Post-independence Continuation: Commitment to Conservation

In the natural resources sectors, this period marks the start of a sharp increase in external involvement through bilateral aid agreements centered around both conservation and development, especially the agreement between the Tanzanian and German governments to start the Selous Conservation Project in the late 1980s (Nelson, 2007). This period also included large shifts in the hunting sector, where private investments increased massively between 1984 and 1985 (Majamba, 2001). The role of the natural resources sector began to change through these processes, but at the local level, more visible changes resulted from the policies for decentralisation and the introduction of local government.

The commitment of the Tanzanian state to the conservation of its natural fauna and flora and the PA model to achieve this was reinforced post-independence: From 1960, the international community, through the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), focused global attention towards the need for conservation in Africa, arguing that the destruction of its flora, fauna and habitats was the most pressing conservation problem of the time, and launching the ‘African Special Project’ to ensure conservation success

35 Previously closed to all hunting.

78 (Neumann, 1998). This led directly to the IUCN Symposium on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in Modern African States (1961), where 21 African nations were represented alongside 5 international organisations (Neumann, 1998). It was at the conference that Nyerere made his famous ‘Arusha Manifesto’ pledging Tanganyika’s commitment to conservation, and inviting international experts and NGOs to assist them with this project (Neumann, 1998).

This commitment to protectionist conservation in the wildlife sector was demonstrated in the publication of the Wildlife Conservation Act (WCA) in 1974, which represented one of the most crucial developments in Tanzanian wildlife policy through setting out the different categories of wildlife PA in Tanzania and their management (Nshala, 1999). The WCA 1974 replaced the Fauna and Flora Conservation Ordinance Cap. 302 (1940) and, until 1998, served as the primary legislation for wildlife (Nshala, 2002). Importantly the act vested the Director of Wildlife with the powers to oversee the management of the country’s wildlife, placed him/her in charge of all the PAs, and clearly defined nature as a ‘ward of the state’

(Nshala, 1999; Neumann, 2004a).

The centralised control of forest resources was also apparent in the post-colonial period, where policy remained focused on production. The Forestry Policy of Tanzania published in 1963 aimed to ensure that Forest Reserves produced sufficient forestry products to meet domestic needs and be competitive in the global timber economy and to protect water catchments (Ylhäisi, 2003). Similarly in 1989 a new Forestry Action Plan was published, which again focused upon the creation of Forest Reserves, and whilst the participation of local communities was mentioned, it is not compulsory or detailed, and cannot be considered as community conservation (Ylhäisi, 2003).

The six classifications of PAs for wildlife and forestry within Tanzania vary considerably in terms of the levels of protection and permitted uses within their boundaries. National Parks, Game Reserves and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area are the most strictly protected, whilst Game Control Areas (GCA), Partial Game Reserves and Forest Reserves are less restrictive in terms of settlement and consumptive use (Mkumbukwa, 2008). National parks are used for non-consumptive uses only, specifically tourist-related activities such as photographic tourism and accommodation whilst, within its network of Game Reserves and GCAs, Tanzania has maintained a policy of wildlife utilisation, except for during the period 1973-78 when by government notice 210 of 1973 all hunting was banned (Nshala, 1999). When

79 hunting activities resumed, the parastatal Tanzania Wildlife Corporation (TAWICO) was granted monopoly over the industry, with all powers to grant bocks, licenses etc. (Nshala, 1999). This was revoked in 1984, as part of the liberalization of the Tanzanian economy and political system, and power was handed back to the Wildlife Division and its Director (Nshala, 1999), who remains in charge of hunting activities in Tanzania to this day (see Chapter 5).

Hunting takes place within a system of over 140 hunting block concessions³⁶ allocated by the Wildlife Division (Baldus and Cauldwell, 2004), covering an area of over 250 000km² (Nelson et al., 2009). Hunting is a multi-million dollar industry in Tanzania, which generated a gross income of $27.6 million from around 1,400 clients in 2001 (Sachedina, 2008).

Tourist hunting generates the vast majority of revenue from hunting, with average income to the Wildlife Division per hunting client of approximately US $520 per day, totalling US

$7,000, the majority of which is made up of a trophy fee (Baldus and Cauldwell, 2004).

Resident hunting operates through a system of permits issued by District Game Officers for each administrative district. Over time the hunting safari has merged into safari tourism, with photographic tourism now accounting for a much larger number of visitors (Adams, 2004), although the large sums involved means that tourist hunting still generates larger revenues for the Wildlife Division (Sachedina, 2008). Hunting has also taken on increased significance in conservation since the introduction of CBNRM in Tanzania, particularly with the potential to channel associated revenues to local communities (see 3.3.2; Adams, 2004).

The centralised history of natural resource management through the colonial periods and up to the 1980s is summarised by Baldus (2001a) as ‘conservation against the people’. The development of ‘conservation by the people’, and eventually CBNRM, is discussed in the following section, and further in Chapter 5. It is important to note that the history of both wildlife conservation and forest protection, and the restrictions placed on local communities through the enclosure of land and appropriation of natural resources at the state level had important implications for state-society relations.

Within both the wildlife and forestry sectors, the colonial annexation of land and creation of PAs is associated with a prodigious number of displacements of local communities (Neumann, 1998; Ylhäisi, 2003). Conservation-related displacements are comprised of two

36 To increase revenue, the number of hunting blocks was almost doubled when the Wildlife Division took over management of wildlife hunting in 1988 (Leader-Williams et al., 2009).

80 processes: the forced removal (eviction) of people from their homes; and economic displacement, relating to the prevention of access to areas vital to livelihood strategies, and thereby enforcing a shift in economic activity (Brockington and Igoe, 2006). In many cases evictions and resettlements were the result of colonial efforts to control sleeping sickness incidence within the country, as well as to re-organise the population into ordered settlements, integrate them into the tax system and improve agricultural and labour systems (Nelson et al., 2009). For example, the creation of the Selous Game Reserve in 1922, underpinned by all these processes, as well as conservation concerns (see Neumann, 2001), led to the eviction of more than 40,000 people (Nelson et al., 2007). Similarly the history of Mkomazi National Park involved the eviction of thousands of pastoralists³⁷, justified in the name of wildlife conservation, and which had long-term impacts upon their livelihood strategies and security (Brockington, 2002). Sachedina (2008) details the impacts of the implementation of community-based conservation in the Tarangire ecosystem of Northern Tanzania on both poverty alleviation and wildlife conservation. He argues that throughout Tanzania, the extension of state control over wildlife resources and the evictions of pastoral communities³⁸ from the Serengeti, Amboseli and Mkomazi National Parks, together with the Maasai Mara National Reserve and Usangu Game Reserve have contributed to the deterioration of relations between local people and the state, creating wildlife wars and a

“militant state of environmentalism” (Sachedina, 2008: 121).

The introduction of CBNRM in Tanzania, as discussed in Chapter 5, followed many of the arguments concerning social justice and the social impacts of conservation set out in section 1.1. CBNRM also represents new forms of environmental governance in Tanzania supported by the neoliberal reforms discussed in 3.2.2. Thus, in the 1980s, both Community-Based Forest and Wildlife Management appeared in Tanzania not as a result of legislative change, but through the implementation of pilot projects, often donor-funded (Gillingham, 1998). In the wildlife sector, the Serengeti Regional Conservation Strategy (SRCS), funded by Norwegian bilateral aid from 1985 was the first example of these, followed by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) funded Selous Conservation Programme

37 People whose livelihoods are based at least partly around the herding of cattle (Nelson et al., 2009).

38 Attention has often been focused on the displacement of pastoral communities through PA and community conservation programme establishment. This is especially well-documented in the North of Tanzania where pastoral groups and their uses of land for grazing have been continually marginalised and largely ignored in policy processes (Goldman, 2003; Nelson et al., 2009).

Furthermore, their livelihoods are being significantly altered as they are placed in competition with both conservation and agricultural land uses (Nelson et al., 2009; Goldman, 2003; Goldman, 2011).

81 (SCP). In the forestry sector, the first examples of community forestry began in Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) funded pilot projects in Babati and Singida districts, known as the Land Management Programme (LAMP) projects (see also chapter 5, Wily, 1997; Wily, 2000; Wily and Dewees, 2001b). By the late 1980s, several attempts at community conservation were being piloted and implemented in Tanzania, drawing upon experiments ongoing in other parts of sub-saharan Africa and the favourable environmental for Transnational Conservation Organisations and development agencies to initiate projects in Tanzania (see 3.2.2; Nelson et al., 2007). Currently, Tanzanian state-implemented community conservation initiatives relating to forest and wildlife consist of two approaches, which have grown out of the developments discussed above, but vary considerably in their approach. The first of these is the Community Conservation Service (CCS), which began in 1988 as part of the Tanzanian National Parks Authority (TANAPA) benefit-sharing programme (Walsh, 2000). It is a park outreach programme that provides funds for community development projects with the intention of increasing local support for National Parks, and decreasing infringements upon their rules (Bergin and Dembe, 1996).

Despite its name, the initiative clearly involves no power devolution to local communities, and cannot be considered CBNRM. The second group represent Tanzanian CBNRM policies, consisting of Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM), which forms part of a larger policy of Participatory Forest Management, and Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs).