Wildlife management & community resistance in Tanzania

Despite continuing rhetoric on community conservation, trends in Tanzania reflect a process of reconsolidation of state control over wildlife resources and increased rent-seeking behaviour, combined with dispossession of local communities. The 1998 Wildlife Policy promoted community participation and local benefits, but – with the policy of 2007 and the Wildlife Conservation Act of 2009 – central government took back control over wildlife and income from sport hunting and tourism. These trends, which sometimes include the use of state violence and often take place in the name of ‘community-based’ conservation, have encountered community resistance.

The article “Wildlife management in Tanzania: state control, rent seeking and community resistance” by Tor Benjaminsen et al (published 2013 in Development and Change 44(5): 1087–1109) drew on in-depth studies of wildlife management practices at three locations in northern Tanzania to illustrate these trends. The three cases were in Enduimet Wildlife Management Area (WMA), Simanjiro and Loliondo (where communities resisted WMAs), all inhabited by Maasai pastoralists.

The authors argue that this process is not only the result of the neoliberalisation of conservation but also reflects old patterns of state patrimony and rent seeking, combined with colonial narratives of conservation. Much of the rhetoric of neoliberal reforms is being pushed back by the state in order to capture rent and interact with villagers in new and oppressive ways.

Posted on 16 May 2022 in Pastoralism & Natural Resources, Pastoralism, Policy & Power