Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

Bernhard Grzimek was the public face of wildlife conservation in Germany from the 1950s until hisdeath in 1987. His reputation was on a level to that enjoyed by David Attenborough in Britain. Heled the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) for decades—from its address at No. 1 Bernhard-Grzimek-Allee —and grew it into one of the largest and richest conservation organisations in Europe. Hewrote books and articles, edited reference works and popular magazines, and made and hosted TVand feature length films, most famously “The Serengeti shall not die”, which won an Oscar in 1959.He was instrumental in securing the Serengeti and associated “Protected Areas” in Tanzania wherehe remains a conservation hero today.

Memorial to the “founder of the Serengeti” in Grzimek’s birth city, now in Poland

Bernhard Grzimek had another face. He carefully rewrote his life between the ages of 24 and 36 andit is largely his version that is known and reproduced by the FZS, and more widely. In his revisedversion, he joined the German army—but never the Nazi Party—in the 1930s. In 1945, after theGermans had lost the war, he claimed to have been questioned by the Gestapo because he had givenJews some food.

The real history is different; understanding by just how much it is different needs some backgroundcontext. Grzimek did not in fact join the army in 1933, but the armed wing of the Nazi Party, theSturmabteilung (SA). He did so when he was 24, a mere five months after Hitler came to power. At

the time the SA comprised about a million members, mostly Bavarians from southern Germanywhere the Nazis had their genesis and the most support. When Grzimek joined, the SA wascomprised of only a small minority (some 1.5 per cent) of the population. Grzimek was not fromBavaria like most of his SA comrades, but from German-speaking Silesia in the north (now inPoland).

Signing up for the SA, the precursor of the SS, was a much bigger step than simply joining theregular army, or even the Nazi political party (the NSDAP). The SA was not a political group; itcomprised the Nazi stormtroopers, the “Brownshirt” thugs, who provided physical protection atrallies, beating and often killing those who disagreed with them.

Original Nazi staff file showing Grzimek joining the Brownshirts in 1933

After the war, Grzimek lied about having been a Nazi, falsely claiming that some papers had beenpressed on him which he accepted only to further his work.

It is true that joining the Nazis could be career-enhancing, but it is also true that it remained achoice. For example, Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven refused to join the Nazi party and had toabandon a career in law. He joined the regular army instead, eventually becoming adjutant toHitler’s chief of staff, and was at numerous high-level meetings with the Führer. He was actually inthe bunker with Hitler as the Russians pummelled Berlin in the final days of the war. He was one ofthe very last to leave, with Hitler’s approval. He died aged 93 in Munich, having never joined theNazi party.

No one pressed Grzimek to join the SA, nor did anyone force him to write his articles for thevirulently anti-Semitic, Der Angriff (The Attack), the newspaper run by Nazi chief propagandistJoseph Goebbels. It is inconceivable that Grzimek would not have read the paper he wrote for. Likemany Germans he would also have read Hitler’s 1925 political autobiography, Mein Kampf. TheNazis made no attempt to hide their racist ideology; on the contrary, they were keen to broadcast itas widely as possible. Many Germans disagreed with them but Grzimek clearly knew exactly whatthe Nazis stood for—he was one himself.

His own subsequent narrative about helping Jews was not a rarity. Many, perhaps most, Nazisscrambled to hide their background once their country had been defeated. It is thought Grzimekcould have been helped in doing so by his lover’s father, but many were even assisted by thevictorious allies themselves. The term Persilschein (clean, like Persil detergent) was widelyemployed. It came to mean washed of one’s Nazi past.

The Americans, in particular, quickly moved to retain many Nazis in the defeated country’sorganisations and structures as Germany was carved up into Russian, American, British and Frenchsectors.

Grzimek clearly knew exactly what the Nazis stood for—he was one himself.

One particularly shocking example is top genetics researcher, Otmar von Verschuer, who becameboth president of the German Anthropological Association and head of genetics at a Germanuniversity after the war. He had actually been able to join the American Society of Human Geneticsduring the war. Yet this man had been an architect of the Nazi “race hygiene” laws, oversaw theenforced sterilization of “mixed race” children, and argued for the same “treatment” for manyothers, such as the “feeble-minded”, schizophrenics, depressives, epileptics, the blind, and the deaf.He collaborated with his student, Josef Mengele, the doctor who conducted medical experiments on

children in Auschwitz, partly for genetic research. In spite of his background, and being considered,“one of the most dangerous Nazi activists of the Third Reich”, von Verschuer enjoyed a top-level,post-war career—like Grzimek.

With Europe on its knees after the deadliest war the world has ever seen, the Americans wantedNazis to keep their positions in what became West Germany partly to avoid the state’s total collapsebut also because they now saw former ally Russia as the new threat.

Thousands of Nazis were even given new, secret identities in the USA to assist the CIA in its anti-communist crusade and its spy network. A few, such as SS officer Wernher von Braun, werewelcomed openly. Von Braun had designed the V-2 rocket that killed some 20,000 people for Hitler,about half of them the concentration camp prisoners forced to build it. He now became the architectof NASA’s space programme leading to the 1960s moon landings. His Saturn rocket which carriedthe Apollo landers was essentially a big, modernised version of the V-2.

Apart from their technical expertise and knowledge of relevant languages, people, and geography,the key asset these Nazis brought to the Americans was their virulent anti-communism. It isimportant to note that one of Hitler’s primary objectives had always been to expand Germany’sLebensraum (living space) to the east, taking the land, including Russia, and evicting, killing orenslaving the “Slavic race” living there.

With the war over, the Holocaust could not be ignored, of course, so two dozen top Nazis wereindicted for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials. Just ten were eventually hanged. Compare thisnumber with the almost one thousand concentration camps and sub-camps, and the 42,500institutions which had a hand in the genocide.

Bernhard Grzimek was one of very many Nazis who enjoyed an illustrious post-war career, and theredoes not seem to be much, or even any, indication that his Persilschein washed away his Nazibeliefs.

Grzimek believed that those with a genetic disability should be sterilised. He thought there were toomany people in the world, and regularly signed off letters, in Latin(!), “I believe human progenyshould be reduced”. He didn’t mean his own, of course; those who inveigh against “overpopulation”never do. The Nazis devised ways to reduce the population of non-Nazis (sterilizing or killing them),but also to multiply their own “Aryan” offspring. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, devised theLebensborn programme to boost the number of “racially pure” babies. He wanted all his soldiers tohave at least four children: Grzimek duly fathered his quota.

Thousands of Nazis were even given new, secret identities in the USA to assist the CIAin its anti-communist crusade and its spy network.

Grzimek saw no problem about collaborating with violent dictators other than Hitler, such as IdiAmin or Mobutu Sese Seko. With unashamed arrogance, he pontificated in his Auf den Menschgekommen, “As a conservationist I pass no judgement on . . . the politics of such men. . . . We arefighting for things that are much more important . . . than changing forms of government and worldviews”! Tragically, the same creed resonates in many environmentalist circles today.

The Frankfurt Zoo Society had a 2,000 word biography on Grzimek on its website when I accessed ita few years ago. It made no mention of his Nazi background. The “history” page of the site has nowdisappeared.

One of Grzimek’s sons was killed in 1959 when filming “The Serengeti shall not die”. The small planehe was piloting hit a vulture and crashed. Its zebra stripe camouflage to make it less visible toanimals worked rather too well. The film’s title is noteworthy: what was supposed to threaten theSerengeti was of course the local Africans who had always lived there. Grzimek outlived his son bynearly 30 years (and married his own widowed daughter-in-law). The ashes of both father and sonnow lie at the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania.

Father and son Grzimek and their Oscar-winning, “The Serengeti shall not die”

Bernhard Grzimek remains famous for securing the Serengeti Protected Areas: this meant kickingout the Maasai pastoralists whose herds had grazed these plains for centuries. There’s a disturbingevocation here: the Nazi Lebensraum policy also stole “lesser” peoples’ lands because “masterhumans” had—to echo Grzimek—“much more important” plans.

More Maasai are threatened with eviction nowadays, to make room for safari tourism and tofacilitate the big game hunting parties of United Arab Emirates’ royalty. They are from Ngorongoro,practically within sight of the Grzimeks’ grave. Bernhard would doubtless be delighted.

Grzimek’s legacy lives on: the German government has long supported plans for a Ngorongorowithout Maasai and it heavily funds Frankfurt Zoo Society projects in Tanzania and Peru. It appearsneither to recognise nor to be troubled by the strident historical echoes.

Bernhard Grzimek remains famous for securing the Serengeti Protected Areas: thismeant kicking out the Maasai pastoralists whose herds had grazed these plains forcenturies.

Grzimek is far from the being the only conservationist to downplay or hide his past; it is common.History matters, which is why so many work so hard to rewrite it. And judging from exchanges Ihave had with the head of FZS, the ideology behind many establishment German conservationistsremains little changed today.

However, it is not just in Germany and Tanzania where racism remains embedded in much ofconservation. Of course there are plenty of conservationists who see this and think it wrong;unfortunately they usually keep quiet in order not to damage their careers. Defenders of BernhardGrzimek claim that is why he had to join the Nazis. He never stopped lying, it is time everyone elsedid.

Grzimek’s vision of African conservation – without Africans – remains ultimately destructive of boththe environment and people. It’s time to bring the land back into the control of local peoples andstop those who think they’re “master humans” from damaging our world.

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Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

The global climate crisis is beginning to manifest in extreme weather events like floods, droughtsand temperature rises all over the world. It is therefore important that the world come together atthis time to meet this new challenge. However, the rate of commercialization of “climate finance”,carbon trade, carbon offsets, and other financial instruments are overtaking the pace of actualreduction of emissions, which is what the environment needs.

In tropical Africa, Asia, and other parts of the Global South, indigenous people are now sufferinginjustices like dumping of European toxic wastes, displacement of people for carbon trading,displacement of people to create protected areas, and violent law enforcement to “protect” theenvironment and wildlife. The payment of money for planting of trees does not reduce emissions,which are the source of the crisis. The UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) held in Glasgow inNovember 2021 clearly demonstrated the depth of this problem in the fact that the summit wasreduced to a business meeting for cutting deals rather than leading environmental stewardship.

The conference resulted in a lot of financial calculations and discussions, but failed to make anyconcrete commitments on reduction of emissions or reliance on fossil fuels. The success of thesefinancial machinations has created and publicized a myth that a clean environment is something thatcan be bought and paid for instead of being achieved through action and behavioural change. A

major “elephant in the room” at COP26 was the open display of skewed power relations between themajor polluters (wealthy Western nations) and their “clients”. These clients or “subject” states arerelatively poor nations in the Global South that are responsible for a very small fraction of globalemissions and are also the most biodiverse.

Heads of states from African countries were diverted from policy discussions with their peers intoparallel meetings (euphemistically called “side events”) with NGOs or corporate interests. Thediscussions in these side meetings typically centred on what financial inducements could be offeredto the individuals or governments involved to subvert their existing natural resource regulations forthe benefit of the NGOs or their corporate patrons. This is the point at which colonization andresource looting is happening because intergovernmental meetings are governed by frameworks ofsovereignty, diplomacy, and laws as opposed to the “side events, which are essentially backroomdeals, all greenwashed in the “detergent” that is climate change and global “biodiversity crisis”. Theseriousness of the challenges posed to humankind by environmental pollution and climate changecannot be overstated, but what the whole world is failing to do is recognize and acknowledge humanbehaviour, capitalism and consumption patterns as the primary cause.

Capitalism is currently very close to its apex in human history and has lost sight of any coherentobjectives, other than the mantra of “more”. Very few (if any) global corporations have any visionsdefining their “endgame” or how big they want to become, or why. It has become de rigueur forglobal corporations and organizations to grow far beyond their ability to positively manage their ownimpact on the human society within which they exist. The fallacy of using engineering andtechnology as surrogates for human impact has been ruthlessly exposed by the current globalpandemic and the exponential growth of technology as an end in itself, rather than a solution tospecific needs. The resultant “disconnects” are so wide, that the world is now struggling torecognize cognitive dissonance for what it is.

This bizarre “open ended” approach has led to untrammelled consumption, landing the world in theenvironmental and moral miasma where we currently find ourselves. For example, Amazon, arunaway success that has become probably the world’s most profitable company, pays some of thelowest taxes relative to its earnings, and is staffed by a workforce that barely earns a living wageand must fight for the right to use toilets at work. It now has a fabulously wealthy CEO who donatessome money to combat climate change, while spending part of it on a flying into low orbit on aphallus-shaped rocket simply for self-actualization.

Consumers have also become startlingly slavish to brands, forgetting even that basic tenet of choice.Apple Inc. is a manufacturer of high quality (and very highly priced) technological devices, whichhave won it customers all over the world. However, it is difficult for anyone who hasn’t visited theUnited States to fathom the bizarre hold the company has on its clients. Stories abound in the mediaof (normal, sane, mature) people camping for a few days on the streets to buy an expensive newmodel of a mobile phone on the day of its release. None of them can explain why they cannot buy itthe following day. A friend recently shared a harrowing tale of how she bought an Apple computerand spent two hours on the phone talking to machines before she finally got a human being toaddress her user issues after spending thousands of dollars purchasing the machine. This is aprofessional person who is never wasteful or profligate or tolerant of nonsense in any of her habits.These are just two of countless examples, and the upshot of this malaise is that global corporations,organizations and even governments have moved away from managing policies, actions and humanoutcomes into the management of perceptions.

The other inescapable effect has been the untold sums of money accrued in profit. These twinthreats have brought capitalists to the table of sovereign heads of states, where they pose thegreatest danger to humankind. Leaders around the world are now discussing policies with the heads

of corporations that have been unable to achieve internal self-control. This is perfectly illustrated inthe co-called mitigation measures being put in place to combat climate change, where the onlytangible movement is the normalization of propaganda, greenwashing, and human rights violationsand other absurdities that are perpetrated in the name of combating climate change. It is a classiccase of elite capture, more astounding because it is happening on a global scale.

One of the more egregious examples of this is the much-touted 30×30 campaign, which recommendsthat 30 per cent of all land around the world be set aside as protected areas by the year 2030. Thiswas initially proposed by conservation organizations, pushed by their corporate donors and,crucially, supported by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). The support of a UN body is theeasiest path to obtaining the compliance of governments around the world by creating “goals” andmaking the action look like an achievement.

Leaders around the world are now discussing policies with the heads of corporationsthat have been unable to achieve internal self-control.

The UNEP recommendation serves conservation interests well, because despite its history of ethicaland practical failures, the veneer of “greater good” that hangs over the UN discourages even themost basic scrutiny. In this particular case, none of the many documents written in favour of thisrecommendation says whether the 30 per cent is a global calculation, or whether every country willhave to set aside 30 per cent of its own land. This apparent lacuna is where the prejudice isconcealed, because it is common knowledge that the world’s biodiversity hotspots are in the tropics(primarily inhabited by non-Caucasian people). Besides, no significant biodiversity gains are likely toaccrue from creating new protected areas in Europe and much of the Global North. Besides, thehigh human population density and regard for human rights in the Global North would present achallenge as regards the violence and human rights violations required to create that many newprotected areas. This demonstrates that the creation of protected areas is a deeply flawed conceptand a primitive, obsolete conservation tool.

Philosophically, protected areas are by definition lands that are taken — or “protected” — from theirowners, the indigenous people. They are based on the globally popular myth of ideal nature existingwithin a matrix of “pristine wilderness” devoid of human presence. This isn’t remarkable, knowingthat the concept — first developed in United States — was the brainchild of Theodore Roosevelt andJohn Muir. Neither of these men had any ecological knowledge and their assertions are based on thepillars of white supremacy and the need for self-actualization. This “poisoned root” of conservation isthe reason why in the Global South, the practice still requires continuous unmitigated violence; itremains a continuous slow-burning war against indigenous people. Together and separately, Muirand Roosevelt both regularly expressed their disdain for Native American societies, referring tothem as “dirty” and “uncivilized”, respectively, in their writings.

It is also crucial to understand that this model was developed in a settler colony by racist immigrantswithout any reference to the presence, let alone the needs of indigenous populations. In recentyears, there have been numerous attempts by conservation interests to make protected areas“inclusive” of local people, more “community focused” and to “share revenues” without much regardfor their impact or their overall effect. This is because none of the practitioners has dealt with theprinciple issues of why protected areas were exclusive, visitor-focused (as opposed to community-focused) and why none of the revenue was being shared with the communities in the first place.

The emphasis on tourism is an avatar of the dominance of external influences over the needs andaspirations of locals in conservation policy and practice. The influences and involvement of external

parties cannot be driven by livelihood dependencies on in situ resources, so they are also dependenton external drivers, namely capitalism and neoliberalism. Conservation organizations have realizedthis and to satisfy their ever-increasing needs for funding they have deliberately moved to engageclosely with the corporations and capitalists who bear the greatest responsibility for the currentenvironmental crisis through their resource use patterns.

It is also crucial to understand that this model was developed in a settler colony by racistimmigrants without any reference to the presence, let alone the needs of indigenouspopulations.

The corporations in turn have their eye on marketing and have realized that any association withenvironmental responsibility, however tenuous, is commercially beneficial. This has given rise towhat is generally known as “greenwashing” of products and services, a process that has grown froma marketing gimmick into a global battery of financial instruments that include carbon credits,nature bonds, grants, easements, and a myriad other ways in which real or perceived financialmuscle can be used to acquire ownership or control of natural resources. The power of thepropaganda machine is such that all the global financial structures have failed to ask how carbontrading differs from money-laundering and other white-collar crime.

The reality we live with today is that this casual lip service to environmental concerns has evolvedinto full-blown corporate partnerships between the self-styled “saviours” of the environment andthose who over-exploit its resources. This has created an all-powerful monster whose preferredvictims are the nations and peoples who still have and live within relatively intact naturalenvironments and biodiversity. Ironically, the environmental stewardship shown by nations andvarious indigenous societies in the Global South has now made their homelands and resourcestargets for capitalist pirates, fronted by “conservation” organizations, backed by UNEP, andfacilitated by governments.

The organizations pushing this injustice need to temper their self-absorption with some caution,because we are currently living in the information age, and it is only a matter of time beforepreviously “ignorant” rural societies realize that wildlife and forests are the “enemy” causing themto lose their rights and start acting accordingly. The prevalence of armed personnel, aircraft, fences,drones and surveillance equipment in conservation are an indication that practitioners are aware atsome level that what they are doing is socially unsustainable and needs to be backed by violence.However, this is a provision of false assurance, because societies that have nowhere else to gocannot be moved. Barring a change of policy, there will necessarily be bloodshed, pitting“conservationists” against people who have nothing left to lose. Already, the number of extrajudicialkillings in Eastern, Southern and Central Africa under the guise of conservation is untenable, soattempts to implement the 30 x30 proposal and effectively double the amount of land underprotected areas would further escalate this slow-burning violence.

The power of the propaganda machine is such that all the global financial structureshave failed to ask how carbon trading differs from money-laundering and other white-collar crime.

The growth in the size and budgets of conservation NGOs gives them the ability to step beyond theroles that are generally expected of civil society organizations. In Kenya and in many parts of Africa,these organizations are now even involved in armed law enforcement, hitherto the preserve of thestate. They also move to influence formal policy decisions by funding the necessary processes like

stakeholder meetings. In Kenya, The Nature Conservancy, International Fund for Animal Welfareand World Wildlife Fund routinely fund policy discussion meetings and Kenyan delegations tointernational conferences. The government pretends not to know that this is akin to brewers anddistillers funding liquor licensing board meetings. In a nutshell, this is capitalism and investmentbeing presented as conservation and philanthropy. This example demonstrates a key effect of theincreased conservation funding levels in that some of the larger organizations have the financialmuscle to effectively achieve state capture.

Climate change is, and will continue to be an existential threat to our world, but the human greedand racism that feeds on it moves much faster than the much-touted rise in global temperatures andsea levels. The arts and humanities must therefore step up and necessarily participate in the questfor environmental justice, because the prostitution otherwise known as donor-funded “science”cannot be expected to point out the ills of their capitalist benefactors.

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Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

In the past few weeks, the Tanzanian government has renewed its attempt to demarcate land inthe Loliondo ward, Ngorongoro District in the north of the country as a wildlife sanctuary, effectivelybanning the Maasai from their indigenous land. As semi-nomadic pastoralists, the Maasai depend oncattle herding and some crop cultivation for the livelihoods. Access to pastures and to water for theircattle is vital.

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. But theMaasai have long lived with the threat of displacement to make way for tourism and forconservancies. The government has accused the Maasai of getting in the way of animal migrationroutes and of breeding grounds and claims that in the interests of conservation and ecology, wildlifecorridors must be created over Maasai land. The Maasai have organised to resist these moves,accusing the government of using wildlife conservation as a pretext for their eviction.

However, in keeping with Tanzania’s land liberalisation and promotion of foreign investment sincethe late 1990s, it is widely reported that the cause of this renewed interest in Ngorongoro is thegovernment’s plans to grant exclusive hunting rights in an area of 579 square miles to foreigninvestors. For the Maasai, this is an intensification of a long-term trend that dates fromindependence. Since then, the Maasai have already lost over seventy per cent of their land to“conservation”.

In 1992, an investor from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was granted a license to trophy hunt inthe area. In 2018, a report detailed the devastating impact of private companies in the area: acompany called the Ortello Business Corporation had evicted the Maasai in order to run a huntingblock for the private use of the UAE royal family and their guests, and continued to operate in thearea after its licence had been cancelled by the Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources.

Governed by an overweening Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA), the Maasai havelittle scope for participation in the running of the territory or decision making about its future. TheNCAA is accused of acting with secrecy. It is providing little information about the implementation ofa new land use and resettlement plan in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area that will lead to thedisplacement of 80,000 residents, and the demolition of their homes, schools, and medical facilities.

In an echo of the struggles over land classification and definition that are seen elsewhere in East

Africa when communities seek to defend their land, the residents of Loliondo argue that the disputedland is village land under the Village Land Act 1999. This legislation sought to devolve authority overdecision making on matters such as land administration, land management and dispute resolution tothe community level. The Maasai are demanding that their ancestral land be recognised aslegitimate village land and not designated as a conservation area.

‘Conservation’

In their powerful 2017 book, The Big Conservation Lie, John Mbaria and Mordecai Ogada set out todebunk dominant conservation narratives and explore the “severe exploitation of the samewilderness [that] conservationists have constantly claimed they are out to preserve”. The renewedtransnational land grab currently underway in Ngorongoro confirms this analysis.

In 2018, an Oakland Institute report documented how conservation laws were being used todispossess the Maasai. Before that, a report by Wilbert Kapinga and Issa Shivji (the latter had servedas the chairperson of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Land Matters) examined the legalpowers and administrative practices of the NCA Authority. They set out the limitations placed on theMaasai by the NCAA without prior consultation and participation of Maasai residents in the relevantdecision-making processes. They recommended that in the NCAA’s management of the ConservationArea, proper representation and participation of the Maasai and other residents was vital so thatthey might decide how best to conserve and develop this globally important place.

Emutai

The treatment of the Ngorongoro Maasai displays certain forms and practices that are recognisablycolonial, imposing on them conditions of life that tend towards their eradication or emutai. In Maa –the language spoken by the Maasai people – the word emutai means destruction or eradication andwas first used to describe the epidemics of the nineteenth century when contagious bovinepleuropneumonia, rinderpest, and smallpox wiped out cattle and caused widespread sickness. It is aword with continuing resonance and increasing urgency. In 2018, the Oakland Institute warned that“without access to grazing lands and watering holes – without the ability to grow food for theircommunities, the Maasai are at risk of a new period of emutai.”

Of what does present day emutai consist? Because of the re-zoning of their land by which they arebanned from grazing cattle and cultivating crops, sickness and hunger has become common. Forcedonto ever smaller parcels of land in order to make way for tourism, the Maasai capacity for socialreproduction is severely circumscribed: the daily tasks of grazing cattle and growing food on smallfamily plots has been made illegal. The result is widespread starvation and disease, most especiallyamongst children.

The violent enclosure of their land prevents the Maasai from maintaining life both on a daily basisand intergenerationally. This prevention of Maasai social reproduction is a real threat. Severed fromland as a productive resource and as their spiritual heritage, the Maasai are bearing the brunt of thegovernment’s efforts to romance the rich and the famous in Ngorongoro. In the words of the Maasaileader, Julius Petei Olekitaika, “Imagine your home being burned in front of you to clear your landfor foreigners to hunt. Imagine not being able to graze our cows because the government wants toprotect a foreign investor whose only interest is hunting the wildlife.”

Wider implications

The struggle of the Ngorongoro Maasai is of vital importance to understanding how “fortressconservation” operates and how it deprecates indigenous peoples’ stewardship of the land. This is

critical in the face of the climate crisis. Neo-colonial conservation models are characterised by asecurity-conservation nexus (intimidation and the use of militias is common) and by links with fossilfuel multinationals.

In Tanzania, the national government and private corporations are colluding. Far from conservation,the aim is the deliberate destruction of the Maasai way of life, “preserving” only those aspects thatserve the purposes of tourism through a peoples’ exoticisation, a racist logic of settler colonialism.As the Oakland Institute recognises, this will not just force them off their land but “force them out ofexistence”.

The violent enclosure of their land prevents the Maasai from maintaining life both on adaily basis and intergenerationally.

Wilbert Kapinga and Issa Shivji argued in their report that the struggle of the Ngorongoro Maasaishould not be presented as a minority struggle but should prompt the creation of alliances betweenall citizens threatened with dispossession and landlessness by the newly introduced land legislation(the Land Act 1999). Analysing the political implications of treating Maasai rights as “minority” or“indigenous” as many international advocacy groups have sought to do, they challenged the use ofthis terminology, arguing that it would have important impacts on Tanzanian civil society.

The authors made a case that has been largely overlooked. By setting the Maasai apart from themainstream, they would be divided from the rest of civil society. Whilst they had no doubt sufferedparticular forms of prejudice and had had a particular historical relationship with the state, theauthors argued, their situation in terms of their enjoyment of their human rights was notfundamentally different from “the rest of Tanzanian non-elite society”. The way forward thereforewas for the Maasai to build alliances with the rest of civil society campaigning against the new landlaw because their concerns “fit in neatly with the current struggle in the country” against landliberalisation.

This important argument encourages us to study the common experience of evictions in urban andrural contexts, recognising their particularities and their histories, whilst seeking alliances beyondthe immediate context of each eviction or threatened displacement. It cannot be doubted that theMaasai are subjected to egregious marginalisation and discrimination by the state that are backedup by orchestrated hate campaigns. The task is to articulate their struggles with those of othersliving with similar threats of dispossession. For, as Salar Mohandesi and Emma Teitalman remind usin their essay Without Reserves, we must recognise “varieties of enclosure”: urban dwellers are notimmune to enclosure movements that deprive them of their livelihoods.

There have been calls for a commission of inquiry into Ngorongoro. In response, I suggest anelaboration of Wilbert Kapinga and Issa Shivji’s argument above: now is the time for socialmovements and civil society groups working against evictions – whether urban or rural – to lend theMaasai their support. We must make connections between the dispossession of the Maasai and thewider effects of the liberalisation of land laws and intensified land grabbing in Tanzania and in EastAfrica more generally.

–

This article was published in the Review of African political Economy (ROAPE).

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Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

Scientific evidence strongly affirms that arid and semi-arid ecosystems are key frontiers for shiftingresource rights and increased exposure to global challenges such as climatic risks. A large share ofKenya’s land is classified as ASALs (Arid and Semi-Arid Lands) with different forms of ecosystemsincluding ranches, community-based conservancies and game reserves, among others, all of whichcontribute to community livelihoods and resilience as well as to the national economy. As the worldgrapples with the underwhelming resolutions of COP26, there is increasing need to pay attention toclimate justice as a fundamental basis for achieving the Paris targets and sustainable developmentgoals.

This will require that keen attention be paid to the shifting resource rights of ASAL communities. Ineffect, resource management decisions have often been accompanied by strong claims that thesecommunities have been involved in the decision making process, that consent has been obtained andthat they are happy with the decisions taken.

However, what has not been revealed is the manner in which consultations and engagements withthese communities have been used to shift rights from communities to other powers. Communityengagement is a fundamental platform through which community voices are included in thedecision-making process, and therefore, understanding how these engagements are being used toshift resource rights is critical to strengthening the engagement capacities of the affectedcommunities.

This blog provides a reflection from fieldwork undertaken in Samburu County, Kenya, that focusedon how land rights intersect with adaptation strategies. The fieldwork was carried out under theRights and Resilience Project funded by Danida. The project aims to investigate resilience and landrights in the context of pastoral adaptation in Kenya. More specifically, the project looks at howadaptation strategies interact with land needs. The implementation of the project is led byresearchers from the University of Copenhagen, The Institute for Development Studies(IDS), University of Nairobi, University of Roskilde, the Danish Institute for InternationalStudies (DIIS), and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)

How are community-based conservancies are established?

The concept of Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) underpins theestablishment of community-based conservancies (CBC), mainly by communities with an interest inparticular outcomes. Conceptually, pastoralist communities, including those living in the ASALs, areexpected to drive the establishment of conservancies as a means of preserving resources andsupporting their livelihoods both during normal seasons and in times of shocks. However, theprocess is not a purely community undertaking, but is often catalysed by actors posing as “goodSamaritans” who either bring experience, resources, or information to support the process. Forinstance, the Northern Rangeland Trust (NRT), a Kenyan conservation NGO, has led and financedthe establishment of some 23 CBCs covering about 1,687,985 hectares in the Isiolo-Samburu-Laikipia landscape since 2004, involving an estimated 400,000 community members.

A study of the Sera Conservancy situated within the Losesia and Sereolipi Group Ranches inSamburu shows how communities lose their rights to the CBC through a relatively obscure andpredatory engagement process. The conservancy was established in 2001 and covers an area of339,540 ha.

According to community members, the decision to establish the conservancy was driven by thechanging ecological conditions (e.g., shifting weather patterns), increasing population and resourcescarcity. This meant that the community had to rethink and embrace new ways of managing theirresources, inspired by the awareness campaigns carried out by established conservation NGOs suchas the NRT. In establishing the conservancy, parts of the group ranches were delineated as wildlifecorridors while specific areas were designated for livestock usage.

Communities lose their rights to the CBC through a relatively obscure and predatoryengagement process.

The fundamental idea behind the creation of the conservancy was to preserve its ecological andresilience value and promote the resilience of both the conservancy and the community by

regulating the availability of feed during the different seasons. This approach to building resilienceis widely recognised in international policy on climate change as part of ecosystem-based adaptation(EbA). EbA involves a wide range of ecosystem management practices to increase resilience andreduce the vulnerability of people and the environment to climate change.

Transitions in engagements: from decision makers to mere public participants

The establishment of CBCs is anchored in the community’s support for conservation that involvesconservationists providing training and creating awareness among selected community members –mainly the leaders of the various community ranches. The need to establish CBCs is then mooted asan option for ensuring a more effective management of the resources of pastoralist communitiesespecially given the changing climate and the increasing population. This often culminates in someform of negotiation between the community leaders and a promoter (e.g. the NRT). Thesenegotiations begin with initial meetings with community elders and representatives of group rancheswhere the ideas around CBCs are discussed and the associated benefits highlighted. Communityleaders then relay the information to the wider members of the group ranches who are called toattend meetings with selected political leaders such as members of the county assembly and wherethey are informed about the need to conserve the resources available for pastoralism.

According to members of the Losesia Group Ranch, discussions in community meetings are oftenbased on the understanding that the CBC idea is driven by the community. Yet the reality is that theprocess is driven by conversations held elsewhere outside the community. The early-stageexperiences in initiating the Sera CBC raise key questions around whether the CBC concept asframed in literature and policy is really community-led or are just a model approved by thecommunity. Whatever the case, this represents the first juncture at which rights begin to shift withinthe engagement space. In this case, the community’s right to decide the best model of conservationfor its resources is weakened as the process is driven by conversations initiated outside thecommunity. Indeed, it has been argued elsewhere that the creation of CBCs is motivated by the richwildlife resources on the community lands rather than by the interests of the community. Yet at theCBC initiation stage community rights still remain relatively high because they still have the powerto make and question decisions since no deals have been struck at this point.

Figure 1: Illustration of the critical junctures along the community engagement process where rightsshift from the communities to other powerful actors

Once a community agrees to the establishment of a CBC, it develops the rules and regulations thatwill govern the organisational engagement with the CBC. These rules include delineating specificareas for wildlife and others for livestock. Community leaders, in conjunction with the conservationNGO, ensure that the areas demarcated for wildlife become relatively restricted to communityaccess. At the same time, the movement of livestock in certain parts of the conservancy issystematised to ensure that pasture is managed and preserved for use by all during the differentseasons. At this point, community rights still remain relatively strong given that most decisions,including the CBC’s rules and regulations are made by the community. However, narratives aroundwildlife conservation begin to strongly emerge as part of the CBC discourse within the community.

The creation of CBCs is motivated by the rich wildlife resources on the community landsrather than by the interests of the community.

Community members have said that while they appreciate the value of wildlife conservation as partof their culture, they do not have a clear understanding of what rights they have over the conservedwildlife. They are merely informed by their leaders about its potential value in terms of tourism andrevenue generation to support various community projects. On the other hand, they are clear aboutthe value that their livestock is able to attract even though livestock is controlled and pushed to theperiphery by the drive to delineate wildlife areas.

Therefore, while the communities still feel that they have rights to the CBCs and the associatedbenefits, whether from wildlife or livestock, their rights are increasingly weakened as they commit

to set aside a section of their land for wildlife conservation while they have little control over theexpected activities and benefits. Moreover, it is the community itself that will have placedrestrictions on access to the designated wildlife areas. This is a clear illustration of how communityengagements serve to open up avenues for loss of resources, especially when communities becomeeager to align to changing conservation models or when they mainly focus on beneficialopportunities without interrogating the inherent consequences.

However, it must be noted that most community members do not have the capacity to interrogatesuch issues. In cultures that reproduce elites and confer powers differently to different categories ofsocial groups, the collective voice of the community to interrogate emerging issues is relativelyweak, and there is a general reluctance to do so because such questioning is seen as going againstone’s own culture.

The areas set aside for conservancies are in truth the major frontiers for the further erosion ofcommunity rights as new interventions begin to leverage the economic value of wildlife. Severalstudies have raised concerns about this, equating the designation of wildlife areas to thecommodification of wildlife for economic gain. To date, about ten lodges and hotels have beenestablished within CBCs, occupying a significant share of the areas set aside for wildlifeconservation. These investment deals are negotiated with community members who all along believethat they are in control of the CBC without realising that they are systematically losing control inthis sphere of engagement. Negotiations regarding investments in CBCs are mediated and facilitatedby particular conservation NGOs, such as the NRT in the case of Samburu, a conservation NGOwhich already has very strong connections with donors and investors at the international anddomestic levels, as well as with policy and business actors. It is at this juncture, therefore, thatpowerful new actors are introduced into the community engagement space. This means thatdecisions at this point are no longer under the remit of the community but rather under a widercadre of interests with different powers.

Several studies have raised concerns about this, equating the designation of wildlifeareas to the commodification of wildlife for economic gain.

According to the Losesia community, representatives of the ranches negotiate with the investorsbased on their constitution, which allows community members to lease out parts of theconservancies. Various economic advantages are touted during these negotiations, resulting in theperception that the community has given its consent through the local elites who are culturallyperceived as representing the interests of the community but who in reality have become self-seeking gatekeepers to community land. In presenting the potential economic benefits, however, thefinancial details are often concealed from the relatively uninformed community members and it isoften simply agreed that a certain percentage of the revenues collected will be ploughed back tosupport conservation. Community members are also promised jobs and other benefits.

While the constitution encourages interventions that promote the conservation agenda, it isrelatively vague on issues of rights and benefit sharing and management. Moreover, there are noclear mechanisms to ensure that investors adhere to the conservation principles enshrined in theCBC agenda. This provides a huge window of opportunity for investors to pursue different agendasand further infringe on the rights of the community. Consequently, community members feel that theinvestments made within the conservancies have actually shifted focus from conservation to pureprofit generation to the exclusion of the community members themselves. Some communitymembers highlighted that investors have often expanded boundaries beyond the agreed areas, haveintroduced new recreational activities—including illegal game hunting—that are detrimental to the

ecology of the conservancies, and in most cases have become less transparent about the revenuesthey generate. Furthermore, new physical boundaries are established, creating a permanent senseof exclusion from the conservancies.

Yet this new trajectory, while clearly infringing community rights, is gaining support from theauthorities, particularly at the level of the county government where the interest centres on revenuecollection. The county government is expected to provide an enabling environment for investorswhile at the same time protecting the rights of the community but investors’ interests systematicallytake precedence over community rights. Moreover, concerns have been raised that some countygovernments are currently developing county conservancy laws aimed at completely shifting themanagement of conservancies from communities to the counties. Some community members havealso raised concerns that conservation NGOs and investors who initially consulted them closely nolonger engage them directly but go through the county government. The common interest aroundrevenues and profits has therefore resulted in a powerful coalition between the investors, the countygovernment, and the NRT, that has taken over the management of the conservancies to the near-complete exclusion of the communities.

New physical boundaries are established, creating a permanent sense of exclusion fromthe conservancies.

This effectively means that communities are no longer in direct control of the conservancies as wasoriginally envisaged. The community engagement process is no longer about the communitydecision-making process; it has now become merely a public participation exercise. Communitymembers are invited to meetings pertaining to the conservancies as public participants rather thanas interested parties with a stake in decision-making. A community member observed that while theCBC retains their name, it is no longer theirs.

What role does policy play in the shifting community rights?

At the national level, Kenya has developed a range of developmental policies targeting themanagement of these resources. Additionally, Kenya’s climate change policies such as the NationalClimate Action Plan, the updated Nationally Determined Contribution, and the Adaptation ActionPlan, focus on adaptation and building resilience. These policies acknowledge the role ofconservancies in improving livelihoods and the broader economic development, but are morefocused on using resources for development rather than for enhancing livelihoods and the resilienceof communities. Therefore, national development and resource management policies do not payattention to the fundamental resource rights necessary to protect local communities from powerfulactors. The policies also lack room for strengthening local governance. While the Community LandAct exists to strengthen the role of communities in managing their resources, this law seems to beincreasingly superseded by other national and county-level legislations.

The value of traditional and communal resources and rights is less articulated in contemporaryconservation policies. This has exposed resilience-building resources such as communityconservancies to powerful economic interests that tear apart the communities’ resilience-buildingsocial structures, creating further inequalities and social vulnerabilities.

Some county governments are currently developing conservancy laws aimed atcompletely shifting the management of conservancies from communities to the counties.

At the county level, county governments are expected to provide an enabling policy environment forthe conservation interventions, and to protect the rights of the communities within theconservancies. However, the case of Sera CBC shows that county governments are motivated by thedevelopmental goals tied to revenue collection rather than by community rights. For instance, theSamburu County Integrated Development Plan acknowledges that CBCs are resources that can beharnessed for increased revenue collection and county development. This also aligns with thenarrative at the national level where conservancies are viewed through the lens of tourist attraction,foreign exchange, and GDP enhancement. As already highlighted above, some counties aredeveloping county conservation laws aimed at putting conservancies under the direct control ofcounty authorities, which is seen as a threat to the rights of the communities concerned.

What are the implications for resilience?

The loss of these rights is leading to an accumulation of social injustice such as gender imbalances.Community governance is also weakened by the community’s exclusion from the decision-makingprocess, leading to the loss of resilience-building resources in pastoralist communities. The loss ofrights is exacerbated by the state-centric approach to resilience planning, an approach that has beenassociated with capitalistic ambitions to control resources and the subsequent resource grabs fromvulnerable communities, a phenomenon that has created new cycles of climate risk accumulation.Consequently, the proposed development and resilience-building options are yet to encompass thelived realities of the communities that they seek to help.

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Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

With its vast expanses and diversity of wildlife, Kenya – Africa’s original safari destination – attractsover two million foreign visitors annually. The development of wildlife tourism and conservation, amajor economic resource for the country, has however been at the cost of local communities whohave been fenced off from their ancestral lands. Indigenous communities have been evicted fromtheir territories and excluded from the tourist dollars that flow into high-end lodges and safaricompanies.

Protected areas with wildlife are patrolled and guarded by anti-poaching rangers and are accessibleonly to tourists who can afford to stay in the luxury safari lodges and resorts. This model of “fortressconservation” – one that militarizes and privatizes the commons – has come under severe criticismfor its exclusionary practices and for being less effective than the models where local communitieslead and manage conservation activities.

One such controversial model of conservation in Kenya is the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT). Setup in 2004, the NRT’s stated goal is “changing the game” on conservation by supportingcommunities to govern their lands through the establishment of community conservancies.

Created by Ian Craig, whose family was part of the elite white minority during British colonialism,the NRT’s origins date back to the 1980s when his family-owned 62,000-acre cattle ranch wastransformed into the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. Since its founding, the NRT has set up 39conservancies on 42,000 square kilometres (10,378,426 acres) of land in northern and coastal Kenya– nearly 8 per cent of the country’s total land area.

The communities that live on these lands are predominantly pastoralists who raise livestock for theirlivelihoods and have faced decades of marginalization by successive Kenyan governments. The NRTclaims that its goal is to “transform people’s lives, secure peace and conserve natural resources.”

However, where the NRT is active, local communities allege that the organization has dispossessedthem of their lands and deployed armed security units that have been responsible for serious humanrights abuses. Whereas the NRT employs around 870 uniformed scouts, the organization’s anti-poaching mobile units, called ‘9’ teams, face allegations of extrajudicial killings and disappearances,among other abuses. These rangers are equipped with military weapons and receive paramilitarytraining from the Kenyan Wildlife Service Law Enforcement Academy and from 51 Degrees, a

private security company run by Ian Craig’s son, Batian Craig, as well as from other private securityfirms. Whereas the mandate of NRT’s rangers is supposed to be anti-poaching, they are routinelyinvolved in policing matters that go beyond that remit.

Locals allege that the NRT compels communities to set aside their best lands for theexclusive use of wildlife.

Locals have alleged the NRT’s direct involvement in conflicts between different ethnic groups,related to territorial issues and/or cattle raids. Multiple sources within the impacted communities,including members of councils of community elders, informed the Oakland Institute that as many as76 people were killed in the Biliqo Bulesa Conservancy during inter-ethnic clashes, allegedly withthe involvement of the NRT. Interviews conducted by the Institute established that 11 people havebeen killed in circumstances involving the conservation body. Dozens more appear to have beenkilled by the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) and other government agencies, which have beenaccused of abducting, disappearing, and torturing people in the name of conservation.

Over the years, conflicts over land and resources in Kenya have been exacerbated by theestablishment of large ranches and conservation areas. For instance, 40 per cent of LaikipiaCounty’s land is occupied by large ranches, controlled by just 48 individuals – most of them whitelandowners who own tens of thousands of acres for ranching or wildlife conservancies, which attracttourism business as well as conservation funding from international organizations.

Similarly, several game reserves and conservancies occupy over a million acres of land in the nearbyIsiolo County. Land pressure was especially evident in 2017 when clashes broke out betweenprivate, mostly white ranchers, and Samburu and Pokot herders over pasture during a particularlydry spell.

But as demonstrated in the Oakland Institute’s report Stealth Game, the events of 2017 highlighteda situation that has been rampant for many years. Local communities report paying a high price forthe NRT’s privatized, neo-colonial conservation model in Kenya. The loss of grazing land forpastoralists is a major challenge caused by the creation of community conservancies. Locals allegethat the NRT compels communities to set aside their best lands for the exclusive use of wildlife inthe name of community conservancies, and to subsequently lease it to set up tourist facilities.

Although terms like “community-driven”, “participatory”, and “local empowerment” are extensivelyused by the NRT and its partners, the conservancies have been allegedly set up by outside partiesrather than the pastoralists themselves, who have a very limited role in negotiating the terms ofthese partnerships. According to several testimonies, leverage over communities occurs throughcorruption and co-optation of local leaders and personalities as well as the local administration.

A number of interviewees allege intimidation, including arrests and interrogation of local communitymembers and leaders, as tactics routinely used by the NRT security personnel. Furthermore, theNRT is involved not just in conservation but also in security, management of pastureland, andlivestock marketing, which according to the local communities, gives it a level of control over theregion that surpasses even that of the Kenyan government. The NRT claims that these activitiessupport communities, development projects, and help build sustainable economies, but its role iscriticized by local communities and leaders.

In recent years, hundreds of locals have held protests and signed petitions against the presence ofthe NRT. The Turkana County Government expelled the NRT from Turkana in 2016; Isiolo’s BoranaCouncil of Elders (BCE) and communities in Isiolo County and in Chari Ward in the Biliqo Bulesa

Conservancy continue to challenge the NRT. In January 2021, the community of Gafarsa protestedthe NRT’s expansion into the Gafarsa rangelands of Garbatulla sub-county. And in April 2021, theSamburu Council of Elders Association, a registered institution representing the SamburuCommunity in four counties (Isiolo, Laikipia, Marsabit and Samburu), wrote to international NGOsand donors asking them to cease further funding and to audit the NRT’s donor-funded programmes.

A number of interviewees allege intimidation, including arrests and interrogation of localcommunity members and leaders, as tactics routinely used by the NRT securitypersonnel.

At the time of the writing of the report, the Oakland Institute reported that protests against the NRTwere growing across the region. The organization works closely with the KWS, a state corporationunder the Ministry of Wildlife and Tourism whose mandate is to conserve and manage wildlife inKenya. In July 2018, Tourism and Wildlife Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala, appointed Ian Craig andJochen Zeitz to the KWS Board of Trustees. The inclusion of Zeitz and Craig, who actively lobby forthe privatization of wildlife reserves, has been met with consternation by local environmentalists. Inthe case of the NRT, the relationship is mutually beneficial – several high-ranking members of theKWS have served on the NRT’s Board of Trustees.

Both the NRT and the KWS receive substantial funding from donors such as USAID, the EuropeanUnion, and other Western agencies, and champion corporate partnerships in conservation. The KWSand the NRT also partner with some of the largest environmental NGOs, including The NatureConservancy (TNC), whose corporate associates have included major polluters and firms known fortheir negative human rights and environmental records, such as Shell, Ford, BP, and Monsantoamong others. In turn, TNC’s Regional Managing Director for Africa, Matt Brown, enjoys a seat atthe table of the NRT’s Board of Directors.

Stealth Game also reveals how the NRT has allegedly participated in the exploitation of fossil fuels inKenya. In 2015, the NRT formed a five-year, US$12 million agreement with two oil companies activein the country – British Tullow Oil and Canadian Africa Oil Corp – to establish and operate sixcommunity conservancies in Turkana and West Pokot Counties.

The NRT’s stated goal was to “help communities to understand and benefit” from the“commercialisation of oil resources”. Local communities allege that it put a positive spin on theactivities of these companies to mask concerns and outstanding questions over their environmentaland human rights records.

The NRT, in collaboration with big environmental organizations, epitomizes a Western-led approachto conservation that creates a profitable business but marginalizes local communities who have livedon these lands for centuries.

Despite its claims to the contrary, the NRT is yet another example of how fortress conservation,under the guise of “community-based conservation”, is dispossessing the very pastoralistcommunities it claims to be helping – destroying their traditional grazing patterns, their autonomy,and their lives.

The Constitution of Kenyan 2010 and the 2016 Community Land Act recognize community land as acategory of land holding and pastoralism as a legitimate livelihood system. The Act enablescommunities to legally register, own, and manage their communal lands. For the first three years,however, not a single community in Kenya was able to apply to have their land rights legallyrecognized. On 24 July 2019, over 50 representatives from 11 communities in Isiolo, Kajiado,

Laikipia, Tana River, and Turkana counties were the first to attempt to register their land with thegovernment on the basis of the Community Land Act. The communities were promised by theMinistry of Land that their applications would be processed within four months. In late 2020, theMinistry of Lands registered the land titles of II Ngwesi and Musul communities in Laikipia.

The others are still waiting to have their land registered. In October 2020, the Lands CabinetSecretary was reported saying that only 12 counties have submitted inventories of their respectiveunregistered community lands in readiness for the registration process as enshrined in the law.

Community members interviewed by the Oakland Institute in the course of its research repeatedlyasked for justice after years of being ignored by the Kenyan government and by the police whenreporting human rights abuses and even killings of family members. The findings reported in StealthGame require an independent investigation into the land-related grievances around all of the NRT’scommunity conservancies, the allegations of involvement of the NRT’s rapid response units in inter-ethnic conflict, as well as the alleged abuses and extrajudicial killings.

Pastoralists have been the custodians of wildlife for centuries – long before any NGO or conservationprofessionals came along. While this report focuses on the plight of the Indigenous communities inNorthern Kenya, it is a reality that is all too familiar to indigenous communities the world over. Infar too many places, national governments, private corporations, and large conservation groupscollude in the name of conservation, not just to force Indigenous groups off their land, but to forcethem out of existence altogether.

Pastoralists have been the custodians of wildlife for centuries – long before any NGO orconservation professionals came along.

The latest threat comes from the so-called “30×30 initiative”, a plan under the UN’s Convention onBiological Diversity that calls for 30 per cent of the planet to be placed in protected areas – or forother effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) – by 2030.

The Oakland Institute’s report, Stealth Game, makes it clear that fortress conservation must bereplaced by Indigenous-led conservation efforts in order to preserve the remaining biodiversity ofthe planet while respecting the interests, rights, and dignity of the local communities.

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Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

The Sekenani River underwent a mammoth cleanup in May 2020, undertaken by over 100 womenliving in the Nashulai Conservancy area. Ten of the 18 kilometres of fresh water were cleaned ofplastic waste, clothing, organic material and other rubbish that presented a real threat to the healthof this life source for the community and wildlife. The river forms part of the Mara Basin and goes onto flow into Lake Victoria, which in turn feeds the River Nile.

The initiative was spearheaded by the Nashulai Conservancy — the first community-ownedconservancy in the Maasai Mara that was founded in 2015 — which also provided a daily stipend toall participants and introduced them to better waste management and regeneration practices. Afterthe cleanup, bamboo trees were planted along the banks of the river to curb soil erosion.

You could call it a classic case of “nature healing” that only the forced stillness caused by a globalpandemic could bring about. Livelihoods dependent on tourism and raising cattle had all but come toa standstill and people now had the time to ponder how unpredictable life can be.

“I worry that when tourism picks up again many people will forget about all the conservation effortsof the past year,” says project officer Evelyn Kamau. “That’s why we put a focus on working with theyouth in the community on the various projects and education. They’ll be the key to continuation.”

Continuation in the broader sense is what Nashulai and several other community-focused projects inKenya are working towards — a shift away from conservation practices that push indigenous peoplefurther and further out of their homelands for profit in the name of protecting and celebrating thevery nature for which these communities have provided stewardship over generations.

A reckoning

Given the past year’s global and regional conversations about racial injustice, and the pandemic thathas left tourism everywhere on its knees, ordinary people in countries like Kenya have had thechance to learn, to speak out and to act on changes.

Players in the tourism industry in the country that have in the past privileged foreign visitors overKenyans have been challenged. In mid-2020, a poorly worded social media post stating that abucket-list boutique hotel in Nairobi was “now open to Kenyans” set off a backlash from fed-upKenyans online.

The post referred to the easing of COVID-19 regulations that allowed the hotel to re-open to anyonealready in the country. Although the hotel tried to undertake damage control, the harm was alreadydone and the wounds reopened. Kenyans recounted stories of discrimination experienced at thisparticular hotel including multiple instances of the booking office responding to enquiries fromKenyan guests that rooms were fully booked, only for their European or American companions to callminutes later and miraculously find there were in fact vacancies. Many observed how rare it was tosee non-white faces in the marketing of certain establishments, except in service roles.

Another conversation that has gained traction is the question of who is really benefiting from theconservation business and why the beneficiaries are generally not the local communities.

Kenyan conservationist and author Dr Mordecai Ogada has been vocal about this issue, both in hiswork and on social media, frequently calling out institutions and individuals who perpetuate theprofit-driven system that has proven to be detrimental to local communities. In The Big ConservationLie, his searing 2016 book co-authored with conservation journalist John Mbaria, Ogada observes,“The importance of wildlife to Kenya and the communities here has been reduced to the dollar valuethat foreign tourists will pay to see it.” Ogada details the use of coercion tactics to push communitiesto divide up or vacate their lands and abandon their identities and lifestyles for little more thandonor subsidies that are not always paid in full or within the agreed time.

A colonial hangover

It is important to note that these attitudes, organizations and by extension the structure of safaritourism, did not spring up out of nowhere. At the origin of wildlife safaris on the savannahs of EastAfrica were the colonial-era hunting parties organised for European aristocracy and royalty and theodd American president or Hollywood actor.

Theodore Roosevelt’s year-long hunting expedition in 1909 resulted in over 500 animals being shotby his party in Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, many of which were taken backto be displayed at the Smithsonian Institute and in various other natural history museums across theUS. Roosevelt later recounted his experiences in a book and a series of lectures, not withoutmentioning the “savage” native people he had encountered and expressing support for the Europeancolonization project throughout Africa.

Much of this private entertaining was made possible through “gifts” of large parcels of Kenyan landby the colonial power to high-ranking military officials for their service in the other British colonies,without much regard as to the ancestral ownership of the confiscated lands.

At the origin of wildlife safaris on the savannahs of East Africa were the colonial-erahunting parties organised for European aristocracy and royalty.

On the foundation of national parks in the country by the colonial government in the 1940s, Ogadapoints out the similarities with the Yellowstone National Park, “which was created by violence anddisenfranchisement, but is still used as a template for fortress conservation over a century later.” Inthe case of Kenya, just add trophy hunting to the original model.

Today, when it isn’t the descendants of those settlers who own and run the many private naturereserves in the country, it is a party with much economic or political power tying local communitiesdown with unfair leases and sectioning them off from their ancestral land, harsh penalties beingapplied when they graze their cattle on the confiscated land.

This history must be acknowledged and the facts recognised so that the real work of establishing asustainable future for the affected communities can begin. A future that does not disenfranchiseentire communities and exclude them or leave their economies dangerously dependent on tourism.

The work it will take to achieve this in both the conservation and the wider travel industry involveseveryone, from the service providers to the media to the very people deciding where and how tospend their tourism money and their time.

Here’s who’s doing the work

There are many who are leading initiatives that place local communities at the centre of their effortsto curb environmental degradation and to secure a future in which these communities are notexcluded. Some, like Dr Ogada, spread the word about the holes in the model adopted by the globalconservation industry. Others are training and educating tourism businesses in sustainablepractices.

There are many who are leading initiatives that place local communities at the centre oftheir efforts to curb environmental degradation.

The Sustainable Travel and Tourism Agenda, or STTA, is a leading Kenyan-owned consultancy thatworks with tourism businesses and associations to provide training and strategies for sustainabilityin the sector in East Africa and beyond. Team leader Judy Kepher Gona expresses her optimism inthe organization’s position as the local experts in the field, evidenced by the industry players’ uptakeof the STTA’s training programmes and services to learn how best to manage their tourismbusinesses responsibly.

Gona notes, “Today there are almost 100 community-owned private conservancies in Kenya whichhas increased the inclusion of communities in conservation and in tourism” — which is a step in theright direction.

The community conservancy

Back to Nashulai, a strong example of a community-owned conservancy. Director and co-founderNelson Ole Reiya who grew up in the area began to notice the rate at which Maasai communitiesaround the Mara triangle were selling or leasing off their land and often their rights to live and workon it as they did before, becoming what he refers to as “conservation refugees”.

In 2016, Ole Reiya set out to bring together his community in an effort to eliminate poverty,regenerate the ecosystems and preserve the indigenous culture of the Maasai by employing acommons model on the 5,000 acres on which the conservancy sits. Families here could have soldtheir ancestral land and moved away, but they have instead come together and in a few short years

have done away with the fencing separating their homesteads from the open savannah. They keepsmaller herds of indigenous cattle and they have seen the return of wildlife such as zebras, giraffesand wildebeest to this part of their ancient migratory route. Elephants have returned to an oldelephant nursery site.

In contrast to many other nature reserves and conservancies that offer employment to the locals ashotel staff, safari guides or dancers and singers, Nashulai’s way of empowering the community goesfurther to diversify the economy by providing skills and education to the residents, as well aspreserving the culture by passing on knowledge about environmental awareness. This can be seen inthe bee-keeping project that is producing honey for sale, the kitchen gardens outside the familyhomes, a ranger training programme and even a storytelling project to record and preserve all theknowledge and history passed down by the elders.

They keep smaller herds of indigenous cattle and they have seen the return of wildlifesuch as zebras, giraffes and wildebeest to this part of their ancient migratory route.

The conservancy only hires people from within the community for its various projects, and all plansmust be submitted to a community liaison officer for discussion and a vote before any work canbegin.

Tourism activities within the conservancy such as stays at Oldarpoi (the conservancy’s first tentedcamp; more are planned), game drives and day visits to the conservation and community projects arestill an important part of the story. The revenue generated by tourists and the awareness createdregarding this model of conservation are key in securing Nashulai’s future. Volunteer travellers areeven welcomed to participate in the less technical projects such as tree planting and river clean-ups.

Expressing his hopes for a paradigm shift in the tourism industry, Ole Reiya stresses, “I wouldencourage visitors to go beyond the superficial and experience the nuances of a people beyond beingseen as artefacts and naked children to be photographed, [but] rather as communities whoseconnection to the land and wildlife has been key to their survival over time.”

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Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

“Here we have a territory (now that the Uganda Railway is built) admirably suited for a whiteman’s country, and I can say this with no thought of injustice to any native race, for the countryin question is either utterly uninhabited for miles and miles or at most its inhabitants arewandering hunters who have no settled home . . . .” Sir Harry Johnstone

There have been significant changes in the pattern of land ownership in Laikipia in the last twodecades. These changes are set against a background of profound inequalities in land ownership in acounty where, according to data in the Ministry of Lands, 40.3 per cent of the land is controlled by48 individuals or entities. The changes have not brought about an improvement in the lives of thepastoralists and other indigenous communities who occupied Laikipia before colonisation. Thesegroups — and the Maasai in particular, following their 1904 and 1911 treaties with the British —were forced out and relegated to reserves in southern Kenya to make way for the establishment oflarge commercial ranches owned by White settlers. Those indigenous inhabitants who remainedwere pushed by subsequent colonial legislation to Mukogodo in the north of the county, the driestpart of Laikipia.

The pastoralists did not recover their land with the end of colonial rule. On the contrary,Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, encouraged White settlers to remain after independenceand today, some of the descendants of those settlers who decided to make Kenya their permanenthome still occupy vast swathes of land in Laikipia County. Those who were unwilling to remain inKenya under majority rule sold their land to the Kenyatta administration. As Catherine Boone, FibianLukalo and Sandra Joireman observe in Promised Land: Settlement Schemes in Kenya, 1962 to 2016,

With the approach of independence, the settler state and the British government stepped in toprotect the interests of Kenya’s white land-owners by creating a land market for white settlerswho wanted to sell their agricultural holdings, and supporting land values for those who wantedto stay. The buyer of most of these properties was the Government of Kenya, using loans

provided by the British Government and the World Bank. Through this process, the Kenyan stateacquired about half of the land in the (ex-) Scheduled Areas.

In 1968, under the World Bank-funded Kenya Livestock Development Programme — whose statedobjective was “to increase beef production for home consumption and export mainly by subsistencepastoral groups” — the government enacted the Land (Group Representative) Act (Cap. 287) thatsaw the creation of 13 group ranches in the northern part of Laikipia, which is the driest part of thecounty. However, well-connected local elites helped themselves to part of the land, excised asindividual ranches. There are 36 such individual ranches that should have been part of the groupranches.

Those ranches that were sold to the Kenyan government by the departing British settlers are withinthe expansive Laikipia plateau. The government later sold them to land buying companies formed byKikuyus that in turn subdivided them into individual holdings. Examples of such lands includeKamnarok, Kimugandura, Kirimukuyu, Mathenge, Ireri and Endana, among others. The remainingland was gazetted as government land such ADC Mutara and Kirimon, or outspans such asNgarendare and Mukogodo, which were used for finishing livestock for sale to the Kenya MeatCommission.

Land tenure and use

In the Kenyan context, and compared to other counties, the history of land in Laikipia County isunique, with a diversity of tenure systems each representing a unique system of production. Themap below shows the different land use and tenure systems in Laikipia County that include large-scale ranches, large-scale farms, group ranches and smallholder farms.

There are 48 large-scale ranches sitting on 40.3 per cent of the total land area in Laikipia County,9,532.2km², some of which are still owned by the descendants of the colonial settlers. The ranches occupy huge tracts of land, the three largest being Laikipia Nature Conservancy with 107,000 acres,Ol Pejeta with 88,923.79 acres, and Loisaba with 62,092.97 acres.

Source: Ministry of Lands

Most of these large-scale ranches — many of which have an integrated economic system thatincludes livestock, horticulture, wildlife conservation and tourism — were acquired during thecolonial period and legislation governing their ownership was taken from the colonial law andintegrated into the constitution of independent Kenya under the land transfer agreement betweenthe colonial government and the Kenyatta regime. It should be noted that the Maasai land campaignof 2004 pushing the government to address historical injustices following the forced ouster ofMaasai from their ancestral lands in Laikipia, brought to light the fact that some of these rancheshad no legal documents of ownership. In an article titled In the Grip of the Vampire State: MaasaiLand Struggles in Kenyan Politics published in the Journal of Eastern African Studies, ParseleloKantai observes,

Ranchers interviewed could not remember how long their own land-leases were supposed tolast, were unaware of the Anglo-Maasai Agreement, and, in at least one case, were unable toproduce title deeds to their ranches. And when opinion was expressed, it bordered on theabsurd: the ‘invaders’, observed Ms Odile de Weck, who had inherited her father’s 3,600-acreLoldoto Farm, were not genuine — not Maasai at all. They were, she noted emphatically,Kikuyus. The Maasai, she said, had willingly ceded rights to Laikipia, had been compensatedlong ago and now resided happily in some other part of Kenya, far away.

Immediately following the campaign, the Ministry of Lands started putting out advertisements in theprint media inviting those landowners whose leases were expiring to contact it.

Twenty-three large-scale farms occupy 1.48 per cent of the land in Laikipia County. These farms aremostly owned by individuals from the former Central Province who bought the land following sub-division by the Kenyatta administration, or through land buying companies, which opted not to sub-divide the land but to use it as collateral to access bank loans.

Source: Ministry of Lands

Smallholdings sit on 27.21 per cent of the total land area in Laikipia County. These farms wereinitially large-scale farms bought by groups of individuals who later sub-divided them intosmallholdings of between two and five acres. There are three categories of farmers in this group:those who bought land and settled to escape land pressure in their ancestral homes, those whobought the land for speculative purposes, and those who bought land and used it as collateral forbank loans. A majority of the first group still live on their farms, practising subsistence, rain-fedagriculture. Most members of the other two groups are absentee landowners whose idle land hasover time been occupied by pastoralists in search of water and pasture for their animals, or bysquatters seeking to escape the population pressure in the group ranches. In some cases,pastoralists have bought the idle land and have title.

The 13 group ranches cover 7.45 per cent of the total Laikipia land area and are occupied bypastoralists who use them for communal grazing. However, some of the group ranches such as IlNgwesi, Kijabe, Lekurruki and Koija have also established wildlife conservancies and built touristlodges.

Laikipia land use.

Source: CETRAD

Changing land ownership, changing landscapes

Since the late 1990s, when agitation for political reforms and a new constitution began in earnest,and in the intervening period, new patterns of land ownership and land use have been emerging inLaikipia County.

Data from the Laikipia County Government indicates that 16 of the 48 large-scale ranches have beeninternally sub-divided into units of between 3,000 and 4,000 acres, with the land rates due for eachsub-division paid according to the size of the sub-division. The sub-divisions are made throughprivate arrangements and do not appear in the records at the Ministry of Lands. There are claimsthat the sub-divided parcels have been ceded to European retirees looking to acquire land forholiday homes in Laikipia, and to White Zimbabweans. There are also claims that the large, palatial,private residences that have sprung up within the sub-divided parcels are in fact tourist destinationsfor a high-end clientele in a business that operates outside Kenya’s tourism regulatory frameworkand violates Kenya tax laws.

In the Kenyan context, and compared to other counties, the history of land in LaikipiaCounty is unique, with a diversity of tenure systems each representing a unique systemof production.

Whatever the case, the County Government of Laikipia confirms, “Most of the white settlers buyingproperty are soldiers or tourists who loved the [county’s] climate, its people and natural beauty andwant to experience it all over again. Big time investors [sic] in real estate flock the area, either tobuy or construct multi-million shilling holiday homes, targeting wealthy European settlers andtourists.”

The Laikipia County Government also confirms that the large-scale ranches have also been leasingtraining grounds to the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK), adding, “In 2009 BATUKexpanded these grounds to 11 privately owned ranches, including Sosian, Ol Maisor and the LaikipiaNature Conservancy.”

Multinationals have also moved in, buying up the large-scale farms, particularly those situated nearpermanent sources of water, where they have set up horticultural businesses growing crops forexport to the European market. The arrival of export horticulture in Laikipia has increasedcompetition for resources as “agro-industrial horticulture, pastoralism and small holder agriculturecompete for land, capital, and water, with access to water being particularly hotly contested.”

Absentee owners of smallholdings that have over time been occupied by squatters are also sellingtheir land. With the help of brokers and officials from the Ministry of Lands, the smallholdings areconsolidated and sold to individuals and companies who may not be aware that the land is occupiedand that the sale could be a potential source of conflict.

Only the group ranches — which are occupied by pastoralists who use traditional grazingmanagement techniques — have not changed hands and remain intact. They are, however, facingpressure from a growing population, intensive grazing and increasingly frequent droughts that areputting a strain on the natural resources.

On the other hand, most of the land gazetted as government land has been grabbed by seniorgovernment officials, politicians and military personnel. Of the 36 government outspans, only fourremain. Outspans neighbouring large-scale ranches have been grabbed by the ranch managers andsuch grabbed land has since changed hands and been acquired by individuals.

Where farmers were settled in forests during the era of former President Daniel arap Moi, forestcover was plundered for timber and the forest floor given over to cultivation. When President MwaiKibaki succeeded Moi, these farmers were constantly under threat of eviction but they continue tooccupy the forests to date. There are, however, intact forest reserves where on-going human activityhas not had a negative impact. They are used and managed by pastoralists as grazing lands, ormanaged by conservation groups, or by the government.

Impact of change of ownership on other livelihood groups

Land deals are coming to compound an already existing multiplicity of problems related to theaccess, use and management of scarce resources in Laikipia County. Compared to neighbouringcounties, in the past Laikipia received moderate rainfall and severe droughts like those experiencedin 2009, in 2017 and now in 2021 were the exception. This attracted pastoralists from Baringo,Samburu and Isiolo counties to settle in the county in search of water and pasture for their livestock.

Over time, land pressure in central Kenya also forced subsistence farmers to move and settle inLaikipia, practicing rain-fed agriculture and keeping small herds of sheep, goats and cattle. This hasled to competition for space and resources that has been compounded by frequent and increasinglysevere droughts in recent years.

“The Maasai, she said, had willingly ceded rights to Laikipia, had been compensatedlong ago and now resided happily in some other part of Kenya, far away.”

The consolidation of smallholdings belonging to absentee owners — where land that had previouslybeen sub-divided into units of between two and five acres is now being merged to form bigger unitsof 500 acres and above, sold off and fenced — is further reducing the land available to pastoralistsand to squatters who have been using such idle land to graze livestock and grow crops, leaving themwith limited options and leading to an increase in levels of vulnerability as they have to rely on relieffood in order to survive.

The smallholder land consolidation process, which is being undertaken by former ranch managerswho are brokering for individual buyers, is also blamed for the over-exploitation of natural resourcesin some areas and their conservation in others. In those areas occupied by farming communities,forest cover has been exploited either for charcoal burning, firewood or timber production as peoplelook for alternative sources of livelihood. In the smallholdings where pastoralists have title,overgrazing of the rangelands due to constrained mobility does not allow the range to regenerate.This in turn has led to the degradation of the land and the emergence of unpalatable invasive speciesof plants like prosopis that render grazing areas unusable, further compounding the problem ofaccess to pasture in the few areas left for pastoralists to graze.

In the group ranches, the most degraded rangelands are overrun with opuntia stricta, an invasivespecies of cactus whose fruit is harmful to livestock and has caused “economic losses in excess ofUS$500 in 48% of households in Laikipia”.

On the other hand, in the large-scale ranches, large farms, consolidated smallholder farms andgroup ranches where conservation and resource use fall under the intensive management of a fewindividuals, the availability of resources is assured even during times of stress. However, theavailability of resources for one group of users and the lack of resources for another often leads toconflict as those without poach from those who have them. One example is when pastoralists grazeillegally in the large-scale ranches whenever there is scarcity in their own areas, leading to arrestsand sometimes confiscation of livestock from the pastoralists by government agencies in an attemptto protect the large-scale ranches.

Historical injustices and government failures

Article 60 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010 guarantees equitable access to land and security of landrights. Further, Article 68(c)(1) states, “Parliament shall enact legislation to prescribe minimum andmaximum land holding acreages in respect of private land.” Parliament has failed to pass suchlegislation and, indeed, the government has shied away from addressing historical land injustices inKenya in general and in Laikipia – where they are most visible – in particular. Policy makers rarelydiscuss justice in the context of land reform and what has taken place are land law reforms in lieu ofthe essential land reforms that would confront the material consequences of unequal access to land.As Ambreena Manji observes in her paper Whose Land is it Anyway?,

The consequences of a legalistic approach to land reform are starkly evident in Kenya’s newland laws. First and foremost, it foreclosed debates about redistribution, prioritising land lawreform as the most effective way to address land problems and so evading more difficultquestions about who controls access to land how a more just distribution might be achieved.

The recent violence that visited death and destruction on parts of Laikipia is a continuation and anescalation of a crisis that first came to a head in May 2000 when pastoralists drove their livestock

into Loldaiga farm. Then the Moi government intervened and allowed the pastoralists into theMt Kenya and Aberdare forests while big ranchers supported the government by allowing someanimals onto their ranches.

In 2004, pastoralists again occupied commercial ranches while agitating for the non-renewal of landleases which they believed had expired. This time the Kibaki government used force to dislodgethem. However, the question of land leases remains unresolved to date. Outbreaks of violence havebecome more frequent since 2009, caused by a combination of factors including the effects ofclimate change and increasingly frequent droughts that force pastoralists from neighbouringBaringo, Isiolo and Samburu into Laikipia in search of water and pasture. This inevitably leads toconflicts with ranchers onto whose land they drive their animals.

Population pressure, from both humans and livestock, is another cause of conflict in Laikipia. Thecarrying capacity of group ranches is stretched to the limit while it is plenty on neighbouringcommercial ranches. Moreover, population migration to Laikipia from neighbouring counties isplacing additional pressure on resources.

The sub-divisions are made through private arrangements and do not appear in therecords at the Ministry of Lands.

The proliferation of small arms in the county has added to the insecurity; pastoralists fromneighbouring counties invade and occupy commercial ranches, conservancies, smallholdings andforests armed with sophisticated weapons. Laikipia pastoralists have also acquired weapons both todefend themselves and their animals and to invade other land.

Politicians have since 2009 also been encouraging pastoralists from neighbouring counties to moveto Laikipia on promises of protection in exchange for votes. There are also claims that politicianshave been helping the pastoralists to acquire arms and that most of the livestock being grazed inprivate ranches and farms belongs to senior government officials and politicians who have exertedpressure on the government not to act on the pastoralists.

In the twilight of another Kenyatta government, relations between the commercial farmers andranchers, the pastoralists and the smallholders remain poor and there is a lot of suspicion amongthem, with each group acting as an isolated entity. But for how long can the big commercial ranchesand large-scale farms continue to thrive in the midst of poor farmers and dispossessed pastoralists?

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Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

“Mimi nimesema shamba ya Maasai ni ya Maasai.” I am saying that Maasailand is for the Maasaipeople.

As expected, this statement raised an uproar because of its tone and content. The volume of supportfor the speaker’s sentiments was only matched by the howls of protests at his perceived “tribalism”or “prejudice” – shop-worn fallbacks for an intellectually floundering society that is terrified oflooking at itself in the mirror.

The entire sequence of events leading up to this strident declaration is symptomatic of an escapistsociety that continuously suffers trauma but remains unwilling to confront the source of the trauma.The reason for this is that Kenya’s formal education structures aren’t equipped (or intended) to havethese discourses, so the issues remain unsaid. In this case, the issue is at hand is simply “whiteness”.

Whiteness is a mindset which decrees that land occupied by indigenous people is terra nullius (noone’s land) and is, therefore, available for occupation, acquisition or development. This term camefrom British settlement in Australia, which for nearly 200 years didn’t acknowledge the rights of theFirst Nations that preceded them.

There are obvious parallels with the acquisition of Kedong’ ranch for infrastructure development,with no regard to the needs of the many thousands of Maasai people and livestock that use it as agrazing area. This truly frightening challenge of loss of land and access to it is currently faced by the

Maasai, pastoralists, and indigenous peoples in other parts of Africa, and has often resulted inviolent resource conflict, leading to loss of lives and property, most notably livestock.

In Kenya, the typical responses to such crises is state violence at the flashpoint and vilification of theaffected communities as “bandits” or “raiders”, accompanied by legal sanction of their leaders orrepresentatives for their “belligerence” or “ethnic prejudice”. This simplistic approach to the issuespeaks loudly of a state where the application of intellectual rigour to natural resource conservationand management is still widely regarded as anathema.

So, what is the true nature of this monster that so consistently defies our (remarkably primitive)attempts to manage its negative impacts? Firstly, the only reason why this challenge seems sointractable is the failure of our society to understand or define it. We are faced squarely with thisdeep malaise called settler colonialism, and the minutiae that vex us so deeply are merely thesymptoms thereof.

Colonialism is a structure, not an event

What is settler colonialism?

In her 2015 paper, “Settler Colonialism”, Tate Lefevre elegantly defines settler colonialism as “aform of colonialism which seeks to replace the original population of the colonised territory with anew society of settlers. As with all forms of colonialism, it is based on exogenous domination,typically organised or supported by an imperial authority”.

The fundamental difference between settler colonialism and standard colonialism is that the lattermerely seeks conquest and control, whereas the former seeks to supplant whatever preceded it,notable examples being the United States, Canada and Australia. Settler colonialism is enacted by avariety of means, ranging from violent genocide and disenfranchisement or depopulation of theprevious inhabitants, to more subtle legal means, such as cultural assimilation or recognition ofindigenous identity within a colonial structure, particularly as concerns land tenure.

In Kenya, the typical responses to such crises is state violence at the flashpoint andvilification of the affected communities as “bandits” or “raiders”, accompanied by legalsanction of their leaders or representatives for their “belligerence” or “ethnic prejudice”.This simplistic approach to the issue speaks loudly of a state where the application ofintellectual rigour to natural resource conservation and management is still widelyregarded as anathema.

The perceptive reader will notice that the enactment of settler colonialism as described herein bearsan uncanny resemblance to the elaborate hoax commonly referred to in Kenya as “communityconservancies”. The “recognition of indigenous identity”, for example, accurately describes thecelebration of Maasai beadwork, dances and traditional garb within a colonial structure, namely, the“conservancy” within which they are not allowed to practise livestock production, unless under thestructures imposed by a conservancy or a conservation NGO – the “colonial powers” in thisarrangement.

The colonial powers that reside within the conservation sector often tout “alternative livelihoods”,such as tourism and beadwork, as key to the economic empowerment of pastoralist communities.But this flimsy window dressing barely hides the fraud within. The casual use of the term“alternative livelihoods” is actually a blatant admission of the intention to change what has beendeveloped over many generations.

Livestock production, apart from being a livelihood providing an income far beyond what tourismoffers, is an identity. This is what is under assault from settler colonialism – that identity that infusespastoralists with pride, and makes it impossible to sway them with petty handouts that are derigueur in the malarkey that styles itself as “community-based conservation”. Modern-daycolonialism requires more cunning than violence, and its agents learned from their precursors thatlivestock is the “glue” that ties pastoralists to their homelands, the source of pride and identity thatunderpinned their resistance to invaders of all kinds. Maasai man with no livestock has no businessin Maasailand and will probably end up working as a watchman in Nairobi, a dancer in Mombasa, ora curio seller on the streets of Cape Town.

These latter-day colonialists are also very well-read in history because they seem to understand howeffectively the Native American nations were subdued two centuries ago by European invadersthrough the systematic elimination of their “livestock” (the bison). Once that task was completed,the impoverished and hungry Native Americans became pliable and were easily moved into smallpockets of their former territories. These were called “Indian reservations” and bear an uncannyresemblance to what we in Kenya refer to as “community conservancies”, islands of contrived “self-determination” in the middle of entire landscapes annexed by outsiders.

The basis for negotiating and mitigating the plight of victims of this kind of disenfranchisement liesin understanding arguably the most profound statement on the subject: “Settler colonialism is astructure, not an event.” This hypothesis was proposed by the late Patrick Wolfe, an Australianhistorian who was an acknowledged authority on the subject.

Unlike other forms of colonialism, the imperial power in settler colonialism does not alwaysrepresent the same nationality as the settlers. However, the colonising authority generally views thesettlers as racially superior to the previous inhabitants, which may give settlers’ social movementsand political demands greater legitimacy than those of colonised peoples in the eyes ofthe home colonies, whereas natural and human resources are the main motivation behind otherforms of colonialism.

Many Kenyans and other people who were once colonised vehemently deny the profound negativeimpact of colonialism because they are either unwilling to accept or are intellectually incapable ofunderstanding Patrick Wolfe’s basic hypothesis of colonialism as a structure. We can only addressthe vagaries of colonialism if we accept that it is a structure, rather than an event or an epoch.

The other difficulty facing Kenyans is their view of settlers as “racially superior”. In Africa, theadvent of colonialism brought with it a clear colour bar, which in some countrie, actually gotformally legislated and led to our initial basic understanding of “whiteness” and “blackness” ascentered around our physical characteristics and peculiarities.

“Whiteness” as a policy position

However, it is now high time that natives of the Global South emerged from the Eurocentric silos ofour respective reported histories to examine our condition. We urgently need to expand ourtemporal and geographical horizons in order to understand what ails us. We need to understand thatin today’s Global South, “whiteness” is the senseless neoliberalism that only values our lands, ourheritage (and even us!) through the prism of how much money a white man will pay to exploit it (orus).

The use of quotes in the word “whiteness” here is the deliberate elevation of whiteness into a policyand cultural position that transcends the race itself. “Whiteness” is not necessarily associated withskin colour, but with a worldview or a mindset. A logical question to ask at this point would

therefore be: How does this hypothesis fit into the recent brouhaha pitting the Honourable SenatorLedama Ole Kina against so-called “outsiders” (mostly Kikuyu smallholder farmers) who aresupposedly “taking over” Maasailand in Narok?

Put into perspective, Kenya, as a nation, is currently undergoing rapid changes driven by economicgrowth, misplaced economic pipe dreams, and several other factors. Any casual observer will noticethat an inordinate proportion of the planned infrastructure in Kenya is targeted at the rangelandsinhabited by Maa-speaking peoples and other pastoralists. The obvious and immediate impact of thisis fragmentation and loss of grazing lands and stock routes. Opposition to these developments isalways fronted by conservation interests who will speak ad nauseam about the loss of wildlifehabitats, but won’t say a word about the negative impact on the livestock production chain orpastoralist livelihoods.

Many Kenyans and other people who were once colonised vehemently deny the profoundnegative impact of colonialism because they are either unwilling to accept or areintellectually incapable of understanding Patrick Wolfe’s basic hypothesis of colonialismas a structure. We can only address the vagaries of colonialism if we accept that it is astructure, rather than an event or an epoch.

The pastoralists are, therefore, caught between the hammer of infrastructure development and theanvil of avaricious conservation interests who want their land for conservation and tourismpurposes. It isn’t difficult to see how this is a socially and economically perilous place to be. Both ofthese forces are extremely powerful, neoliberal and overwhelmingly white. To anyone who has beensubject to this pressure and not yet taken the time to examine the issue critically, the reflex is to hitout at the nearest and smallest target. Sadly, these tend to be smallholder farmers from non-Maacommunities who have bought land from willing sellers and are trying to produce crops forthemselves and the markets, an overwhelmingly “black” activity.

Ecofascism

There is no doubt that pastoralists communities in Kenya are under relentless pressure fromdevelopment and conservation interests, both of which are intent on taking control of their lands.However, the problem is a complex one, requiring a far more sophisticated approach than what wehave witnessed thus far. More importantly, we need to understand that the vice squeezingindigenous peoples and their livelihoods is a global phenomenon driven by ecofascism, a globalschool of thought whose intellectual and financial underpinnings are often underestimated, to thedetriment of indigenous populations.

The insatiable need that extractive industries have for natural resources isn’t anything new acrossthe world, and communities in many resource-rich parts of the world have fought these industriesfor decades with varying levels of success. It is instructive to note here that even though these fightsare sometimes violent and cost lives, they are honest fights, where the postures and needs of all theprotagonists are clearly understood by all.

Apart from these conflicts, the greed of these extractive industries also led to the growth of theglobal environmental conservation movement and the advent of large conservation NGOs. Theseorganisations have thrived for decades riding on a huge pool of goodwill drawn from the apparentnobility of their romanticised missions and visions. Only in the last decade or so have the whitesupremacist underpinnings of their images been acknowledged or confronted. For generations, art,fiction, media and even science normalised the absurd notion that wildlife in Africa is under constant

peril from black Africans and that the intervention of white people is required in order to “save” thisbiodiversity.

This paradigm has grown and has now taken a distinct shape that can easily be recognised asecofascism – defined by Michael Zimmerman (2008) as a theoretical political model in which anauthoritarian government would require individuals to sacrifice their own interests for the “organicwhole of nature”. Loosely described, this is the notion that any action in violation of human rightscan be justified by the demonstration of its benefit to biodiversity or the natural environment in situ.

The pastoralists are, therefore, caught between the hammer of infrastructuredevelopment and the anvil of avaricious conservation interests who want their land forconservation and tourism purposes. It isn’t difficult to see how this is a socially andeconomically perilous place to be.

The majority of our society live on the periphery of these issues and would understandably besceptical at the thought of such a flawed principle gaining any credibility or traction, but the realityis very different. Several decades of relentless promotion through the media, the arts, academia, andscientific publications has normalised an idea that is an absurdity at best and an injustice at worst.

The vilification of pastoralist communities is still the “default setting” for acquisition of their landfrom both sides of what is a two-pronged onslaught. “Development” and state and commercialinterests maintain that pastoralism is “uncivilised” and that pastoralists’ lands need to be“developed”, while environmental and conservation interests maintain that pastoralists are“overpopulating”, “over-grazing” and “degrading” their land. This creates the absurd logic thatconservationists have to somehow “take over” and “manage” these resources on their behalf (read:annex and exploit the said resources). The earlier stated position taken by capital is well known andwidely acknowledged, but the position of the “eco-pirates” is often couched in feigned concern forthe indigenous population, complete with local foot soldiers for window dressing purposes.

A recent incident in eastern Kenya is a prime example of how this typically plays out. On the 10th ofMarch this year, two four-month old giraffe skeletons were found in Ishaqbin area in Garissa. Theconservancy management (under the direction of the Northern Rangelands Trust) immediatelyissued a press release saying that the giraffes (a leucistic mother and calf) had been “killed byarmed poachers” without giving any evidence whatsoever to corroborate this claim. The pressrelease was carefully worded to imply that the two dead giraffes were two out of only three existinganimals belonging to an extremely rare species. The key fact that they were simply reticulatedgiraffes suffering from a genetic disorder was studiously avoided. The BBC immediately startedregurgitating the story through their international platforms and made a pointed reference to thefact that the giraffes “lived in an unfenced conservancy”, illustrating clearly that one of their mainobjectives was to justify the use of fencing here as a conservation tool.

Following the publication of the article, the expected global crescendo of condemnation for the“savage” poachers took hold. In India, for example, the BBC report was covered by the onlinepublication Bhaskar.com and readers’ comments ranged from cursing the “poachers” to demandsthat they also be killed for their transgressions.

Biased reporting

Extrajudicial killings are a common human rights violation in the Global South, but this extremereaction clearly indicates the power of biased reporting on African conservation issues. It is

important to note that up to this point, the Kenya Wildlife Service has still not referred to this as apoaching incident, and its investigations thus far have not unearthed any evidence of crime. Thisreport on “poaching” is, therefore, a fabrication by conservation practitioners on the ground that isamplified and distributed with the assistance of the BBC.

The power of this romanticised wildlife conservation narrative and its proponents cannot be over-estimated. The BBC is an outlet that is widely respected for its carefully cultivated and demonstratedpenchant for objectivity, but this is instantly abandoned whenever it reports on wildlife issues inAfrica. Examples of the BBC’s “whitewashing” of African wildlife reports abound, including Dr. HansBauer’s “discovery” of a lion population in Ethiopia (2016) and the false report by Dr. Mike Chase ofan elephant “massacre” in Botswana (2018). The BBC also participated in the elaborate hoaxsurrounding the “extinction” of the northern white rhino with the death of “Sudan” (2018).

Interestingly, the same BBC is covering a much-touted project to find some remnant specimens ofthe species they reported as being extinct with such alacrity two years earlier. This unusual show ofinstitutional weakness is actually just a submission to the needs of global capital. Ordinarily (or in asensible world), sentiments like ecofascism are relegated to the peripheries of rational thoughtwhere other outlandish theories, like the belief in a flat earth, exist.

So, what could have driven the sudden incursion of these ideas into realms of rational thought?Increasing demand for money in the conservation world led to the professionalisation of fundraisingand the engagement of marketing professionals in a field where there really isn’t any product to sell.These brilliant professionals came up with a valuable product to tap into the pockets (and guilt) ofglobal capital for funds: a dose of guilt and an offer of self-actualisation (for a considerable financialconsideration) as an antidote to the same. Suddenly, any self-respecting billionaire who could haveanything had to have an environmental conservation project attached to his name. The only thingmissing now was intellectual leadership with enough gravitas to take our minds off the unpleasantwhiff of racism that pervaded this movement.

Enter Sir David Attenborough, with his famous breathless voice, brilliant documentaries, andMalthusian views on human population (except white people) and their impact on biodiversity.

The next challenge was capturing academia and those who saw themselves as beyond capture byimages. Enter Edward Wilson, the famous Harvard sociobiologist who needed to retain somerelevance in the twilight of his career by proposing the “Half Earth Theory” – the ludicrous idea thathalf the earth should be protected in its primordial state to save biodiversity. It is racism clothed inacademic mumbo jumbo because it is obvious to any observer that the target of this “protection” isthe tropics, which are home to black and brown people. There won’t be any biodiversity gains byturning London, New York (or Boston) into a protected area.

The vilification of pastoralist communities is still the “default setting” for acquisition oftheir land from both sides of what is a two-pronged onslaught. “Development” and stateand commercial interests maintain that pastoralism is “uncivilised” and that pastoralists’lands need to be “developed”, while environmental and conservation interests maintainthat pastoralists are “overpopulating”, “over-grazing” and “degrading” their land.

With these ingredients, conservation interests built a cauldron into which the extremely wealthy arepouring startling amounts of money to subvert systems, grab lands, and plunder resources in theGlobal South. This money also captures the media and the arts, who cleanse all the injustices withglowing reports on conservation success or apocalypse, depending on whether white or black people

are in charge.

All over Africa, the big international conservation NGOs like the World Wildlife Fund and The NatureConservancy have captured state conservation organs using financial might conferred upon them bytheir corporate backers, and Kenya is no exception. Our rangelands, and the people who call themhome are caught between the hammer of “white” destruction and the anvil of “white” conservation,neither of which have any time for “black” livelihoods. This can even be observed in the way thestate (through Kenya Wildlife Service) is pursuing its conservation mandate. It allows “white”geothermal development and “white” music festivals in Hells Gate National Park, but “black”grazing of Maasai livestock or gathering of firewood in the same place can get one arrested or shot.

In 2017, violent clashes were witnessed when pastoralists from Samburu moved south into Laikipiawith their livestock seeking pasture and routes through to grazing lands further south. The media(BBC included) talked at length about the lawlessness and violence, with numerous references to thepastoralists as “raiders” and “bandits”. What they did not mention was the fact that all of theSamburu pastoralists were coming from areas that were “community conservancies” – areas whereall their dry season grazing reservoirs had been converted into conservation areas or tourismfacilities.

Conservation interests must necessarily be treated with caution because they are the new face ofimperialism and disenfranchisement. Awareness of this global challenge is growing through thework of organisations like Survival International. Indeed, international instruments, such as the“New Deal for Nature” merit close examination, as illustrated by Stephen Corry (2020) in theMedium journal.

Senator Ledama Ole Kina stood out back in 2017 because he was the only one who spoke out againstthis injustice at a time when pastoralism was a reviled and vilified livelihood in Kenya and aroundthe world. This year he has spoken out again, and it is my fervent hope that his voice this time willinitiate a conversation, because conversation is a quintessentially “black” method of conflictresolution.

This is my contribution to the much-needed conversation: Senator, we cannot afford to losepastoralism for the sake of our identity culture or economy, but the two “white” prongs will destroyit if we let them. The capitalist development prong is harmful, but honest. You can negotiate with itbecause its objectives do not expressly require your subjugation. The conservation prong is lethal,because it comes smiling and it recruits your brothers to help rob you, and it will tell you that yourbrothers from other ethnic groups are your enemies. It is laughing as you attack smallholder Kikuyufarmers and Luo conservationists while it takes your birthright. To my pastoralist brothers, don’t besilent! Our ancestors will bless you for speaking out, and our children will thank you for it. For now,I only hope that my light has illuminated the face of your real enemy.

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Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

Wildlife tourism is one of Tanzania’s main foreign exchange earners and an important source offormal employment, but the sector’s survival is threatened by poaching, mineral exploration, andpressure from farmers and cattle-keepers to access farmland, fuel, pasture and protein in protectedareas. For the Selous Game Reserve (SGR), the decision to build Africa’s largest dam across theRufiji River adds a new and potentially devastating dimension to these existing threats.

Between a quarter and thirty per cent of Tanzania consists of national parks, conservation areas,game reserves, and controlled and protected areas. Until last year, the Selous was the world’slargest game reserve, covering an area of 50,000 sq. kms (larger than Denmark). In 1896, the areawas designated a protected area by the Governor of Tanganyika Hermann von Wissmann, and it wasmade a hunting reserve in 1905. Last year’s gazetting of the 31,000 sq. kms Nyerere National Parkreduced the SGR by sixty per cent, to about 20,000 sq. kms. President Magufuli justified this radicalmove as a means of reducing hunting tourism. “Tourists come here and kill our lions, but we don’tbenefit a lot from these wildlife hunting activities”, Magufuli said. Slicing up the SGR will alsocomplicate future negotiations over its status as a World Heritage Site, discussed below.

Exploration and mining concessions to Western and Russian oil, gas and uranium companiescovering an estimated six per cent of Selous constitute a further challenge to the reserve’s integrity,

and have been widely criticised by environmentalists. By 2017 there were said to be 48 prospectiveoil, gas and uranium concessions in the SGR (See Map 1), but for the moment, the government hasput their development on hold. If and when the price of uranium reaches a certain threshold, wemay expect mining to take off, with the attendant negative environmental consequences.

From the Selous’ killing fields…

The Selous once boasted Africa’s largest concentration of elephants and other megafauna. Waves ofsustained ivory poaching reduced the elephant population from about 100,000 to only 13,000 in2013. In 1982, SGR was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site for protective purposes, and in2014, it was added to UNESCO’s List of World Heritage Sites in Danger, by which time poaching,driven by the Asian ivory trade, was threatening to wipe out Tanzania’s entire elephant population,leading UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre (WHC) and the International Union for the Conservationof Nature (IUCN) to declare that: “there appears to be no coherent governmental response whichcould halt or even reverse the documented poaching trends”. Successive Tanzanian governments,politicians and officials, were widely considered complicit at best or, at worst, actively involved infacilitating the trade.

… to the Stiegler’s Gorge Dam…

In 2016, Stiegler’s Gorge Dam (SGD) was included in the Tanzania Power System Master Plan, andthe project was finally underway. In the same year, the WHC expressed its “utmost concern aboutthe ongoing project despite a high likelihood of serious and irreversible damage to the OutstandingUniversal Value (OUV) of the property”, that is, the Selous. In 2017, UNESCO stated bluntly: “Theforeseeable impact of Stiegler’s Gorge Hydropower project is irreversibly damaging to theOutstanding Universal Value of the property and clearly not in line with the Committee’s position onthe incompatibility of dams with large reservoirs inside a World Heritage property”. UNESCOconsequently recommended that the Tanzanian government should “permanently abandon” theproject.

… enraging the conservationists…

In addition to UNESCO and other UN agencies, conservationists and the wildlife tourism industrywere dismayed by the proposed dam, as were bilateral agencies and NGOs supporting Tanzania’sconservation efforts. They complained that no robust social or economic impact analysis,environmental assessment or public consultations informed the decision to proceed with the dam.The brief Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) produced by the University of Dar es Salaam’sConsultancy Bureau in 2018 contained “hardly any quantitative predictions of positive or negativeimpacts” of the proposed dam. Conservationists further argue that, by disturbing annual water flowpatterns, the dam will have a potentially devastating impact on farmers and fishers downstreamfrom the dam, and on the vast mangrove forest in the Rufiji Mafia-Kilwa Marine Ramsar Site,another internationally protected area. The dam would trap sediment and organic matter normallytransported to the coast and enriching downstream agriculture, fisheries and hatcheries.Interrupted water flows would lead to increased salination upstream from the delta.

In addition, critics argue, the dam’s reservoir will take years to fill and will be subject to increasingrates of evaporation as temperatures rise under global warming. Up-stream irrigated rice cultivationon the Kilombero River and sugar on the Great Ruaha have reduced the volume of water flowing intothe Rufiji, and future unpredictable weather patterns could lead to crippling drought. Effectively,only the waters of the Rufiji will be filling the dam’s vast reservoir. A more optimistic scenario couldsee an increase in precipitation from the unpredictable effects of climate change on micro-climates.

New roads and power transmission lines and the arrival of contractors and workers on the dam siteand attendant commercial activities will have a massive and uncontrolled impact on the localenvironment and encourage further poaching, say the project’s critics. The millions of tons ofcement required to build the dam will stimulate the local cement industry, but at the cost of amassive carbon footprint (cement accounts for about eight per cent of global greenhouse gasemissions). Loggers have already cleared the dam site of vegetation, and the site of the projected1,200 sq. kms. reservoir, containing nearly three million trees, awaits the same fate, with unknowneffects on wildlife habitats and biodiversity. When the loggers entered the park in late 2018, oneluxury lodge announced its imminent closure.

… and leading economists to wave a red flag

Not only conservationists have found fault with President Magufuli’s mega-project. Though thenecessary data for a robust analysis are lacking, economists argue that the dam makes neitherfinancial nor economic sense and that there are cheaper, smaller, less risky and more practicalalternatives for increasing access to electricity. Joerg Hartmann, an independent consultant whoundertook an economic feasibility assessment of the project, argues that: “Stiegler’s Gorge hasbecome unnecessary, and would be a significant economic burden for Tanzania”. The dam is likely tocost a multiple of the present contract price, and take much longer to build than currently proposed.One recent estimate puts the total cost of the dam at nearly $10 billion, while the Brazilianconglomerate Odebrecht estimated that it would take 9-10 years to complete, and not the threeyears claimed. At over 11 US cents per unit (kWh), SGD power would cost almost twice the currenttariff, and a multiple of the cost of power from gas.

Currently, Tanzania has surplus power generation capacity of 280MW, and it is most unlikely that somuch additional power would find a market. The project’s supporters claim that surplus power fromthe SGD will be exported. A 2018 World Bank technical appraisal for a power interconnectivityproject between Tanzania and Zambia argued that internal demand for electricity was inadequate tojustify the SGD, so that it could only be justified if exports were built into the project.

A final risk facing the planned dam is the apparent inexperience of the Egyptian contractors.According to Barnaby Dye, Arab Contractors, a state-owned company, worked on the giant Russian-built Aswan Dam in the 1960s, but only as one of many sub-contractors, while the second company,El Sweeny, builds transmission lines, not complex electro-mechanical systems.

President Magufuli defends his project

Defending the dam that he claims will power his ambitious industrialisation programme, PresidentMagufuli claims that it will affect “just three percent” of the SGR, and will help combat deforestationacross the country by providing citizens with a cheap alternative to charcoal and wood fuel. Ironic,therefore, that over 90,000 ha of miombo woodlands and forest risk losing an estimated 2.6m treesin the dam’s reservoir. For the moment, only the dam site has been cleared. President Magufuli saysmore power will be required for industrial growth, rural electrification and to run the StandardGauge Railway, justifying one mega-white-elephant project in terms of the needs of another.Arguably, diesel power would be more economical than electricity given the probable low trafficdensity on the new railway, though this needs to be examined empirically.

Critics argue that the notion that rural Tanzanians will soon enjoy cheap hydropower via the nationalgrid thanks to the SGD is highly unrealistic. The huge investments in transmission and distributioninfrastructure required to make this work have not been costed, and the limited demand for electricpower would make the required investment to reach Tanzania’s vast rural hinterland hugelyexpensive. Solar mini-grids have become widely popular and can be supplied at little cost to the

state by commercial and social investors. Gas, not electricity, is the best (or least bad) alternative tounsustainable charcoal use for cooking in Dar es Salaam and other urban centres.

The President’s claim that “just three percent” of the SGR will be affected by the dam is alsochallenged by environmentalists, pointing to the downstream impacts and the likely negative effectsof the dam’s construction on the Selous discussed above.

Past plans to dam the Rufiji came to nothing

Both colonial and post-independence governments explored the viability of damning the Rufiji Riverat Stiegler’s Gorge to produce power and develop irrigation agriculture. In the 1970s, Swedish aidfinanced dams at Kidatu and Mtera on the Ruaha River, a tributary of the Rufiji, upstream fromStiegler’s Gorge. At different times, detailed technical studies and construction designs by Japanese,American and Norwegian aid agencies and consultants led nowhere, while the World Bankconcluded that, on the basis of demand projections and environmental concerns, a large dam wasnot feasible. Donors subsequently funded two more small- to medium-size dams, at Kidatu andPangani.

Increasing power shortages and rationing under Presidents Mkapa (1995-2005) and Kikwete(2005-15) led the government to seek private investors through power purchasing agreements.South African, Canadian and Chinese companies came forward with hydropower proposals, but themain interest came from Brazil’s giant Odebrecht corporation, which in 2012 signed an MOU withthe Rufiji Basin Development Authority (RUBADA).The MOU specified a seven-year timeline to finishthe first phase and a further three years to complete the project. But the project preliminaries hadnot been finalised before the corruption scandal known as Operation Carwash” made Odebrecht ahousehold name for serial bribery in Brazil and internationally, and led to the imprisonment of threeformer Brazilian presidents. President Magufuli disbanded RUBADA in 2017 and the SGD’s client isnow Tanzania’s power utility TANESCO under the supervision of the Ministry of Energy.

Not even China, Africa’s premier source of concessional finance for big infrastructure projects,including dams, has shown any interest in financing this one. As of 2015, Chinese contractors wereinvolved in dam building projects in over twenty African countries, from Angola to Zimbabwe.Though estimates vary, Deborah Brautigam and her team identified Chinese-financed dam projectsin 17 African countries in 2013, financed by concessional loans from China’s Exim Bank worth nearlyUS$7 billion.

Finally, no private investors could be found to finance a dam on a Public-Private Partnership (PPP)basis. Globally, private developers are increasingly reluctant to invest in large dams for powerproduction or irrigation. Human rights activists condemn forced population displacements while theeconomics of large dams are increasingly questionable. No forced population movements areinvolved in the SGD project, however.

What has changed to make this project viable?

After so many years of aborted plans to build a dam, what has changed to make Stiegler’s a viableproject? The answer is: nothing. If anything, the project is even less viable now than it was a decadeago, before Tanzania’s huge gas deposits off its southern coast began to be exploited. The risksattached to continued upstream-irrigated agriculture and siltation increase with time, bringing theadditional risk that the dam’s reservoir could fail to provide the volume of water required to run thefacility at a capacity level that would justify the huge investment involved.

For sixty years, no bilateral development agency nor the World Bank has been willing to finance a

dam at Stiegler’s Gorge, though these agencies have funded numerous medium-size dams over theyears on tributaries of the Rufiji River, which regularly dry up during the dry season and areincreasingly vulnerable to unpredictable rains. A study titled Structural adjustment and sustainabledevelopment in Tanzania reported that siltation was a common feature of small dams in Arusha,Kilimanjaro, Dodoma, Tanga and Rukwa regions. Falling water levels due to the degradation ofwater catchment areas rendered the potential of hydropower “doubtful”.

Beware of the mega-dam syndrome

If completed, the 700m long by 130m high SGD would be one of Africa’s largest dams by installedcapacity, equal to Egypt’s Aswan High Dam (2,100MW) and Mozambique’s Cahora Bassa(2,075MW). A rapid review suggests that SGD will generate few of the benefits but suffer most ofthe costs normally associated with large dams. A study titled Megaprojects and risk: An anatomy ofambition lists four typical flaws of mega-projects, including dams: “underestimated costs,overestimated revenues, undervalued environmental impacts and overvalued economic developmenteffects”. All four appear to apply in the case of the SGD. The study argues that: “Megaprojects aresystematically subject to “survival of the unfittest”, the worst projects get built instead of the best”.Big dams are inherently high-risk. In a 2014 study, researchers from Oxford University concludedthat: “In the vast majority of cases . . . megadams are not economically viable”.

Map 1: Selous Game Reserve. Source DW

Note: The map shows the SGR before the creation of the Nyerere National Park in 2019.

Dams per se are not the issue, but mega-dams. Though it is by no means true that dams are carbon-neutral, hydro is still by far the most common source of renewable power worldwide, accounting foraround 90 per cent of renewable energy generation. The main problems with mega-hydrohighlighted in the literature are population displacement, often accompanied by inadequatecompensation, and the up- and down-stream impacts on local eco-systems discussed in this report.Despite mega-dams’ bad reputation, a number of countries are investing heavily in mega-hydro,including Ethiopia, Brazil, Pakistan and China. The SGD does not involve population displacements.

Megaprojects are systematically subject to “survival of the unfittest”, the worst projectsget built instead of the best

But the dam’s power generation capacity is also questionable. The figure of peak generationcapacity of 2,100MW was based on a 25-year old feasibility study, since when the Rufiji River’saverage volume is said to have fallen by as much as a quarter. Upstream agriculture and (possibly)climate change are responsible. Experts see the effects of climate change (more droughts, storms,floods) as a threat to the viability of hydropower globally. According to Clemente Prieto of theSpanish Committee on Large Dams: “Climate change is having a remarkable impact on hydropowergeneration and it increases the challenge of managing hydro plants”. Though the effects of climatechange are difficult to predict, the increasing intensity of extreme and unusual climatic events iswell documented.

A dysfunctional aid relationship

UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre, prominent wildlife and nature conservation bodies, including theWorld Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN),numerous donors and a substantial number of private philanthropies dealing with specific animalsand issues (hunting, poaching, wildlife trafficking, forestry, water), have commented negatively onthe SGD initiative, so far to no avail. Germany, one of the most vocal critics of the project, has beenat the forefront of wildlife conservation efforts in Tanzania since colonial times. Over many years,Germany has financed the Tanzanian government, technical experts, the Frankfurt ZoologicalSociety (FZS) and others to promote conservation efforts in the Selous. After a heated debate in theGerman Bundestag in early 2019, a proposal that future Germany aid should be made conditional onTanzania abandoning the dam was rejected, while it was agreed that Germany should assistTanzania in finding an alternative source of power. This offer was not pursued.

Climate change is having a remarkable impact on hydropower generation and itincreases the challenge of managing hydro plants

Critics wonder why, given the Tanzanian government’s refusal to enter into a substantive dialoguewith its main long-term advisor/financier on conservation issues, while constantly ignoring its owninternational conservation commitments and policies, Germany continues to fund conservationefforts in Tanzania. In late 2018, a group of German experts was refused permission to enter theSelous to check on progress in anti-poaching. A German source commented: “International natureconservation organizations are increasingly wondering about the German policy of ‘paying andkeeping their mouth shut’’. An expert from KfW (Germany’s state development bank) resigned aftertwo years, during which the GOT restricted his visits to Selous (his work site). Underlying theprotracted stand-off is the widespread belief that the rapid decimation of Tanzania’s elephantpopulation—a two-thirds decline from about 109,000 in 2009 to about 43,000 in 2014—wasfacilitated by the active participation of elements within the Tanzanian state. The slow release of a2018 aerial survey of wildlife in the Selous fuels suspicions that poaching is still an issue. It took twoyears to release the report, which the German government had financed. According to HenryMwangonde, the number of elephants had stabilised at just over 15,000, more or less the numbercounted in 2014, suggesting little or no recovery.

Comment is free … and punishable

Once the government launches a major project, its implementation is declared “inevitable” and

beyond discussion, and any internal criticism is deemed “unpatriotic” and “treasonable”, whiledevelopment prospects. Magufuli accused “some” CSOs and NGOs “of being used by ‘foreigners’”to push the latter’s agenda. In May 2018, both ruling party and opposition MPs challenged thedecision to proceed with the SGD project in advance of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA),and the premature issuing of licences to clear-fell the site of the dam’s future reservoir.

International nature conservation organizations are increasingly wondering about theGerman policy of ‘paying and keeping their mouth shut’

These mild criticisms were met with an impassioned threat from environment minister Kangi Lugola,who told parliament: “. . . the government will go ahead with implementation of the project whetheryou like it or not. Those who are resisting the project will be jailed”. Since then, apart from praise-singing, local commentary has been muted, while external critics have focused more on theconservation aspects of the project than on its economic and financial implications, though the twoare related. No academic economist, Think Tank or newspaper editorialist has commentednegatively on the project, while social media sources have featured both critical and pro-Magufulicommentary, albeit with little insight into the underlying issues. It is striking that no advocacy groupor alliance in or outside Tanzania has challenged the SGD through public interest litigation, ashappened in the case of the proposed road across the Serengeti.

Conservation versus “development”: a zero-sum game?

Rapid population growth is fueling increasing conflicts between farmers and cattle-herders overland. Both groups face off against conservationists, big-game hunters and the safari tourism industryin what is increasingly becoming a zero-sum game. Attempts for more than two decades to“empower” villagers to protect rather than harvest wildlife and forest reserves have largely failed.Last year, President Magufuli ordered the deregistration of a number of “idle” forest and gamereserves totaling over 700,000ha for “redistribution to wananchi for residential and farming uses”.Subsequently, the government announced the creation of three new national parks, including onenear President Magufuli’s home district of Biharamulu. In addition, the government has recentlylegalised the hunting and sale of game meat, a move that conservationists see as opening the door tothe widespread slaughter of wildlife. The wildlife survey mentioned above reported a 72 per centdecline in the number of wildebeest in the Selous between 2013 and 2018. According toMwangonde, the numbers for buffalo and antelope have not been released, but there are thought tohave been significant decreases. Lastly, though the President justified the creation of NyerereNational Park in terms of stopping hunting tourism, the ban on commercial hunting that wasimposed in 2015 has been partially lifted.

For your information, the government will go ahead with implementation of the project. .. Those who are resisting the project will be jailed

With or without a functioning dam, the SGR has taken an additional hit. While ivory poaching mayhave been curbed for the moment, and uranium mining and oil and gas exploration are on hold, thedisruptions caused by the SGD contractors and the impending clear-felling of the dam’s imaginedreservoir only add to these and other threats to the (now much smaller) SGR’s long-term survival. Agloomy but realistic prognosis is that further population growth and the impact of climate changewill eventually put an end to conservation and wildlife tourism in the Selous and throughout thecontinent. According to Kenyan conservationist Richard Leakey, as a result of climate change: “. . .

the problems we all face now are far beyond the power of individual conservationists to cope with”.

Alhough many conservationists would challenge this view, it is difficult to see how fences and armedwardens can ward off climate change even if they can prevent “trespassing”, illegal hunting andgrazing, or how farmers and pastoralists can be “empowered” to conserve rather than degradeforests and grasslands in the absence of an effective state that can legislate, coordinate and regulatethe management of natural resources effectively and efficiently in the public interest. Even withoutthe gathering storm clouds of climate change, and the obscenities of ivory poaching and wildlifetrafficking, population growth and competition over finite resources are likely to lead us inexorablytowards a comprehensive tragedy of the commons.

Resource misallocation and delays

Beyond conservation issues, however, is the question of resource misallocation, which economistsnow treat as a major explanation of why some economies and firms perform better than others.Though universal, the issue of systemic resource misallocation is particularly devastating in poorcountries, where investible savings are by definition limited, and where prestige projects, whiteelephants and poor policy analysis and implementation commit huge amounts of capital to non-performing ventures, at enormous opportunity costs. Africa is littered with examples of leaders’vainglory, extravagance and incompetence.

President Magufuli is pinning his legacy on what he terms “strategic” infrastructure projects,perhaps reflecting, in Flyvbjerg’s words, “The rapture politicians get from building monuments tothemselves and their causes, and from the visibility this generates with the public and media”. Butthe success of the strategy depends on the success of the projects. If they succeed, the leader’slegacy is assured. If they fail, so does the legacy.

Wildlife trafficking, population growth and competition over resources are likely to leadus inexorably towards a comprehensive tragedy of the commons

President Magufuli’s penchant for multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects is stretching Tanzania’sfinances to the limit, consuming an ever-larger part of the national budget and growing the nationaldebt. Since coming to power in 2015, he has: initiated a 2,500km, $14.2 billion standard gaugerailway (SGR) to replace the narrow gauge line and extend it to neighbouring countries; revived thecountry’s airline Air Tanzania Company Ltd (ATC) with new aircraft, including four AirbusA220-300s and two Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners; signed off on a three-kilometre, $260m bridge acrossthe Mwanza Gulf on Lake Victoria, and launched a number of other costly projects.

It is most unlikely that the SGD will be commissioned before the end of President Magufuli’s secondterm in 2025, given the typical delays and cost overruns in mega-dam construction, leaving theunfinished project as a potentially costly embarrassment for the next government to deal with.Hopefully, ongoing investments in gas-fueled power plants, bottled gas for urban consumers and off-grid solar for rural areas will assure adequate power and help control deforestation in the likelyevent of an aborted Stiegler’s Gorge Dam.

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Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

Kenya’s Vision 2030, which identified Isiolo as a strategic location in the hydrocarbon economy ofthe region, combined with the 2010 Constitution, which led to the devolution of power andresources, have thrust Isiolo County, a once sleepy and neglected former garrison town, into the ElDorado of Kenya’s future development.

However, Isiolo’s potential, if not judiciously managed, could turn the county into the future axis ofnatural resource-based conflict, especially in the large-scale irregularly acquired land by privatecorporations and individuals under the guise of community wildlife conservation. The consequencesof what happens in Isiolo will likely spill over into other parts of Northern Kenya and Northern RiftValley.

Like other parts of Northern Kenya, Isiolo lagged behind the rest of the country in economicdevelopment because of the government’s economic planning policies contained in Sessional PaperNo 10 of 1965 “African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya”, which created adichotomy between low and high potential areas of the country. The reasoning was that the former

would benefit from the trickle-down effect of the government’s investment in the latter. Isiolo wasconsidered a low potential area, and thus received limited government investment. The community’slivelihood was based around livestock, which successive post-independence administrationsconsidered economically unviable and antiquated compared to agriculture. This meant that theregion received limited state support.

Parallel to limited investment, the post-colonial state continued with the colonial government’spolicy of mediating its relations with Isiolo and the broader North Eastern region through the lens ofsecurity. If the British colonial administration used Northern Kenya and Isiolo as a buffer zoneagainst Italians who were attempting to colonise Ethiopia and the French who were colonisingDjibouti, the post-colonial state viewed Isiolo as a place where demands for secession, banditry andcattle rustling were rampant. This has made Isiolo one of the few counties with the most militaryschools and military barracks in the country. The military is also one of the largest landowners inIsiolo.

Like other parts of Northern Kenya, Isiolo lagged behind the rest of the country ineconomic development because of the government’s economic planning policiescontained in Sessional Paper No 10 of 1965, which created a dichotomy between lowand high potential areas of the country.

Vision 2030, Kenya’s development plan for making Kenya a middle-income country (MIC) by 2030, isperhaps the closest the state came to rectifying the problems created by Sessional Paper No. 10 of1965. Vision 2030’s economic pillar aims to achieve an average economic growth rate of 10 per centper annum and sustaining the same until 2030. If the core of Sessional Paper No 10 is centralisedplanning, thus creating a center and a periphery, Vision 2030 calls for decentralisation, thusblurring the distinction between peripheries and the centre. In fact, it aims to turn previouslymarginalised areas like Isiolo into centres of development.

Some of the major Vision 2030 projects of the economic pillar are either based in Isiolo or passthrough the county. These projects include 6,500 acres of land at Kipsing Gap, which is about 20kilometres west of Isiolo town and sandwiched between Katim and OlDonyoDegishi Hill, where amulti-billion shilling resort city will be based. Parts of the LAPSSET pipeline passes through thecounty, and the town is also where the Isiolo International Airport has been built. These projects areat different stages of being implemented.

When they finally take off, these projects will undoubtedly spur positive economic growth andimprove peoples’ lives. Attention generated by these projects has also attracted “entrepreneurs” ofall stripes with land as their primary key resource. Excision of huge chunks of land pose anexistential threat to the pastoralist communities’ primary source of livelihood, which is alreadybuffeted by multiple challenges, including climate change, agro-pastoralist conflict, and the ever-decreasing water and pasture because of demographic pressures.

One of the big players in land excision debates are the private wildlife conservancies. The entitybehind wildlife conservancies is the Northern Rangeland Trust (NRT), which manages 39conservancies that cover an area of 42,000 square kilometers across the country, mostly in Northernand coastal Kenya.

In the media and in policy circles, the discourse on wildlife conservation and pastoralism is alwayscast in Manichean terms: wildlife conservancy is “good” and pastoralism is “bad”. This was evidentduring the Laikipia conflict in 2017 that pitted the mostly Samburu and Pokot herders against mostly

white, private ranchers (popularly known as Kenyan Cowboys or KCs).

During the conflict, the government and in turn the media described the pastoralists as “barbariansat the gate of civilization”, who only understand the language of brute force. As a result, the killingof livestock – the pastoralists’ livelihood – by the security agencies elicited less sympathy than thekilling of wildlife killed by the pastoralists, sometimes in self defence.

In the media and in policy circles, the discourse on wildlife conservation and pastoralismis always cast in Manichean terms: wildlife conservancy is “good” and pastoralism is“bad”.

Since tourism earns Kenya huge amounts of foreign exchange, it tends to be privileged over humanlife and pastoralists’ livelihoods. For instance, during the 2017 clash involving pastoralists andwildlife conservancies in Laikipia, over 300 cattle were killed by the security agencies, and this actdid not generate any condemnation.

Collective destruction of the pastoralist economy has historical precedent: The Truth, Justice andReconciliation Commission found that the Kenyan army killed and confiscated livestock belonging tocivilians in Northern Kenya. The shooting, especially of camels, was a particular strategy employedby the army as it was believed that camels were used by the Shifta to transport guns and othersupplies. The Commission also revealed that it was common for soldiers and government officers toinvade villages and confiscate cattle, sheep, camels and goats. The owners of such livestock werenever told what happened to their livestock, nor were they ever compensated for their losses.

But the discovery of natural resources has suddenly changed the state’s engagement calculus withNorthern Kenya, with the government making a beeline for the region, as demonstrated in theexpansion of some of the often-neglected infrastructure. There is a sense that being among the leastpopulated region, and being strategically close to the key borders of Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan,the North has plenty of “free” land to be exploited.

But this courtship is anchored on a deterministic and reductionist single narrative: the free market.There is a belief that if the markets are opened in the region, all its problems will go away.

This narrative is problematic. First, it assumes that the moment the region is linked to other parts ofKenya, it will automatically “develop”. Second, the creation of Northern Kenya in the image of therest of Kenya at the very minimum denies the people the agency to determine what developmentmeans to them. Third, we need to be circumspect regarding the pervasive business language thatassumes that the problem with public services is inefficiency and that technology is the answer. Thistechno fallacy and big data syndrome dehistoricises and decontextualises problems, and is ultimatelybound to fail. Fourth, the market, while it can be efficient in allocating economic goods and services,is terrible as the arbiter of social services. Unleashing market forces onto the region will destroy thecollective social fabric that has held these people together even in bad times.

Often unaccounted for in this framing is the pastoralist communities of Northern Kenya, which havebeen trading amongst themselves and with their counterparts across all the borders withoutgovernment support. The mutually reinforcing twin issues of insecurity and a fragile ecosystem haveengendered the communities’ remarkably innovative resilience instincts.

If everything around pastoralism is not securitised, pastoralists are infantilised. In the currentwildlife private conservation paradigm – underwritten by well-heeled intergenerational wildlifeconservation untouchable “royals” and marketed by a well-choreographed sleek PR machine –

pastoralist communities who have lived in harmony with wildlife for generations are only used asworn-out tropes of the Messiah Complex. Kuki Gallmann, whose life is immortalised in the movie IDreamed of Africa is cast as a noble White Saviour, keeping the wildlife and pastoralists safe.

Northern Rangeland Trust and the Lewa model

Isiolo has three national game reserves: the Shaba Game Reserve (256 square kilometres), BuffaloSprings (131 square kilometres) and BisanAdi (150 square kilometres). All of these areas block orrestrict human habitation and grazing. On top of the game reserves, there are a number ofconservancies in Isiolo: Biliqo-Bulesa, which covers 3784.82 square kilometres and was establishedin 2007, Nakuprat-Gotu, which was established in 2011 and covers a total area of 719.92 squarekilometres, Leparua which was established in 2011 and covers a total area of 328.35 squarekilometres, and Nasuulu which was established in 2011 and covers 346.01 square kilometres. Theseare significant chunks of land being administered by a corporation.

If everything around pastoralism is not securitised, pastoralists are infantilised. In thecurrent wildlife private conservation paradigm, pastoralist communities who have livedin harmony with wildlife for generations are only used as worn-out tropes of the MessiahComplex.

According to NRT, conservancies are community-led wildlife conservation initiatives that provide awin-win situation for wildlife conservation and for pastoralists. The lack of transparency andadequate information regarding the manner in which these conservancies are established andmanaged adds to the anxiety of pastoralist communities. Pastoralists in the area have been victims ofvarious land grabs in the past and therefore view conservancies as a Trojan horse that will lead tofurther annexation of their pastoral rangelands.

Lewa conservancy, which covers 62,000 acres and is a home to a wide variety of wildlife, includingrare and endangered black rhinos, zebras and Sitatungas, as well as the “Big Five” wildlife animals. Lewa’s value addition is held up as an aspirational model for other private wildlife conservancies.

However, the use of Lewa as a model for the future of Isiolo misses the dynamics inside Isiolo andfor that matter elsewhere in the North. Laikipia County, where Lewa is located, doesn’t have nearlyas many pastoralists as Isiolo does, which made the excision of such a huge tract of land possible.Additionally, the pastoral communities in Isiolo are diverse. Also not discussed when holding Lewaas a model is the failure of efforts at replicating Lewa inside Laikipia. For instance, establishment ofa conservancy in OldoNyiro led to the community losing their land, forcing them to graze theirlivestock by the roadside because all the land has been fenced off.

Pastoralists in the area have been victims of various land grabs in the past and thereforeview conservancies as a Trojan horse that will lead to further annexation of theirpastoral rangelands.

At the heart of the establishment of the conservancies is the argument of return on investment:having “community” wildlife conservancies will allow pastoralists to have a stable income. But thereis no conservancy that can guarantee the pastoralist the same kind of return that they can get fromtheir livestock.

NRT has ambitions of establishing conservancies not just in Isiolo but across the Northern region.

They already have some conservancies in Samburu County and plans are at an advanced stage toestablish more conservancies in Marsabit County.

Devolution of power and resources to the county was designed as an antidote to centraliseddecision-making in Nairobi, which resulted in unbalanced and unequal economic development. Whatthe framers of the constitution did not envisage, however, was the quality of representation that willshepherd devolution at the county level. The disparity between counties with good leaders and thosewith poor leaders is well documented.

But Isiolo’s land grab did not happen in a vacuum; it has been facilitated by poor leadership. Theestablishment of wildlife conservancies in Isiolo is a shot across the bow for other counties, such asMarsabit County. If they are not stopped, we could be walking into land-related conflicts with oureyes wide open.

The large-scale land grab in Isiolo by NRT will adversely impact the pastoralists’ livelihood, andgenerate new conflicts in an area blighted by incessant conflict. This will erode the potential Isiolowould have gained from devolution, Vision 2030 and its proximity to Ethiopia, which has thepotential to increase cross-border trade.

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Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

The tension was evident, untouchable, but abundant. Everyone spoke with unmistakable anger. Itwas approaching 11.00 p.m. and for hours we listened to community members who took turns tonarrate to us the harrowing experiences the Borana community had gone through at the hands ofwell-trained rangers and raiders from the Samburu community. This had gone on since 2006 whenthe Biliqo-Bulesa Conservancy was formed.

“We were forced to collect the information at night after word went round that the NorthernRangelands Trust had earlier mobilised its supporters to unleash chaos during a meeting called thefollowing day to discuss its operations in the Conservancy,” said Al-Amin Kimathi, a renownedhuman rights activist. . After taking dinner out in the open, the team gathered in a makeshift sheltereager to listen to members of the community. And they had prepared well. Some had come withwritten notes and used torches to read through them.

“The organisation employed the carrot-and-stick tactic used across Africa for centuriesby Europeans to colonise, control, exploit and dominate people on the continent. NRTstarted off by contacting and sweet-talking influential personalities within thecommunity who it later deployed to convince fellow community members of the benefitsthey stood to gain from the conservancy,” said Najar Nyakio Munyinyi, a consultant onindigenous land rights.

“Ile ndovu tuliyoambiwa tutakua tukiikamua sasa imekua ya kutumaliza” (We were told that we willbe benefiting from wildlife conservation, but instead we have been losing our lives), said SheikhDabbaso Ali Dogo, the former chairman of the Conservancy Board. Dogo added that before theconservancy was formed, top officials of NRT, including its founder, Ian Craig, had made a raft ofpromises to the community.

“The organisation employed the carrot-and-stick tactic used across Africa for centuries byEuropeans to colonise, control, exploit and dominate people on the continent. NRT started off bycontacting and sweet-talking influential personalities within the community who it later deployed to

convince fellow community members of the benefits they stood to gain from the conservancy,” saidNajar Nyakio Munyinyi, a consultant on indigenous land rights.

Among those selected was Jaarso Golicha Gaade, a former councilor with the defunct Isiolo CountyCouncil and now an employee of NRT. With other elders, Gaade was hosted by Craig at LewaConservancy in Laikipia in 2006. Craig then asked the initial group of elders to identify fellow elderswho could join them in coaxing the rest of the community members to accept the idea of theConservancy.

After being promised goodies, the latter then organised seminars during which the formation of theConservancy was discussed. “NRT promised the communities a complete halt to the long-runninginsecurity and cattle-rustling incidents as well as lasting peace between it and the neighbouringSamburu, Turkana and Rendille communities,” said Retired Major Jillo Dima, an elder in thecommunity. Jillo added that to make this happen, NRT promised to finance the construction of aninstitution for morans in the area. He says that the organisation also made other promises related toemployment of young men as rangers and said that they would not only be protecting wildlife butalso members of the community. It would also invest Sh50 million on a project identified bymembers of the first Conservancy Board, and income from tourism activities in the Conservancy.

“With the promises in mind, the community needed no more coaxing; it soon agreed to commithundreds of thousands of its pasturelands for conservation purposes. The 364,000-hectareConservancy was formed in 2006 following the ‘signing’ of an agreement between the communityand the NRT.” He expressed disappointment that the agreement has remained secret for over the 13years the Conservancy has been in existence, adding that it was odd that all the people, includingformer board members, “have neither seen the agreement nor were they aware of its provisions”.

(Our attempt to interview relevant officials of NRT did not bear fruits. They did not get back to useven after sending questions to them.)

Members of the community reported that apart from giving the Conservancy a vehicle, constructingtwo classrooms, a mud-walled nursery school and teachers’ houses and employing a number ofrangers, the NRT has reneged on most other promises. To make matters worse, NRT went out of itsway to worsen the plight of the community and unilaterally makes all the decisions. For instance, welearned that the organisation engineered the sacking and replacement of members of the first boardafter they demanded to know what came of the promises made to the community. Those interviewedadded that finances meant for the Conservancy were banked in an NRT account and that theConservancy has only held two annual general meetings since it was formed. Further, they said thatpast and current Conservancy board members have no powers and do not even know what incomewas earned by the Conservancy.

It is not a wonder that the community later resolved, in a meeting called by elected leaders and theBorana Council of Elders, to kick NRT out of Isiolo County; a resolution that is yet to be fullyimplemented.

‘Kenya ‘B’ and the Community Land Act

As part of Isiolo County, the land in Biliqo-Bulesa is just a small proportion of the morethan 60 per cent of the country where land adjudication has hardly started. So anyonewith the financial muscle and the ability to command the backing of top politicalkingpins in the country can lay claim to vast tracts of land there and thereby disinheritcommunities, some of whom have inhabited the region since the 10th century.

It is important to appreciate that the goings-on at the mammoth-sized conservancy is part of whathappens in the section of the country now called, in Kenyan parlance, “Kenya B”. This is a vastregion in the country whose residents have suffered neglect and open discrimination since thegeographical entity now called Kenya was configured by the British colonisers. It is a region thatseems to have remained in the peripheries of the subconscious of many a policy maker and politicianwho’ve run this country since independence. As Dr Nene Mburu says in the book Bandits on theBorder: The Last Frontier in the Search for Somali Unity, this is “one half of Kenya which the otherhalf knows nothing about and seems to care for even less.”

As part of Isiolo County, the land in Biliqo-Bulesa is just a small proportion of the more than 60 percent of the country where land adjudication has hardly started. So anyone with the financial muscleand the ability to command the backing of top political kingpins in the country can lay claim to vasttracts of land there and thereby disinherit communities, some of whom have inhabited the regionsince the 10th century. The land conundrum there is now compounded by the decision to put upmega-schemes, such as LAPPSET and other Vision 2030 projects that continue to take up vast tractsof the community land.

However, the seemingly desolate and apparent economically underdeveloped regioncovers more than half of Kenya’s total land area and has vast wealth buried in the soil.The presence of mineral wealth is confirmed by a map of oil blocks in Kenya that criss-cross Isiolo and other arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) counties.

On paper, the land in Isiolo and elsewhere in the north is protected by the Community Land Act. ThisAct gives pastoral communities the right to govern their land with full recognition of their ancestralheritage and unique governance and livelihoods systems. It recognises, protects and provides for theregistration of community land rights; the administration and management of such lands; and titlingand conversion of community land. It also provides for the management of the environment andnatural resources on community land and the resolution of disputes and accommodates the customsand practices of pastoral communities relating to land.

However, although this piece of legislation became part of Kenyan law in 2016, the process ofdeveloping regulations for its implementation have been frustrated by powerful people ingovernment for their own ends. At the same time, little or no effort has been made to raise theawareness of members of the pastoral communities on the provisions of the Act. Further, theNational Land Commission and the relevant county governments are yet to initiate a process thatwould lead to registration of community land and implementation of this law. This has givenorganisations, such as the NRT, adequate room to manipulate communities for their own benefit.

It is no wonder that NRT had gone ahead to unilaterally identify sites for the construction of tourismfacilities that are located in areas that are key for the survival of the livestock-based economy inBiliqo-Bulesa and the entire Charri Rangeland. These include the Baballa Camp that is set to be putup along an animal movement route close to the Ewaso Nyiro River, the Maddo Gurba Huqqa, whichis close to a community shallow well, and Sabarwawa, an area where the water table is quiteshallow. Others are in Nyachiis, which was previously used by the community for traditional namingceremonies, and Kuro-Bisaan Owwo, a hot spring whose water has medicinal properties for bothhumans and livestock – a place where the NRT had planned to set up a spa for tourists. “We haveresisted the takeover of these sites by NRT,” said Jillo.

Deliberate schemes

There are those who believe that the failure to start the land adjudication process in Isiolo and thecounties of Marsabit, Moyale, Garissa, Wajir and Mandera, and the marginalisation and deprivationin the erstwhile Northern Frontier District (NFD) have been deliberate schemes by all thegovernments that have run Kenya since the colonial period. Their main aim, it is said, is to keep thelands open for all manner of activities that have largely been injurious to the environment as well asto the local residents and their economic lifelines. For instance, the colonial government arbitrarilypartitioned – and thereby greatly disrupted – the rhythm of life and especially the traditional pastoralway of life in the north. This went hand in hand with the establishment of what Dr Nene Mburu calls“impracticable administrative arrangements”.

The colonial government did little other than setting up military installations there, taxing thepastoralists as well as quarantining animal movements that curtailed the traditional trade inlivestock. It also enacted discriminatory laws, such as the District Ordinance of 1902, declared Isioloa closed district in 1926, and restricted the movement of residents under The Special DistrictsOrdinance of 1934. “This legislation regulated non-resident travel into the districts,” writes DrMburu who concludes that the net effect of the discriminatory policies was to create an “ironcurtain” that isolated the north from the rest of Kenya.

Sadly, successive post-independence governments have not shown, in policy and actions, that theywere opposed to the colonial policy. If anything, the first post-independence government of JomoKenyatta continued the colonial policy of discrimination and neglect. Kenyatta waged war against adetermined Somali nationalism. This was after failing to reach an agreement over whether NDF wasto be part of Kenya or Somalia during the three Lancaster House Conferences on 1961, 1962 and1963. Between 1963 and 1968, Kenya deployed its military to fight off Shifta guerillas out to enforcethe secession of the NFD from the new republic.

Isiolo’s hidden wealth

Isiolo is dominated by members of the Borana community who have continued to lose their land overthe years. According to Dr Mburu, the community was historically used as a convenient humanbarricade, or buffer, by Ethiopia and Britain against the expansionist tendencies of othercommunities. For instance, he says that different Ethiopian kings used the Borana country to checkthe influence of European penetration into Abyssinia’s interior and to contain Somali expansionnorthwards from the NFD and western Somalia into Ethiopia. And just like the Kenya governmenthas failed to do since the colonial period, Ethiopia merely used the Borana community but was notinterested in governing its homeland effectively.This gave the Somali an opportunity to consolidatetheir westwards expansion into the NFD. Dr Mburu says that by 1880, the Somali had forcefullydriven the Borana into Moyale and southwards out of the El-Wak wells, forcing them furtherwestwards into Marsabit, Isiolo and parts of Wajir.

Although the attractiveness of Isiolo and other parts of the north appears to have being missed bypolicy makers, it is not lost on the NRT and the vested interests it represents. True, the region has aharsh environment with hot and dry habitats dominated by low-lying terrain, acacia trees, shrubsand isolated dwarf bush grasslands. The county has conditions that are quite uncomfortable,especially for people inhabiting the highlands areas of Kenya, where it is much cooler. Wheneverthey fall, the rains there are low; there’s hardly a place that gets more than 500 mm of rain. Andbesides the Tana and Ewaso Nyiro to the south as well as River Dauwa to the north, Isiolo and othercounties in the entire region have few other permanent water sources.

However, the seemingly desolate and apparent economically underdeveloped region covers morethan half of Kenya’s total land area and has vast wealth buried in the soil. The presence of mineralwealth is confirmed by a map of oil blocks in Kenya that criss-cross Isiolo and other arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) counties. Indeed, the presence of mineral wealth in Isiolo and other areas of Kenyawas confirmed by the Russian ambassador in 2003, who revealed publicly that by the 1940s,Russians had known the minerals Kenya has. What the ambassador did not reveal then was that theBritish had contracted Russian geologists to explore and map out mineral occurrence in Kenya.

The NRT-mineral connection becomes vivid if one was to overlay the map of the 35conservancies under the organisation and the minerals-occurrence map of Kenya.Whether this is by coincidence or not is hard to ascertain. However, it is important tonote that the NRT conservancies happen to be in the same areas suspected to have thegreatest proportion of mineral wealth in Kenya.

Around the time the Russian ambassador made the claim, many keen Kenyans were surprised whenmineral deposits started “popping out” all over the country. For instance, it was around the sametime that the prolonged controversy over the titanium deposits in Kwale started. Further, wordstarted spreading that Isiolo has significant deposits of iron ore, gemstones and other mineralsm, aswell as vast amounts of water in the Merti aquifer. This was decades after Kenyan school childrenstarted being taught about the lack of minerals in the sub-soils of the country in geography lessons!What became interesting too was that the greatest number of companies that have since receivedprospecting or mining permits for oil, titanium and other minerals are either British or belong to theBritish in the Australian and Canadian diasporas.

The mineral-conservation nexus

It is easy to miss the connection between conservation and mineral occurrence in the country. It isalso easy to miss the nexus between the ongoing quest to secure vast tracts of land, ostensibly forconservation purposes, and the confirmed mineral wealth in Isiolo and other counties in the north.But keen observers have noted an interesting financial camaraderie between the NRT and certainmining concerns. For instance, according to reports, Tullow Oil gave NRT a whopping $11.5 million(Sh1.15 billion) to NRT in 2013 to start six conservancies in Turkana, a county that has little or nowildlife. “It is not a wonder that many people have expressed suspicions that by donating sogenerously to NRT, Tullow Oil wanted the organisation to help it secure lands that are rich in oildeposits,” said Ms Munyinyi. However, as media reports showed, the operations of NRT in Turkanawere curtailed to a great extent after the Joseph Nanok-led county government kicked theorganisation out of the county in 2014.

The NRT-mineral connection becomes vivid if one was to overlay the map of the 35 conservanciesunder the organisation and the minerals-occurrence map of Kenya. Whether this is by coincidence ornot is hard to ascertain.

However, it is important to note that the NRT conservancies happen to be in the same areassuspected to have the greatest proportion of mineral wealth in Kenya. Indeed, this writer found itcurious during the tour to Biliqo-Bulesa Conservancy in February that the Chinese were alreadymining mica and other minerals in Nyachis and Sabarwawa areas, which are located in aninaccessible part of Biliqo-Bulesa Conservancy. This writer has since learned that the Chinese havestopped their operations there following the raging controversy over NRT operations in theConservancy. However, what this writer was unable to establish was the connection between theNRT and Chinese miners and how the latter were allowed to mine in a Conservancy started for thesole aim of wildlife conservation.

Initial symptoms

What is unmistakable though is that Isiolo, a resource-rich county, is already experiencing the initialsymptoms of a “resource curse” that is so prevalent across Africa and which is more pronounced inplaces that are rich in minerals. Usually, the curse unfolds whenever governments unwittingly ordeliberately fail to pacify areas referred to as the “backwaters of development”. To cover the void,the communities decide, or are encouraged, to arm themselves to protect their lives and livelihoodsfrom neighbouring communities with whom they share water, pastures and other resources. Soon,bilateral and multilateral agencies, as well as NGOs, find these places attractive for their activities,which are largely passed on as being beneficial to the neglected communities. The agencies aregiven a near-free hand to operate there since their activities and their effects on the relevantcommunities are rarely audited by the national governments or independent auditors.

As far as the north of Kenya is concerned, there have been claims that outsiders are involved insupplying arms to the warring communities. For instance, the Small Arms Survey of 2012 says thatthe British Army Training Unit in Kenya (Batuk) is one of the outfits that have been supplying armsto pastoralists in the north. This has raised the firepower wielded illegally by members of differentcommunities in the north and has led to the transformation of the traditional cattle-rustling activitiesinto intermittent clashes which, if unchecked, can spiral into dangerous, full blown conflicts thatmight go on for decades.

Because many of the people who run African governments are beholden to vested interests in richindustrial countries, they do very little or nothing to fully integrate the neglected areas intomainstream society. This gives the vested interests ample opportunities to keep the conflicts alive;

they result in the same divide-and-rule tactics perfected by Europeans who have kept much of Africaon a leash. In Isiolo for instance, the NRT has encouraged the expansionist tendencies by membersof the Garri community, who are said to have migrated from Moyale in Ethiopia following the changeof government in Addis Ababa that occurred a few year ago. Encouraged by NRT, the Garri nowconstitute seven out of the eleven board members of Gotu-Nakurpat Conservancy that neighboursBiliqo-Bulesa.

At the same time, there is evidence that NRT has been facilitating inter-community and intra-community tension and conflict in the conservancies in Isiolo. We learned that for years, the Boranacommunity, whose most members are opposed to ongoing NRT operations in Isiolo, had almost losttheir ability to fight for human and land rights. According to a local elder, Mzee Mohamed Adan, thiswas after the organisation influenced the withdrawal of guns held by homeguards who earlierdefended the Borana. He added that since the Conservancy was formed, the community hasexperienced nine raids conducted by Samburu morans, during which over 70 people were killed andthousands of livestock stolen. From interviews with past officials of the conservancy board and othercommunity members, it emerged that 59 of the people were killed by Samburu morans who wereassisted by the specially-trained NRT rangers who travelled there in NRT-branded vehicles. The restof the victims died after young men from the Borana community engaged in counter-attacks. Theraids, we learned, were well coordinated. The NRT had taken sides and appeared keen to “punish”the Borana for opposing its operations in Isiolo.

Campaign to involve communities

NRT’s operation across Kenya was informed by the campaign for the involvement of communities,and especially those inhabiting wildlife dispersal areas, in the national conservation programme.This began in early 2000s and particularly after the IUCN’s World Parks Congress held in Durban,South Africa in 2003. The campaign was inspired by the need to preserve ecosystems and wildlifehabitats that happen to be on lands owned and held by local communities. The effort was entrenchedin law following the review and enactment of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act in2013. Championing the model have been conservationists who claim that 70 per cent of Kenya’swildlife is found outside national parks and reserves and that the survival of protected areas largelydepends on the preservation of vast habitats and lands used by wildlife away from parks.

NRT was founded by Ian Craig in 2004. Craig is a holder of the Order of the British Empire (OBE),awarded in 2016 by Queen Elizabeth II for “services to conservation and security to communities inKenya”. Craig’s family owns the 62,000-acre Lewa Conservancy in Laikipia, which is said to havebeen given to his great-grandmother by the British government in 1918 for serving during the FirstWorld War. Craig, who was raised in Kenya, is the father of Jessica Craig, the young woman who wasonce believed to be romantically involved with Prince William.

Since its formation, the NRT has been receiving billions of shillings in grants from a number ofEuropean countries and the United States as well as international NGOs, such as the NatureConservancy (TNC), private trusts and rich people in the West. As a result, the NRT has managed toset up 35 conservancies across northern and coastal regions that now cover a whopping 44,000square kilometers or over 10 million hectares (i.e. about 8 per cent of the total land surface inKenya). These conservancies are mainly in remote places where the Kenyan government has little orno footprint. The NRT has been trying to fill the void by altering and adding to its initial conservationmandate a number of activities, including security, prevention of cattle rustling, running a creditscheme, meeting the needs of the communities and livestock marketing.

It is out of this hue and cry that this writer accompanied the team that carried out the fact-findingmission in Biliqo-Buulessa Community Conservancy. Included in the team were representatives of

the Isiolo-based Waso Professional Forum, the Borana Council of Elders, the Sisi kwa Sisiorganisation formed by students from the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure at KenyattaUniversity, journalists as well as representatives from the Errant Native Movement.

True state of affairs

Kimathi, who is also a member of the Errant Native Movement, says that it was important toestablish whether the allegations made against NRT were true. He told this writer that his team borein mind the fact that livestock production remains the most important livelihood activity for thecommunity and that any tourism activity or other economic undertaking can only supplement, butnot replace, livestock husbandry. He added that the joint team experienced firsthand how NRT hadbeen violating the rights of the community.

“We visited the Biliqo-Conservancy between January 26 and 29, 2019. Prior to the tour, we wereinformed that NRT had, on ten different occasions, used its influence within the security andadministration establishments in Isiolo County, and especially in the Merti Sub-county, to frustratethe desire by the community to hold a meeting to deliberate on whether or not to continue with theconservancy. Indeed, we found out that conducting the fact-finding mission was risky,” says Kimathi.

According to community members interviewed by this writer, the NRT had earlier sent its officialswho would travel in the organisation’s vehicles “inciting and buying off” some communities in orderto unleash chaos during the planned community meeting. To avoid what would have otherwisebecome an ugly encounter, Kimathi’s team decided to hold long discussions with members of thecommunity on the evening of January 26th at Biliqo Market, during which different people therenarrated how the conservancy was started and the harrowing experiences they have experienced atthe hands of NRT rangers and Samburu raiders. They also claimed that the NRT has introduced lionsinto the conservancy, which have been killing livestock and attacking and injuring some of theresidents.

“On the morning of January 27th, we visited and interviewed some of the family members of thevictims killed during the Samburu raids and counter-raids by the Borana,” said Ms Munyinyi. Theconsultant on indigenous land rights added that many of the interviews were held in their homes atthe Buulessa Market. “As this was going on, we saw rowdy young people being ferried to the venueof the meeting by Land Cruisers belonging to the NRT and the Biliqo-Buulessa Conservancy whoshouted threats to members of the team, saying they would kick them out of the area. Later, therowdy youth succeeded in disrupting the meeting.”

On their part, the police from the Merti Police station, who were present, appeared more interestedin finding out whether the conveners of the meeting had a permit. They were unwilling to stop therowdy youth from disrupting the meeting even after finding out that the conveners had indeed takenthe necessary steps, as is required by the law. Eventually, the police stopped the meeting andordered everyone to disperse, which greatly pleased the rowdy youth.

It was apparent that the Acting Deputy County Commissioner (DCC), James Miring’u, and theAssistant County Commissioner (ACC), Njeru Ngochi, were of not much help either. The DCC andthe ACC were evidently not in control. When interviewed by this writer, they expressed ignorance ofthe connection between insecurity and NRT operations in the Conservancy. However, it was notclear how the sub-county administration would have failed to notice (or investigate) the allegedkilling of tens of people and the invasion of Borana people’s land by the raiders.

Traditional conflict resolution mechanisms

According to Dr. Abdullahi Shongolo, a consultant with the Germany-based Max PlanckInstitute of Social Anthropology, the Borana, Samburu, Somali, Rendille and otherpastoralist communities in the north avoided conflicts by sending elders to seek andnegotiate for permission to graze in each other’s lands, especially during droughts.

The intermittent conflict in the Conservancy is not new; inter-community conflicts in the north havea long history. The conflicts usually start off as “normal” cattle raids or as competition over waterand pasture. But they have worsened with the proliferation of small arms in the region. In the past,local communities had established effective traditional mechanisms to either avoid the conflicts or toresolve them whenever they occurred.

According to Dr. Abdullahi Shongolo, a consultant with the Germany-based Max Planck Institute ofSocial Anthropology, the Borana, Samburu, Somali, Rendille and other pastoralist communities inthe north avoided conflicts by sending elders to seek and negotiate for permission to graze in eachother’s lands, especially during droughts. Usually, the elders from the affected community wouldvisit their counterparts in communities that were not as affected by the droughts with a message ofgoodwill and to seek grazing permission on behalf of their community members. In most cases, sucha request was granted once the elders in the relevant community assessed the available pasturesand deliberated on where to allow the affected people to graze their animals. But, according to DrShongolo, this system was done away with following the appointment of chiefs and elected leaderswho can now make unilateral decisions on this matter without consulting the community, especiallyafter money has changed hands.

This has been complicated further by the entry of NRT, which has altered the power and traditionalgovernance structures of the communities in the north and replaced traditional natural resourcemanagement systems, such as the Dedha system practiced by the Borana, with “modern” systems.Instead of working through institutions such as the Dedha Council, NRT has appointed conservancymanagers, security scouts and members of the conservancy boards who have effectively taken overthe decision-making roles that were the preserve of the elders. These NRT-appointed managers andboards now wield largely unchecked and ultimate power in the conservancies. NRT has also imposedits influence on the management of resources by reducing the grazing area of the Borana communityin the Biliqo-Conservancy.

“After we came back from Biliqo-Bulesa, it was clear that NRT has capitalised on the lack ofawareness of the land rights of the inhabitants of the Conservancy to violate their rights,” said MsMunyinyi. She added that it is also clear that security issues in the Conservancy, as well as in otherparts of in the north, are made worse by the fact that the Kenyan government has largely ceded itsresponsibility of providing security to the residents. “There is evidently a thin line between the rolesof conservancy security teams formed by the NRT vis-à-vis state security personnel because theformer are well-trained and equipped with sophisticated weapons and have been handling roles thatare legally the preserve of the police, the KWS [Kenya Wildlife Service] and the countyadministration.”

In most other countries, no NGO, such as the NRT, would be allowed to conduct security operationsthat lead to violence and are coercive in nature. In this regard, the Government of Kenya has failedthe community of Biliqo-Buulessa and needs to take its responsibilities seriously.

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Ngorongoro NaziBy Stephen Corry

The practice of conservation and the narrative around African wildlife is a kingdom, albeit without asingle monarch. The monarchy and nobility consist of an eclectic mix of royalty, commoners, idlers,misfits, scientists, killers (who refer to themselves as “hunters”) across a very broad spectrum ofbackgrounds. We have youthful cowboys in their 20s, and we have octogenarians. There are alsowealthy lords and scruffy backpackers. The one thread that links them is the fact that they are allwhite.

Their race is also what confers upon them a unity of purpose and mutual sympathy in lands where

the indigenous majority are black. This kingdom is absolute and doesn’t tolerate dissent from itssubjects. Those who serve the kingdom faithfully are rewarded with senior positions in the technical(not policy) arena and international awards and are showered with praise and backhandedcompliments in descriptions like “being switched on”, “a good chap”, and best of all, “a reformedpoacher”. This praise also manifests itself in the form of the Tusk Conservation Award, which isconferred annually by the Duke of Cambridge, HRH Prince William, on the local conservationist whobest serves as an implementer or enforcer of the kingdom’s conservation goals.

Structured conservation practice in East Africa began largely when demobilised World War IIsoldiers started looking for a field where they could apply one of the few skills they had gained in thewar (shooting) without harming people. The rise of the conservation officer or protector was actuallypreceded by the establishment of the first hunting reserves at the turn of the century a few decadesearlier.

However, there was a new recognition that the resource was finite and needed to be preserved forthe exclusive use of the colonial nobility that was necessarily defined by race; hence the need forenforcement. Exploitation of African wildlife by Western consumers began in the early 1900s withhunting safaris, which were basically tests of resilience and skill with the target of harvesting thebiggest and largest number from this bounty under pretty harsh and rustic conditions. It was closelyfollowed in the 1960s by the photographic safari and cinematography that cemented theromanticism of these adventures in the African wild. This led to a spurt in tourist interest, which nodoubt pleased the foreign exchange-hungry newly independent states.

Intellectual desert

Two major pitfalls arose from the romantic age between 1950 and1970 – pitfalls that continue todetermine how wildlife conservation is practised today. The first major pitfall was the illogical linkand valuation of wildlife based on tourists’ appreciation and (where hunting was allowed)consumption. The second pitfall was the firm placement of black Africans as “props” who weredestined never to be equal intellectual participants in the management of and discourse aroundAfrican wildlife. Thus my compulsion to describe Kenya (rather harshly, in some of my readers’estimation) as an “intellectual desert” as far as wildlife conservation is concerned.

Two major pitfalls arose from the romantic age between 1950 and1970 – pitfalls thatcontinue to determine how wildlife conservation is practised today. The first major pitfallwas the illogical link and valuation of wildlife based on tourists’ appreciation and (wherehunting was allowed) consumption. The second pitfall was the firm placement of blackAfricans as “props” who were destined never to be equal intellectual participants in themanagement of and discourse around African wildlife.

Indeed, photographic and hunting safaris have since then included a very obvious but unspokenelement of domination over black Africans – we can see it in the nameless black faces in whitehunters’ photographs and in the postures of servile African staff attending to white tourists in theadvertising brochures. Black Africans are totally absent as clients in all the media and advertisingmaterials and campaigns. When hunting was legal in Kenya, it was normal for a photograph of ahunter with his guides, porters and gun bearer to be captioned: “Major F. Foggybottom and a fineleopard bagged in the Maasai Mara region of Kenya, September, 1936.” Fast forward 80 years or so.Black Africans are prominent in their absence from the reams and hours of literature and footage onAfrica’s spectacular wildlife. The uniformity of this anomaly is startling across the board, whetherone is watching the Discovery channel, BBC, or National Geographic.

With the advance of neoliberalism, market forces have become important drivers of both tacit andexplicit policies all over the world. In African conservation policy and practice, the black African hasbecome like an insidious impurity that sometimes leaks into the final product but should ideally beabsent in anything considered “premium”. This is not to say that media houses and marketing firmsare deliberately engaging in racial discrimination; however, they are, sadly, pandering to prejudicesthat have been cultivated by romantic or colonial notions about Africa and its wildlife.

The colour bar

Blatant racism becomes much more evident in the conservation field, which in Kenya is dominatedby whites. From a strictly academic standpoint, the open discrimination and obvious colour barevident in the conservation sector in Kenya is fascinating for two major reasons: one is its longevity –business, agriculture, banking, education and all other fields have changed beyond recognition inthe last few decades, but conservation remains firmly in the “Victorian gamekeeper” mode, whereconservation is basically about protecting wildlife from the proletariat so that the nobles canconsume the same for luxury/ recreational purposes.

The second is the acceptance of this status quo by senior indigenous state officials and technicalexperts across the board. Wildlife conservation is the one field where highly-qualified black Africansare routinely supervised by white practitioners of far lesser technical pedigree or experience.Indeed, some of the supervisors are American or Europeans relatively new to Kenya and with veryrudimentary knowledge (if any) of Kenyan wildlife and ecosystems. Examples that come to mind arethe appointment of one Peter Hetz (MSc, American) as Executive Director of the Laikipia WildlifeForum in 2011 to supervise one Mordecai Ogada (PhD, Kenyan) who was appointed as DeputyDirector. The recent appointment of Mr. Jochen Zeitz to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) board isanother case in point. Here I have used very pointed racial references because it is quite simply aracial divide. We simply do not find non-Caucasian foreigners in wildlife leadership positions inKenya, nor do we find Latin Americans or Asians. We also don’t find Kenyans of European descent inany of the subordinate roles.

Wildlife conservation is the one field where highly-qualified black Africans are routinelysupervised by white practitioners of far lesser technical pedigree or experience. Indeed,some of the supervisors are American or Europeans relatively new to Kenya and withvery rudimentary knowledge (if any) of Kenyan wildlife and ecosystems.

How, an observer might ask, is this hierarchy maintained without any disruption by the growingnumber of indigenous Kenyans pursuing advanced studies in the conservation field? How do theacademic exertions of all these technicians fail to moisten the intellectual desert in Kenyanconservation?

One reason is because, just like water never produces vegetation on seedless ground, theintellectual barrenness of indigenous Kenyans has been built into the training facilities andcurricula. It goes without saying that Kenya’s ecological diversity and abundant wildlife are keypillars in the country’s economic, social and cultural identity, but Moi University, the de factoleading local institution in this field, only offers a degree course in “wildlife management”, whichbasically equips local wildlife practitioners to be technicians or foot soldiers for conservation, not tobe fully engaged with any of the intellectual challenges that exist in the sector. Those who are bettertrained and experienced in this field are a small minority who seldom find acceptance in the sectorbecause they inherently threaten the existing hierarchy.

KWS itself has two training facilities: the Manyani field school and a well-resourced training institutein Naivasha. Manyani is a proven centre of excellence in tactical field training necessary for wildliferangers. The Naivasha training institute, which was established in 1985 to develop the “soft skills”and policy thinking around conservation and fisheries, changed in 2009 when it began offeringrudimentary naturalist and paraecologist courses more geared towards serving the tourism industrythan the cause of conservation. As one would expect, the academic contribution of this institution totourism falls so short of the standards required by Kenya’s highly developed tourism industry that inthe final analysis, it is a lost investment. One of its more recent distinctions is the levels of academicperformance advertised on its website as requirements for admission, which are far below what aninstitution training custodians of any country’s most valuable resource should be.

Closer analysis of these institutions and their low intellectual ceilings reveals a far subtler, butimportant, perspective on the colour bar in Kenyan conservation. The people being trained in theseinstitutions are replacing the gun bearers and gamekeepers of feudal England and colonial Kenya.

Kenya as a nation still struggles with this colour bar and our public arena is replete with thesymptoms of it. One that stands out is the dropping of charges against the late Tom Cholmondeleyfor the killing of Samson Ole Sisina, a KWS officer, at the scene of an industrial bushmeat harvestingand processing operation on the former’s Soysambu ranch. Those familiar with Kenyan society knowthat the killing of a security officer on duty is a (judicial or extrajudicial) death sentence in Kenya99.99% of the time. The truth is that there were absolutely no mitigating circumstances here, otherthan the victim’s race. Barely a year later, in May 2006, Cholmondeley shot and killed Robert Njoya,a stonemason who lived in a village that borders his 50,000-acre estate, a crime for which he wasjailed in 2009 following public uproar.

Closer analysis of these institutions and their low intellectual ceilings reveals a farsubtler, but important, perspective on the colour bar in Kenyan conservation. The peoplebeing trained in these institutions are replacing the gun bearers and gamekeepers offeudal England and colonial Kenya.

More recently, in January 2018, there was a memorial service for the late Gilfrid Powys, a renownedrancher, conservationist, and KWS honorary warden. The service was attended by a plethora of topbrass from KWS in full uniform, as well as several government leaders, as befitted his status insociety. I suspect many in the congregation were taken aback when one of the eulogisers, Mr. WillyPotgieter, read a long and touching tribute where he detailed how the departed wasn’t a particularlyreligious man but would indulge his spirituality by hunting buffalo every Sunday morning. Thediscomfiture of the uniformed staff and company gathered was palpable and would have beenamusing had it not been such a stark testament to the existence of conservation apartheid in ourcountry and our society’s acceptance thereof.

Sanitised terminology

Apartheid in conservation matters. The duplicity that exists within many people and institutionspurported to be dedicated to conservation may seem bizarre to those unfamiliar with the sector.Here is how it works: Basic psychological examination of wildlife hunting reveals that it is a uniquelycomplex aspect of human endeavour because it occurs at both ends of the spectrum of Maslow’shierarchy of needs. Subsistence hunting is firmly at the bottom of the hierarchy as it fulfilsphysiological needs while sport hunting is at the top, within the realm of self-actualisation. This isillustrated by the celebrated blood sports of falconry and fox hunting pursued by royalty in theMiddle East and Britain, respectively.

The highly sanitised terminology is also in striking contrast to the derogatory terms like “bushmeatpoaching” used in reference to subsistence hunting. This highlights the role of the media incultivating the racial divide because in Africa the term “poacher” or “bushmeat” is never applied tothe activities or diets of people of European descent, regardless of legality.

Likewise, the term “hunter” is never applied to the activities of black people. These three degrees ofseparation in the hierarchy of needs are the basis of the colour bar. They are the reasons behind theflawed belief that we can allow white people to kill (not poach) wildlife and shoot black peoplesuspected of being “poachers”. This is also the basis of the ongoing nonsensical scheme of a “taskforce” going around Kenya trying to gather support for proposed “consumptive use” of wildlife, anactivity de facto delineated by race. It stands to even casual examination that the practice ofstructured legal hunting of wildlife in Kenya (and much of Africa) is an activity controlled by, andindulged in, by people of Caucasian extraction.

The highly sanitised terminology is also in striking contrast to the derogatory terms like“bushmeat poaching” used in reference to subsistence hunting. This highlights the roleof the media in cultivating the racial divide because in Africa the term “poacher” or“bushmeat” is never applied to the activities or diets of people of European descent,regardless of legality.

It also goes without saying that the colour bar we live with in Kenyan conservation is ananachronism that we should have escaped from in the mid-20th century. But before we can achievethat freedom, we must squarely face up to the problem and appreciate its full extent. It is systemic.

When the board chairmanship of KWS fell vacant about four years ago, our government turned,almost reflexively, to the ageing Dr Richard Leakey, who is no longer at his physical or intellectualbest, and who, in my view, is not even the best candidate for the job. The spectacular failure, franticinactivity, and deafening silence on conservation issues that characterised Dr Leakey’s last tenure atKWS came as no surprise to those of us familiar with the man’s capabilities. The most poignantmemory of this is a photo of Leakey posing with the black board members holding tusks beside him –an image that evoked memories of the “great white hunter” of yore. The photo itself was takenduring the torching of 105 tonnes of ivory in 2016, a fairly logical conservation activity, but thecarefully structured pose shows a board composed of people who have no knowledge or reading ofthe history and culture around wildlife conservation in Kenya. If they had even rudimentaryknowledge of the history of conservation practice in Kenya, they would have recognised that theirphoto was misplaced in space and time. There is little doubt that Leakey (and possibly Brian Heath,in the back left, distancing himself from the ivory) were aware of this nuance and were the onlyintellectual participants in this photo – and therein lies a snapshot of our enduring tragedy.

The intellectual desert that is Kenya’s conservation sector remains as barren as ever in 2018. Thesporadic and disjointed efforts to moisten it with sprinklers will all come to nought unless weconcurrently plant the seeds of indigenous knowledge and expertise.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their societyby interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

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