way of increasing regulatory controls over hunting outside of reserved lands, and have never involved restrictions on land use or livelihood activities by local people, unlike in game reserves and national parks.
10.
¹⁰ This legislation classifies such lands as ‘village lands’ and places them under the authority of village council, which is the lowest level of administration and governance in Tanzania.
11.
¹¹ These were the African Wildlife Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund.
12.
¹² The Ilparakuyo form one of the 22 associated sections of the wider Maa-speaking peoples of eastern Nilotic origin (Sommer and Vossen, 1993, p. 30).
13.
¹³ Although the Ilparakuyo were present in what is now southern Dodoma District by the end of the nineteenth century, they only moved more permanently into Pawaga and what is now the periphery of north-eastern Iringa District in the early part of the twentieth century (Redmayne, 1964, p. 392). The first official reports of Ilparakuyo pastoralists migrating into the Pawaga area occurred in 1928 and 1934. By 1953, Ilparakuyo pastoralists had reached Idodi (Lemu Lebere, personal commnication) and the Usangu (Charnley, 1997). It is likely that the Ilparakuyo initially may only have been seasonal transhumant residents in north-eastern Iringa District, but by the late 1930s they had become more permanently established in the area. Redmayne (1964, p. 396) remarks that the Ilparakuyo were allowed to utilize the rangelands by the resident Hehe on the condition of refraining from stock raiding, and paying tribute to the Vanzagila (Sub-Chief) of Pawaga (Redmayne, 1964, p. 360).
14.
¹⁴ Prior to the creation of the Lunda–Mkwambi Game Controlled Area (LMGCA), there had been an ‘Iringa Controlled Area’ (ICA) probably created in 1951 or 1952, under the Fauna Conservation Ordinance of 1951. It is thought that the ICA became defunct after a number of years. Certainly there is no mention of the ICA during the gazettement process for the Ruaha National Park in 1964 (M. Walsh, personal communication). The LMGCA was created by Government Notice No. 33 published on 1st February 1985 under the ‘Wildlife Conservation (Game Controlled Area) (Declaration) (Lunda–kwambi) Order, 1984’.
15.
¹⁵ Pastoralist and farmer evictions in the Pawaga Lunda North section of the LMGCA have continued to occur over the years. More recently, the authorities have targeted Barabaig herders who take advantage of seasonal grazing in the Ruaha National Park.
16.
¹⁶ ODA is now the Department for International Development.
17.
¹⁷ REWMP was designed from a traditional protected area conservation perspective to work with Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) to support park planning and to strengthen anti-poaching.
18.
¹⁸ Resident hunting licences are sold according to a pricing schedule that greatly subsidizes citizens' and residents' access to wildlife. A buffalo costs between $600 and $900 on a tourist hunting licencse, while a citizen can purchase a resident hunting licensce for a buffalo for only 10,000 Tshs., or less than $9 at current exchange rates.
19.
¹⁹ As part of the Serengeti Regional Conservation Strategy which began in 1986.
20.
²⁰ The concept and impetus for the new CWM project, MBOMIPA arose in part from the District Steering Committee made up of District, ward and other stakeholder representatives – including resident hunters. Established in 1996, and although falteringly at first, the committee's members increasingly came to recognize a commonality of interests and a joint vision for the future management of wildlife of Lunda-Mkwambi south. Notably, the committee played a central role in negotiating the auction system with resident hunters in 1997 and then played a key role in helping resist continued pressure for cheap hunting by some resident hunters, with the strong backing of the WD (Walsh, 2000).
21.
²¹ Most of the other early CWM pilot areas had also failed to achieve WMA status despite over 10 years' investment in the process; the consensus in Tanzania by 2006 was that the political will required to devolve management responsibilities to local communities simply did not exist (see Baldus et al., 2004; Baldus, 2006).
22.
²² The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Tanzania provided a relatively substantial grant through WCS for the MBOMIPA Association to support its institutional development. WWF is currently undertaking a larger project in the area that is trying to address the complex and difficult issues relating to the sustainable management of the Greater Ruaha river basin.
23.
²³ In recent years, a more accommodating stance has been adopted in that grazing boundaries have been agreed between pastoralists and village natural resource committees in the Lunda section, facilitated by the World Wildlife Fund and the Ruaha–Rungwa Landscape Conservation Programme of the Wildlife Conservation Society of New York. With continued relatively high levels of seasonal herder immigration, the rangelands are coming under increasing pressure, and understandably villages are keen to ensure that parts of the rangeland remain less affected by heavy grazing. But the high level of pressure on the Idodi and Pawaga rangelands is symptomatic of local failures in natural resource governance, coupled with rising local human populations relying on an ever-more limited resource-base. The situation is compounded by inappropriate countrywide policies and attitudes to pastoralism and agro-pastoralism.
24.
²⁴ A result of operation Uhai (a large scale anti-poaching operation carried out in the late 1980s), most firearms in the villages were confiscated, resulting in an anecdotal increase in localized populations of ‘vermin’ such as baboon, vervet monkey and bush pig.
25.
²⁵ In September 2007, the Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism signed regulations that now totally control all investor partnerships with communities, and appropriate what may be up to 75% per cent of all revenues from these agreements.
26.
²⁶ This project is one of the longest-running WMA pilot initiatives in Tanzania, and was started by the Selous Conservation Programme in the early 1990's. For background on this programme and its impacts in Morogoro District, see Baldus et al., (1994); Baldus and Siege (2001); and Ashley et al., (2002).
27.
²⁷ This area is administratively the Gonabis Game Controlled Area.
28.
²⁸ The amount of revenue generated by JUKUMU has been limited (see Ashley et al., 2002) and barely suffices to cover the operational costs of the association. The core problem in this area, as with MBOMIPA, has been that formal gazettement of a WMA that would allow the community to develop income streams from lucrative tourist hunting activities has not been possible. JUKUMU submitted a formal WMA application several times to the Wildlife Division during the pilot phase of 2003–2006, but was rejected due to technicalities each time (see Baldus et al., 2004). By 2006, the lead donor to the entire Selous Conservation Programme, GTZ, had ended its long-running support to CWM in Tanzania due to an increasingly contentious relationship with the Wildlife Division over WMA implementation, leaving the prospects of JUKUMU and other pilot CWM initiatives around the Selous highly uncertain.
29.
²⁹ Tanzania's Local Government Act of 1982 allows village councils to formulate and pass their own by-laws, which are legally binding and enforceable in courts of law. These village by-laws have been widely used during the past ten 10 years to support local natural resource management in both forestry and wildlife sectors.
30.
³⁰ The founder of FZS, Bernhard Grizmek, wrote the internationally acclaimed book Serengeti Shall Not Die, in the late 1950s, and was a staunch proponent of protection of the Serengeti and eviction of resident peoples.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge and thank the people who have contributed to these case studies. We are not able to mention all of them, but we especially thank Dr Martin Walsh, Dr Peter Coppolillo, Maanda Ngoitiko, Daniel Ngoitiko, Makko Sinandei, Edward Loure, Dismas Meitaya, Mike, David and Thad Peterson, and the many residents of the villages in the case study areas who shared their views and experiences. The authors take full responsibility for the views expressed in this chapter, together with any factual errors.

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Maliasili Initiatives, Tanzania
Fred Nelson
Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley, CA
Benjamin Gardner
Tanzania Natural Resource Forum, Arusha, Tanzania
Andrew Williams

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Fred Nelson
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Benjamin Gardner
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Jim Igoe
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Andrew Williams
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Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK
Katherine Homewood & Pippa Chenevix Trench &
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya
Patti Kristjanson

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Nelson, F., Gardner, B., Igoe, J., Williams, A. (2009). Community-Based Conservation and Maasai Livelihoods in Tanzania. In: Homewood, K., Kristjanson, P., Trench, P.C. (eds) Staying Maasai?. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 5. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-87492-0_8

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