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Richard Howarth

287826

MA African Studies

Word Count: 10000

Submitted September 17th

2012

“Deconstructing ‘Solutions’ from Political

Ecology”

Problems of State centrality for community conservation in

Tanzania

 

 

 

 

 

Dissertation supervisor: Phil Clark 

 

 “This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts (MA) African Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London)”  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Declaration by candidate

I have read and understood regulation 17.9 (Regulations for Students of SOAS) concerning

plagiarism. I undertake that all material presented for examination is my own work and has

not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person(s). I also undertake that

any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has

been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. I give permission for a

copy of my dissertation to be held at the School’s discretion, following final examination, to

be made available for reference.

Signed Richard Howarth (student)

Date 14/09/2012

 

 

 

 

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Abstract

Since wildlife conservation and development became amalgamated as a goal both

conceptually and pragmatically, the role of the community within them has been reassessed.

Within the field of social studies, the driving force behind this process has been political

ecology. Influenced by post-modern principles and neo-Marxist assumptions, political

ecology, at least theoretically, has championed community-based conservation as the

foundation of sustainable development in Africa. However, despite its influences, this thesis

suggests that political ecology has struggled to transcend the borders of its Western origins,

and its suitability to the socio-political and economic contexts in Tanzania is ambiguous. A

comparative analysis with key concepts on the African state, such as neo-patrimonialism,

corruption and state-centrality reveals direct contradictions with political ecology. Political

processes in Tanzania, notably the government’s relationship to local communities and

international organisations, undermines the democratic and empowering nuances that political

ecology espouses. As such, the approach needs significant modification to apply to the

Tanzanian case.

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Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter One 3

Historical Background

Chapter Two 5

Political Ecology and the Tanzanian State

Chapter Three 13

Community-Based Conservation

Chapter Four 22

International Conservation Organisations

Chapter Five 29

Comparative Analysis

Conclusion 33

Bibliography 35

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Introduction

Wildlife conservation constitutes a perennial source of income and prestige for the Tanzanian

state. The country’s remarkable amount of land reserved for conservation: “twenty eight per cent

of Tanzania’s total land area” (Goldstein, 2004: 482), along with some of the world’s most

famous conservation areas (e.g. The Serengeti and Ngorongoro) have made Tanzania a leading

player of conservation, both within the continent of Africa and globally.

The process of conservation, however, has been far from simple; starting with colonial

imposition and a continued elitist bias post-independence, the tenets of conservation have been

divorced from Tanzanian society for a great period of time. The effect of this so-called “fortress

conservation” (Brockington, 2002) was an increase in human-wildlife conflict, with decreasing

numbers of wildlife (Barrow, Gichohi & Infield, 2001: 94). According to Adams and Hutton it

had “a direct impact on livelihoods. As forced resettlement exposes displaced people and those in

receiving communities to a wide range of risks of impoverishment” (2007: 157). Since the 1970s

two intertwined processes have changed the nature and scope of wildlife conservation, the first

being the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment. This created the UN Environmental

Programme and marked a policy shift towards conservation that was tied to sustainable

development and valued the inclusion of local communities. (O’Neil, 1996) The second was the

emergence of political ecology as a field of investigation. The politics of environmental science

contributed, if not led, to a renewed understanding of nature as something that is intimately

social, economic and political. (Adams & Hutton, 2007: 149; Biersack & Greenberg, 2006:2)

The success of this mode of thinking has permeated into governmental and non-

governmental practice (Campbell & Vainio-Mattila, 2003: 418; Hulme & Murphey, 2001: 1-2);

notwithstanding the significant, and arguably positive, changes political ecology has brought

about to conservation in countries such as Tanzania, it remains very much a “global” theory.

Inspired by neo-Marxist understandings of globalised class hierarchies (Biersack & Greenberg,

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2006:3, 5; Frank, 1967), the narratives of political ecology represent of top-down theoretical

approach to conservation.

The aim of this dissertation is to analyse and assess the arguments of political ecology in

the context of the major debates surrounding the nature of the African state. The principal

research question is to ask if political ecology adequately comprehends the complex and dynamic

state-civil society relations in Tanzania that determine the processes of wildlife conservation. The

theoretical body covers the key areas of neo-patrimonialism, state-centrality, corruption, and the

relationship between the state and social groups. Using this, I will argue that political ecology

does not do enough to comprehend the relationships and political processes involved within

conservation in Tanzania, and as such needs to be reworked if it seeks to have a greater

theoretical and practical basis.

I will start with a brief genealogy of conservation in Tanzania to establish the historical

context in which current conservation functions. From this I will move on to review the

progression of political ecology as a theory, and contrast it with the debates of the African state,

in order to provide a critical approach towards political ecology on a theoretical basis. To

institute a greater context to this, I will finally apply this examination to arguments for

community conservation and an international organisational approach in Tanzania. This will

demonstrate that despite the narratives in favour of community-based conservation, these

processes remain essentially elitist-biased towards the government and international organisations

because of the political forces at work in the country.

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Historical Background

The starting point for this analysis is the acceptance that “one cannot understand natural resource

management dynamics and rural economies in Tanzania today without the colonial context of

resource appropriation, and within the wider political structure of colonial societies” (Kallonga et

al, 2003: 4; Adams & Hutton, 2007: 152). From a genealogical perspective, conservation has

been an elitist and centrally controlled process. Kallonga et al (2003:4) suggest “The framework

of central control over resources established during the colonial period is the most important

characteristic of natural resource management and governance in Tanzania today”.

The narratives driving this centralised, colonial, conservation process are often that “the

East African has been regarded as a useless farmer, too lazy or ignorant” (Kjekshus, 1977: 26)

and “Africa portrayed as Eden, humankind as its chief destroyer and conservation, through a

protectionist strategy, its necessary regime of salvation” (Adams & Hulme, 2001: 12).

Importantly for considering NGO policy on conservation later in this thesis, “Such images still

retain their power and remain a central feature of Western perceptions of Africa” (Adams &

Hulme, 2001: 12). Goldstein notes that “rather than develop new land laws and administrative

structures, the British maintained the game and forest laws established by the Germans and

implemented a top-down conservation strategy” (Goldstein, 2004: 494). From German to British

rule, conservation was an elitist process, and indeed through into independence, the Arusha

Manifesto also bears the hallmarks of this colonial legacy:

The conservation of wildlife and wild places calls for specialist knowledge, trained

manpower, and money, and we look to other nations to co-operate with us in this

important task the success or failure of which not only affects the continent of Africa but

the rest of the world as well.

(President's Statement, The Arusha Manifesto (1961), reprinted in THE WILDLIFE POLICY OF

TANZANIA (1998), available at http://www.tzonline.org/pdf/wildlifeploicy.pdf (Accessed Jun. 6, 2012))

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This paragraph of the deceleration points to a newly independent government that placed little

faith in its own population to effectively manage conservation, and therefore needed to rely of

external expertise. The outcome of this conservation strategy is ambiguous, for instance, “by

several measures this ‘great experiment’ was successful for perhaps thirty years: wildlife

populations had not declined dramatically” (Boone et al, 2006: 811). However, Goldstein (2004:

493) argues that “many conflicts between German colonists and Tanzanians were the direct result

of forest and game laws and the loss of indigenous land.” Another example of this was that “the

colonial period saw the decimation of the Maasai, the collapse of their colonial control of East

African rangelands, their restriction to a much smaller area” (Thompson & Homewood, 2002:

108-109).

Two central points to consider throughout this project can be drawn from this

historiography: “wildlife conservation has been imported to sub-Saharan Africa derived largely

from Western roots and has generally excluded local people” (Thompson & Homewood,

2002:109). While “local participation in wildlife management had been limited during the

colonial era” (Goldstein, 2004: 497), post-independence conservation fared no better, “as the

nations primary wildlife legislation (The Wildlife Conservation Act No. 12 of 1974), propagated

during the Ujamaa [Socialism] period, placed authority and responsibility for wildlife resources

in the hands of the state, with few provisions for community preservation” (Kallonga et al, 2003:

4).

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Political Ecology and the Tanzanian State

This section contrasts the theoretical components of political ecology with key features of

Tanzanian political processes: neo-patrimonialism, state-centrality and corruption. In order to

demonstrate this, the following chapter will review a chronological progression of political

ecology from its origins, through two adaptations (third world political ecology and critical

political ecology), contrasting these arguments with some of the key theorists on the African

state.

“The term political ecology was first used in its neo-Marxist sense by the anthropologist

Eric R. Wolf (1972) to signify the study of how power relations mediate human-environmental

relations” (Biersack & Greenberg, 2006: 3). It is “less grounded in a coherent theory than in a

fluid and ambivalent space that lies among political economy, culture theory, history and

biology” (Biersack & Greenberg, 2006: 5). Perhaps it is better understood as a model of analysis

that made significant shifts towards a greater understanding of the processes that define, manage

and deliver wildlife conservation. That “political ecology has been seen to focus on underlying

and wide-spread political explanations for environmental change and degradation” (Forsyth,

2003: 8) also tacitly acknowledges the central role that colonialism played in the development of

conservation in Tanzania. However, political ecology remains essentially a ‘global theory’, one

that is applied to all states; the emphasis has tended to be on the nexus between the local and the

global, missing the key factor of the state itself.

The metaphysical origins of political ecology are problematic, “in its first generation…it

tended to think in terms of structures, systems and interlocking variables and had little to say

about actors and their agency” (Biersack & Greenberg, 2006: 4). The kind of structures here,

reflect a neo-Marxist concern of a global Capitalist structure, which according to Biersack and

Greenberg (2006:3) grew out of ‘dependency theory’ of Andre Gunder Frank (1969), and the

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‘world system theory’ of Immanuel Wallerstein (1974). The key influence from Frank and

Wallerstein was a conceptual shift to from modernism, that is “at least three related

characteristics: the dualism of nature & society, the notion of objective science, and assumptions

of linear control” (Pálsson, 2006: 72), to post-modernism which is important for conservation.

This relates to conservation practice, as observed by Homewood and Rogers (1991: 232), because

“conservation-orientated exclusion of human-populations from ecosystems of high conservation

value, with which those populations have a long-standing and close integration, is now

recognized as artificial and inappropriate in biological terms.”

Within the post-modern framework “political ecologist analyse environmental or

ecological conditions as the product of political and social processes” (Adams & Hutton, 2007:

148). They (2007: 155) also suggest that the demarcation of separate spaces for nature and human

settlement continues to the present day, an integral aspect of the way modern state classifies,

organises and simplifies complexity. This is a structuralist, neo-Marxist approach which assumes

a global, homogenous class hierarchy, whether this be the ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ or ‘aristocracy’

and ‘peasantry’. This is an assumption that is highly problematic because it “is difficult to

establish, other than in ideological terms, whether there are identifiable social classes with

discrete and coherent political ambitions” (Chabal & Daloz, 1999: 5). The colonial imposition of

hierarchies of authority in society, combined with President Nyerere’s post-independence

Socialist program of Ujumaa, forms a more complex meaning of class in Tanzania. Indeed,

Campbell (1999: 109) argues that, in Tanzania there is little evidence that class provided an

enduring collective identity in the state.

This misplaced focus on class structures overshadows more prominent markers of

identity; Biersack and Greenberg (2006: 5) noted that the class inequalities of classical Marxism

are notoriously gender blind. Further Escobar (1998: 66) argued that across the continent, gender,

as an important aspect of identity construction, is also progressively becoming a salient aspect in

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the agenda of ethno-cultural organizations. Markers such as race, gender, ethno-linguistic

differences and age are far more important in the formation of Tanzanian identity than class.

In response to these criticisms, political ecology has been reworked into two particular

influential strands: ‘critical political ecology’ and ‘third world political ecology.’ Both place

greater emphasis on local anthropology and contextual examinations of political economy and

conservation within communities rather than a globalised, generic theory applied ‘top-down’.

Bryant and Bailey (1997: 1) suggest that the emergence of ‘Third World political

ecology’ “was a reflection of the pressing need for an analytical approach integrating

environmental and political understanding in a context of intensifying environmental problems in

the third world.” This retains the post-modernist premise “that humans are simultaneously part of

nature and society, and that modern policy on the environment should be based on that premise”

(Pálsson, 2006: 74); yet, crucially, it focuses upon the notion that “environment problems cannot

be understood in isolation from the political or economic contexts within which they are created”

(Bryant & Bailey, 1997: 28).

The basic formulae presented by Third World political ecologists, such as Adams and

Hutton, asserts an appropriate statement on nature and society; that “ideas about nature are

framed, shared and applied in ways that are inherently political” (2007: 149). They state that “the

dynamics of power and knowledge interacted in the regulation of people and nature through what

social theorists call ‘governmentality’ and ‘biopolitics” (Adams & Hutton, 2007:153). For Bryant

and Bailey, as principal third world political ecologists, “The role of local politics in mediating

resource access and conflict was thereby often largely neglected and discussion of different actors

verged at times on the simplistic” (Bryant & Bailey, 1997:11). What they are arguing is a need

for greater understanding of the relationship between local actors and central government. Adams

and Hutton attempt to explain this relationship as unequal in the following way:

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States claim legitimate power to enforce socially desirable outcomes and on this ground,

the protection of nature as state policy has often involved coercion, particularly where it

has involved the displacement of human communities from protected areas (Adams &

Hutton, 2007: 158).

Placing this within the context of conservation in Tanzania, conceptually there is nothing wrong

with this hypothesis, and it does accurately describe the historical policy of wildlife conservation.

Indeed, Århem observed that, “Development policies in Tanzania – and livestock policies in

particular – have consistently denied pastoral communities the right of self-reliant development”

(Århem, 1985: 97). The difficulty is that it does not specifically analyse the processes involved

within this, as coercion can take a number of forms both with force and diplomacy. Further,

Adams and Hutton fail to understand that “this conception of space, authority and power was

exported to Africa via imperial conquest, delegitimising indigenous discourses of political space

and sovereignty” (Dunn, 2009: 434).

Political ecology fervently presents community-based conservation as a catalyst for

democratic expansion and the strengthening of civil society. Lansing et al (2006: 327) framed this

in terms of ‘Techne’: Techne both constrains and empowers the social action – constrains because

it defines our productive engagement with the material world, empowers because it stimulates the

consciousness of self as a social being that is a prerequisite for praxis, which is Marx’s term for

salient agency. Yet, this again misunderstands the nature of the relationship between society and

the state in Africa, because the notion of civil society is ambiguous. This is demonstrated by

Chabal and Daloz’s argument,

The state is in fact so poorly institutionalized, so weakly emancipated from society, that

there is very little scope for conceptualizing politics in Africa as a contest between a

functionally strong state and a homogenously coherent civil society (Chabal & Daloz,

1999: 21).

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Further, what is understood to be a keystone within this relationship in African states is

the role of neo-patrimonialism, defined by Pitcher, Moran and Johnson (2009: 129) as, “commonly

understood (with reference to Weber) to denote systems in which political relationships are

mediated through, and maintained by, personal connections between leaders and subjects, or

patrons and clients.” While neither neo-patrimonialism nor the ‘weak’ state are unique to the

African continent, any discussion of power relations must include these debates. They have so far

been mostly lacking in political ecology. This is surprising as Nelson and Agrawal noted of the

conservation management system in Tanzania, “Wildlife is a valuable patronage resource in the

context of Africa’s neo-patrimonial governance institutions” (Nelson and Agrawal, 2008: 558).

Any discussion on the role of the state in conservation must address the concept of

‘centralization’, most especially in the case of Tanzania, given the period of post-independence

socialism and the heavy government influence that came with it. Kallonga et al, summarized

centralized government in the following way:

Centralised modes of management lands and natural resources, with control still

remaining in the hands of the state at the expense of local communities, that hinders the

development of new opportunities and continues to marginalise local people (Kallonga

et al, 2003: 10).

The centralized state is a problem for community conservation; nonetheless, this particular

approach seems to be overly structural, not allowing enough room for the agency operating in the

patrimonial system through both the local and state levels. As such, Third World political ecology

has not gone far enough in discussing how these specific power relations, such as neo-

patrimonialism, determine the outcomes of wildlife conservation management. As such, it is very

difficult to assess how devolved power of conservation to local communities has affected the

relationships between society, the state and conservation NGOs within the Tanzanian context.

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The second branch of political ecology which attempted to rectify some of the earlier

criticisms of the mode, is what Forsyth (2003) calls ‘critical political ecology’, which perhaps may

fit into a wider academic circle of discourse analysis. Forsyth claims that,

The aim of a “critical political ecology” is to refocus political ecology from the

assessment of capitalism alone as a source of environmental degradation, towards a

politicised understanding of environmental degradation beyond the epistemology

offered by the critique of capitalism (Forsyth, 2003: 7).

Forsyth’s book “suggests that ideologies and science need to be seen as co-constructed

and specific environmental explanations as contingent upon social and political framings.”

(Forsyth, 2003: 268) Again, this falls within the central tenants of political ecology and its post-

modern approach, yet crucially he (2003: 9) emphasised the need “to integrate the structural focus

on state, society and industry and the post-structuralist attention to how interactions between such

actors co-construct environmental discourses and narratives about the environmental change and

who should be represented as victims and villains.” In Tanzania, this is key given the difficult

relationship between local groups and the state, when discussing ‘the land’: such as the Maasai

and their pursuit for indigenous rights in the setting of environmental rights. An issue complicated

further because of Tanzania’s inimitable association between government and environmental

NGOs discussed in greater length in Chapter four.

Escobar reinforces this point arguing that “The biodiversity discourse has thus resulted in

an increasingly vast institutional apparatus that systematically organizes the production of forms

of knowledge and types of power.” (Escobar, 1998: 56) Certainly Adams & Hutton suggested that

this is a key reason for the domination of NGOs in wildlife conservation as “the organisations and

the scientists, intellectuals and supporters have remarkable power to define and delineate nature”

(2007: 168). Beyond NGOs, this particular argument seems to be compatible to some extent with

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the concept of neo-patrimonialism. While “patrimonialism is a structural feature of many states”

(Pitcher et al, 2009: 134) the post-structuralist discourse allows for,

These administrative and conservationist elites define which sources of knowledge are

valid and how accepted facts fit into the larger narrative, which reflect relations of

power and authority and people’s particular values as well as their interpretations of

nature (Gillson et al, 2003: 383).

The centralized, top-down hierarchies of political authority and knowledge production sanction an

elite dominance of the conservation discourse; Gilson et al (2003: 383) note that “Ideological

constructs and implicit assumptions can have quite material effects.” For example, Bayart argues

“The personal nature of the system makes the communication of grievances increasingly difficult

as social stratifications become petrified.” (Bayart, 2009: 233) Perhaps Presidents Nyerere’s

personal support for conservation, and the policy weight he threw behind it through the central

bureaucracy of his socialist government, established they influence of wildlife management and

the public perception of conservation in Tanzania today.

Nevertheless, despite Gilson et al claiming that there are material implications to these

discourses, of which no doubt there are, there is a danger that, “the biodiversity narrative created

obligatory passage points for the construction of particular discourses,” such as local communities

as a threat or solution to conservation, “This process translates the complexity of the world into

simple narratives of threats and possible solutions” (Escobar, 1998: 56). When examining the

processes of social and power relations involved in wildlife conservation, it is best to avoid simple

narratives of problem/solution, as the reality is far more complex.

A second problem here is that while critical political ecology may be attuned to neo-

patrimonialism, discourse analysis cannot account for the problem of corruption in African states.

Chabal and Daloz noted that,

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Corruption is not just endemic but an integral part of the social fabric of life. For those

at the bottom end of society, like lowly civil servants, the sale of the limited amounts of

power they possess is virtually their only means of survival (Chabal & Daloz, 1999: 99).

Nelson and Agrawal provide such an example for Tanzania arguing that, “the very

low salaries paid to wildlife personnel and the lack of transparent and accountable oversight

processes increase corruption in the management of hunting concessions” (Nelson &

Agrawal, 2008:575). Whilst corruption can be part of a discourse or narratives, and

undeniably there are discourses of corruption, it does not remove from the fact that

corruption is also a practice beyond a discourse. As such, critical political ecology must

concede that the power relations and process of wildlife conservation go beyond an elite

domination of knowledge. The clearest example of this is the infamous ‘Serengeti Highway’

– the plans for a major road to be built through the Serengeti Park into Central Africa, clearly

disastrous for local wildlife but indispensible for Tanzanian government revenue.

Conceptually, as has been demonstrated here, political ecology has difficulty in meeting

the key debates and arguments surrounding the nature of the African state. Although its

restructurings have made considerable effort to be more contextualized, this model of analysis still

appears to be a less than adequate measure of wildlife conservation management and power

relations in Tanzania. This being the case, the next section looks at the case political ecology

makes for the advantages of community based conservation against the practice of NGO

dominated conservation, in order to display how the arguments of political ecology fail to live up

to the political reality.

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Community – Based Conservation

In response to the assumed causes of environmental and wildlife degradation, political ecology

asserts that community-based conservation (CBC), sometimes referred to as community based

natural resource management (CBNRM), is the solution to the problem. Just as degradation is

linked to social, political and economic factors, so too is community-based conservation tied to

ideas of sustainable development and democratization. This is done in such a way, according

Århem (1985: 109), that it “becomes a way of strengthening the integrity of a community and its

self-determining capacities. It aims at the stabilization of resource consumption at a level judged

adequate by the people themselves.”

By assessing three specific processes: the defining of conservation, the production of

knowledge, and the political authority over its management, I will demonstrate that political

ecology’s ambitions for community-based conservation fall short of their expectations. Instead,

what becomes apparent is that the historical centrality of the state in conservation has remained,

and so community-based conservation continues to be, for the most part, a narrative of

government more than a functioning reality.

Campbell and Vainio-Mattila (2003: 421, 418) present two useful points to begin this

discussion; firstly “there is no one definition of community-based conservation. It does however,

have two broadly recognised objectives: to enhance wildlife/biodiversity conservation and to

promote incentives, normally economic for local people.” Second, thinking of it as a narrative,

“community-based conservation is now a dominant theme in conservation policy statements by

organisations such as the IUCN, WWF or Conservation International.”

Hulme & Murphree state,

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Community conservation is not simply about technical choices or changes in locus or

formal organisations. It is part of wider processes of social change and about attempts to

redistribute social and political power (2001: 4/5).

Clearly then, political ecologists do not support community-based conservation purely on

the premise that it is a more successful or ideal type of conservation, their position comes loaded

with a number of pretexts and outcomes that can be inherently socio-political and economic.

However, addressing the way in which elements of conservation are defined, it appears

that political ecology falls foul of its own criticisms. It claims community-based conservation can

act as a local resolution for a problem which is created, at least in part, by the ‘West’. Yet, their

definition of what a community is, arguably developed from a Western understanding. Berkes

(2004: 627) noted, “‘The Community’ is complex and elusive”, but authors of political ecology

have attempted to create a general understanding of what the community is. Barrow and Murphree

(2001: 25) asserted that communities can be viewed along three analytical lines: Spatially, as

groupings of people who live in the same place; socio-culturally, as social groupings who derive a

unity from common history and cultural heritage; economically, as groupings of people who share

interests and control over particular resources.

The difficulty here is that “the nature of politics of participation are not straightforward,

too often ‘communities are portrayed as unproblematic homogenous political entities”

(Brockington, 2002: 8/9) That is, there is no proper discussion of how a village demographic split

of age, gender and social status would effect the distribution of resources and hierarchies of

authority over local decision making. So while Barrow et al (2002: 63) might suggest that

“Tanzania would appear to be ideally placed for the development of community approaches. The

creation of Ujamaa villages resulted in defined community groups with rights to specified

territories, many rich with wildlife resources.” The drawback is that other markers of identity such

as age, and gender affect the power relations of social groupings, and the apparent social, political

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and economic benefits from community based conservation, may not benefit the entire community

as political ecology attests. Thus, the economic incentive for conservation would also not

permeate through the entire village community, and certainly its rewards would not benefit all.

The effect on conservation would be that, “The small amount of wildlife revenues allocated to

communities is frequently not of a sufficient value to allow people to be in an economic position

to forgo wildlife damage” (Emerton, 2001 : 216).

This difficulty demonstrates a broader issue working against political ecology and

community-based conservation:

A close look at various community-based conservation processes across Africa suggests

that while communities are now included in the politics and policies of conservation,

they remain peripheral to defining the ways in which conservation is perceived and

nature managed (Goldman, 2003: 834).

Beyond this, the crux of community conservation is centred upon the concept of

participation, yet this term is also less than clear. An example of this are the Wildlife Management

Areas (WMAs) introduced in Tanzania. the Wildlife Policy of Tanzania states the a key objective

as:

To transfer the management of WMA to local communities thus taking care of corridors,

migration routes and buffer zones and ensure that the local communities obtain

substantial tangible benefits from wildlife conservation (URT, 1998: 35).

However, as Goldman rightly observed within the policy, “A WMA, as defined in the

Wildlife Policy, ‘means an area declared by the Minister to be so and set aside by village

governments for the purpose of biological natural resource conservation’” (2003: 837). This

demonstrates a nexus of power relations from village to central government that is unlikely to be

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inclusive of non-elite members of the local community. Thus, community-based conservation

only functions as such when defined as so by the Minister; the effect of this is highlighted well in

the work of Goldman whose study brought back the following response: “To begin with, as one

of the participants acknowledged, the very definition of a Wildlife Management Area is

contradictory and reflects a colonial conservation mentality.” (Goldman, 2003: 837)

There is a demonstrable effect here that in keeping with the centralized management style

of the Tanzanian government, conservation is conceptually devised in a way that is divorced from

society. As such, “it may be difficult to establish meaningful community participation where the

conservation goal has to be conceived, introduced and implemented by outsiders.” (Thompson &

Homewood, 2002:109/10)

The process of producing and distributing knowledge about conservation is also far more

unequal that political ecology might understand. For third world political ecologists like Bryant

and Bailey, local knowledge can be an empowering and effective contribution to wildlife

management,

The general point here is that indigenous knowledge…has often served as the basis for

highly effective environmental management system allowing for simultaneous resource

exploitation and conservation (Bryant & Bailey, 1997: 161).

However, Campbell & Vainio-Mattila (2003: 426) in their own research in Tanzanian

found that “the value of local, often indigenous, knowledge is sometimes acknowledged as part

of the community-based conservation concept, but in an overly simplistic fashion.” Two

examples demonstrate this. Homewood & Rodgers (1991: 239) used a study by “Pennington

(1983) that found over 90% of Tanzanian secondary school pupils thought conservation areas

existed because of their foreign exchange earning potential”. The lack of education on

conservation and poor provision of knowledge, regarding what its benefits are, in this case, might

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explain why the goals of conservationists and communities are not in line and therefore why

conservation would not be fully supported by local communities. So for the management of

conservation, “devolution of control to the local community becomes problematic when the local

community’s goals are not inline with those of conservationists” (Campbell & Vainio-Mattila,

2003: 431).

Yet, Songorwa’s research into local reactions to community-based conservation fifteen

years after Pennington’s study “suggests that the more formal education people have the more

they are likely to oppose this kind of program in their area.” (Songorwa, 1999: 2068)

Furthermore, Songorwa’s research (1999) respondents in the participating group gave a list of

expectations of WMAs for their households:

Assistance for income-generating projects/agricultural inputs (43.2%), game meat

(13.7%), to learn about/see wildlife (4.2%), to harvest timber (1.1%), employment

(0.7%). But 2.1% expected to lose access to wildlife as they believed the program's goal

was to ban hunting, and 32.8% had no expectation or did not know (Songorwa, 1999:

2066).

This diverse range of priorities for conservation brings into question just how much the

community will benefit from the project when there exist differing opinions on what the

community should gain from projects like WMAs. The data above suggests that the production of

indigenous knowledge on conservation is less concern in the management process of

conservation than ensuring the benefits of it are accrued in the most valuable way. Perhaps then,

the incentive based approach of political ecology does not guarantee an interest in developed

power to community conservation.

In regards to the political power over conservation - the management process itself that

ultimately defeats the ambitions and objectives of political ecology. The political processes in

  18 

Tanzania are certainly influenced, and often constrained by foreign actors, there does exist a

nominal ruling class, to use Fatton’s term. That is, “the existence of a ruling class implies

necessarily the existence of a state whose role is to preserve and reproduce the social, political,

and economic structures of the ruling class's dominance.” (Fatton, 1998: 253) The impact on

community-based conservation and political ecology is, as Nelson and Agrawal stated,

The relative lack of influence of local communities and civil society in African CBNRM

experiences may reflect the dominant role of governing elites and foreign donors in

broader economic policy formulation and decision-making processes. (Nelson &

Agrawal, 2008: 577)

Specifically in the Tanzanian context, Majamba (2001) identified the legislative authority

the Tanzanian government has vested in itself,

The analysis of the provisions of the Wildlife Conservation Act shows that the Director,

the Minister and the President have all been vested with enormous powers. In exercising

their respective powers, these authorities can do practically anything under the guise of

the law in the name of “public interest” - a term that is not defined in the Act (Majamba,

2001: 16).

Political ecology, in response to this, makes use of “Goran Hyden’s concept of an

‘uncaptured peasantry’ capable of resisting and neutralizing state policies.” (Fatton, 1998: 256) It

is questionable, though, the extent to which this so-called peasantry is able to remain outside the

grip of state influence. Bryant and Bailey (1997: 161, 162, 177) detailed the community efforts of

the Barabaig who “sought to regulate communal use of such common property resources such as

rangelands, water or trees through a hierarchical system of institutions”, noting that “the political

and economic pressures that have marginalised the Barabaig people intensified in the 1990s as

the post-socialist Tanzanian government has pursued IMF-inspired structural adjustment policies.

  19 

The group is thus being subjected to political and economic forces that threaten the very cultural

survival of the group itself.”

One might conclude from this that both the state and society retain elements of agency to

act in their own interest, what is important for this discussion is whether it is the state or society

that prevails in power struggles and how they do so. For instance attacking protected species can

be a way of utilising local resistance in power struggles, as Bryant and Bailey noted, “the Maasai

began to kill protected wildlife surreptitiously as a means of attacking state and business interests

antithetical to their own” (Bryant & Bailey, 1997: 173). Where the government pursues its

interest in a far more discrete fashion; “while policies and strategies for natural resource

management seek to democratise resource tenure and access in the interest of poverty reduction,

the situation on the ground does not reflect this rhetoric” (Kallonga et al, 2001: 7).

Indeed, Thompson and Homewood suggest “Patterns of returns flow along social

networks according to hierarchies of power, whether through control over official channels or in

extreme cases through manipulating information, misinformation and intimidation” (2002: 111).

Patrimonialism, therefore, exists within the conservation agenda and Brockington’s work The

Politics and Ethnography of Environmentalism in Tanzania (2005) details this perfectly.

He (2005: 105) stated that “environmental concerns make good vehicles for state

officials’ strategies of extraversion as they exploit international connections for personal profit

and their client networks.” Boldly, he claimed “the money available from environmental activity

is probably the most powerful proximal explanation for environmentalisms vigour in the central

government of Tanzania and its financial power is also visible in local government and

constituency politics” (2005: 105).

The point here is that the patrimonial authority over conservation is not inherently

structural, rather in a more post-structuralist sense, the central elite following from the colonial

  20 

influence have endowed themselves with such power using conservation as a means to do so.

Thus, “The allocation of use rights by the Minister (who also maintains the right to revoke such

rights) reflects a top-down distribution of privileges to community members, rather than active

participation” (Goldman, 2003: 839). Further to this, it also remains that “the State retains

ownership of all wildlife in Tanzania and allocates user rights to various interest groups”

(Goldstein, 2004: 503). Legislation, therefore establishes the top-down nature of conservation,

making political ecology’s aims of more democratic and devolved management of conservation

more unlikely. The benefits of conservation must then be granted to the local community from

the government with two key effects; firstly neo-patrimonialism can be a prime tool of

distributing wildlife use rights and secondly:

The main concern in economic approaches to community conservation is not the total

economic value of wildlife but rather the extent to which wildlife benefits actually reach

the local residents of wildlife areas (Emerton and Mfunda, 2001: 211).

According to DeGeorges and Reilly’s study of the Selous Conservation Program (2008)

the revenue raised from WMAs is apportioned thus,

75 % of revenue goes to the local community for management and community

development; 15 % to district councils for support of local government wildlife staffs;

10% to the Tanzania Wildlife Protection Fund for administration (Degeorges and Reilly,

2008: 1605).

Whilst this ‘seventy-five per cent’ of revenue may at first seem a highly reasonable figure

and certainly a strong incentive for the involvement of local actors allowing them to develop their

community. Third world political ecology, however, notes that “all grassroots organisations

certainly cannot be deemed ‘democratic’ since these groups operate in communities that are

influenced by unequal power relations” (Bryant & Bailey, 1997: 18). Markedly, this

  21 

incentive/reward based approach to conservation which is believed to bring about wider social

changes to the community, only appears to be an inducement for selected members of Tanzanian

communities, notably the elites.

This chapter has challenged political ecology’s perspective of community-based

conservation. The process of community-based conservation has tangible benefits, but its part in

the wider social process and the political authority over it, in the case of Tanzania, is far from the

autonomous agency political ecology hopes for. Community-based conservation is a process that

is defined, conceived and implemented in a top-down structure, which is also tied into the neo-

patrimonial system, stymied by corruption and elite rule. Rather than being the solution to an elite

control of environmental degradation, community-based conservation is the product of it, and has

served as a powerful tool of power acquisition for the elite actors in Tanzanian conservation.

  22 

International Conservation Organisations

In contrast to the preceding chapter, this section looks at the role of International Conservation

Organisations; these organisations retain (with governments and international governance) a

special influence, finance and power of conservation within Tanzania. This is not to say that

community-based conservation and these actors are diametrically opposed or mutually exclusive;

indeed, there exist increasingly blurred lines of distinction between ‘grassroots’ conservation

NGOs and community-based conservation organisations.

To begin with, the position of the post-liberalisation Tanzanian government on

conservation is quite clear as they quote former President Julius Nyerere’s Arusha Declaration

(1961) in the Wildlife Policy of Tanzania:

“The conservation of wildlife and wild places calls for specialist knowledge, trained

manpower, and money, and we look to other nations to co-operate with us in this

important task the success or failure of which not only affects the continent of Africa but

the rest of the world as well” (MNRT, 1998: 8).

Evidently, an external role in conservation has always been envisioned in Tanzania,

arguably the external role (including colonial rule) has been the dominant, if not sole actor, in

conservation. “Since then the emphasis has shifted to longer term development focusing on rural

livelihoods. It is in this context that many NGOs have become involved with conservation

activities” (Barrow et al, 2000: 33). In fact, the role of local communities in conservation may be

reactionary in this respect, because community-conservation is not a locally devised project; “all

of these terms were generated by the conservation organizations, not by the indigenous peoples;

and the programs were designed and run by the conservationists, not the indigenous peoples”

(Chapin, 2004: 20).

  23 

It seems that the basis of power for these conservation organizations stems from their ability

to define the terms within which they operate. Dunn asserts that, “Claiming to represent those who

cannot represent themselves (in this case, the flora and fauna), the NGOs claim that their mandate

comes from global and universal human interests”(2009: 39). This basis of moral authority has

allowed international conservation organizations to dominate the conservation discourse; for

instance, without conclusive biological or social evidence they have “generally concluded that

Africa’s human ecological problems are too great to be resolved by Africans” (Yeager & Miller,

1986: 136). Further, this dominance allows for a degree of exploitation. Bryant and Bailey argue

that this manifests itself in one particular way,

What was often termed participation was in practice a form of decentralised decision-

making dominated by NGO staff and local elites, and that local elites received a

disproportionate share of the benefits (Bryant & Bailey, 1997: 149).

This “strong ‘moral’ character, seemingly absent in most other actors” (Bryant & Bailey,

1997: 131), however, is unlikely to be as credible as the narrative suggests, “like public officials

in African state wildlife agencies, aid donors operate according to their own set of institutional

incentives’”(Nelson and Agrawal, 2008: 579). What is clear is that local communities are

systematically the least autonomous agents in conservation; a proposition that is identifiable in the

Wildlife Policy of Tanzania which states, “the role of the public is to support the government

efforts in the conservation and management of the wildlife resources” (MNRT, 1998: 34). This

suggests that no matter the level of devolvement, conservation policy and practice will ultimately

rest with central government, reducing the local communities abilities to influence and make

decisions about wildlife use in their area.

International conservation organization’s association to the Tanzanian state also reveals a

specific form of power relationship. As Brockington, an advocate of ‘fortress conservation’ notes,

  24 

They (conservation and pastoral development) are about ordering society and nature,

determining how landscapes and reserves should be best used and who should be the most

appropriate users and who the beneficiaries (Brockington, 2002: 4).

This ordering may well relate to conservation organisations in two over-lapping forms, their

relationship to the state, and their relationship with local communities. Writing on Environmental

NGOs (ENGOs), Bryant and Bailey state:

The sources of political power of ENGOs elude easy description. Unlike the state,

ENGOs do not posses a formal monopoly on the means of coercion within a defined

territory and, unlike some businesses; they typically do not control sizeable amounts of

capital (Bryant & Bailey, 1997: 131).

Despite this, it is evident that ENGOs do have a sizable influence in both the formulation of

policy and the execution of projects. Dunn (2009: 439) suggests that “these NGOs and their IFI

and donor allies employ the discourse of Western conservation to reconfigure modern

sovereignty, circumscribing state power.” NGOs assert a number of Western narratives as a

predicate to action; however, rather than limiting state power perhaps NGOs coerce state policy.

As O’Neil notes, “states seldom create environmental policies unless domestic advocacy

organisations, foreign states and international groups apply pressure” (O’Neil, 1996: 522).

To put this in the context of political processes in African states, Nelson and Agrawal

propose the following formulation:

Given the very nature of development aid as a quasi-diplomatic transaction between

donor and recipient governments, the vast majority of external support to CBNRM is

channeled to centralized bureaucratic institutions (Nelson and Agrawal, 2008: 579).

Comparing this statement with two others in relation to the Tanzanian state reveals what

  25 

may be a telling statement on the relationship of actors in conservation. Addressing the longevity

of clientelism in neo-patrimonial regimes, Pitcher et al notes that, “The survival of clientelism, its

reconfiguration in an era of dependency and modernization, and its existence alongside a

bureaucratic logic thus give the contemporary state its neo-patrimonial character” (Pitcher et al,

2009:132). Secondly, and in conjunction to this,

In contemporary neo-patrimonialism, relationships of loyalty and dependence pervade a

formal political and admin system and leaders occupy bureaucratic offices less to perform

public service than to acquire personal wealth and status (Bratton and Van de Walle, 1994:

458).

Combining these three statements, surely it follows that conservation organizations become

entangled in personal/legal-bureaucratic dichotomy of neo-patrimonialism. It has already been

established that contrary to political ecology’s statements community-based conservation is also

part of the neo-patrimonial network; but how do NGOs and communities relate to each other in

this respect?

Bryant and Bailey’s third world political ecology attempts to shorten the divide between

these two actors by raising the issue of ‘third world Environmental NGOs’; they suggest that,

Third World ENGOs in contrast, often developed out of the livelihood concerns and

interests of local communities threatened with social and environmental degradation

arising from the actions of states or businesses (Bryant & Bailey, 1997: 134).

Yet, critically they argue that “Third World ENGOs are drawn from the middle classes and

tend to reflect middle-class concerns about the deteriorating quality of the environment” (Bryant

& Bailey, 1997: 143). The existence of a middle class is countries such as Tanzania is highly

questionable; third world NGOs also do not negate the fact that community-based conservation is

  26 

a foreign concept for local communities. This being the case the extent to which third world

ENGOs bridge the divide of conservation to local Tanzanian communities is exceptionally vague.

Princen argues “where environmental politics is more then the relations of states, NGO

influence is exerted by linking the local to the international levels of politics” (Princen, 1994: 33).

While this related back to political ecology’s argument of creating a local-global nexus, it

inherently implies that NGOs operate higher up the hierarchy than local communities. The

following extract from Princen’s work ‘Environmental NGOs in World Politics’, provides a more

detailed example of this,

Neither the World Fund for Nature (WWF) not Greenpeace are primarily grassroots

organisations. Their employees are not part of the local communities they serve, not do

they share the socio-economic standards of the poor or working-class people they often

attempt to reach. Greenpeace identifies a problem area, enters for a direct action protest,

gets the media coverage and then disappears. WWF funds a conservation project, sends

technical advisors and tries to make the project self-sustaining (Princen, 1994: 32).

This highlights the difficulty of political ecology’s preoccupations with the global capitalist

system and resistance to the state, because the argument does not allow room for the vast political

space the NGOs occupy in the African setting. When President Nyerere called for external help in

conservation, it has been conservation NGOs that have responded. These NGOs dominate most of

the decision making processes not occupied by the Tanzanian state and Princen’s argument

suggests that communities will sometimes only engage in conservation, long term, at the behest of

NGOs.

Arguably, one of the key questions for an internal analysis of NGOs and their

relationship to community-based conservation is, do NGOs enable or enhance the prospects of

this method of conservation? Naturally, this question is one full of conceptual difficulties, such as

  27 

how to measure success, or what the objectives of the project should be. The first deficiency of

note is that, “donor and NGO support to CBNRM in sub-Saharan Africa is often based on

technocratic approaches to policy formulation and locally-situated, relatively short-term projects”

(Nelson and Agrawal, 2008: 579). To follow political ecology’s assumptions of tying

conservation and sustainable development, would mean a management of resources that is

sustainable in the long term, such an objective is at odds with the actual practice of NGOs.

In their ethnographic study Yeager and Miller (1986: 137) concluded that, “In the

Tanzanian case, year-to-year funding reductions were partly caused by philosophic and

operational differences between donor and recipients as to the nature and purpose of

development.” This study was undertaken well before liberalisation and the boom of NGOs in

Tanzania, but arguably as time has progressed the domination of NGOs has increased. Bryant &

Bailey’s work in the late nineties, however, also concedes a similar point,

WWF initiatives seek to stimulate community participation in eco-tourism ventures,

agro-forestry schemes and horticulture projects. Yet even, these well-intentioned efforts

can backfire when they do not come to grips with local concerns (Bryant & Bailey,

1997: 142).

There appears to be a growing reaction that the top-down approach of international

conservation organisations is a fundamental tool of talking the ‘environmental crisis’. Princen

(1994: 30) contends, “top-down approaches to international environmental problems are easy to

criticise as instances of dominance and neo-colonialism…top-down approaches are, nevertheless,

necessary components in any overall attempt to address broad-ranging environmental issues.”

Similarly, Brockington’s study of the Mkomazi Game Reserve in Northern Tanzania concludes

that, “the necessity for participation is limited. Communities are heterogeneous and divided. The

numerous people who live around Mkomazi have divergent interests” (Brockington, 2002: 128).

  28 

What this demonstrates is that in Tanzania community-based conservation still appears

little more than a narrative, a rhetorical tool for conservation agencies. Nelson and Agrawal’s

report on Tanzania concludes the following:

CBNRM may require long-term approaches and flexible and locally adaptive

investments, but such an investment framework is often at odds with the incentive

structures of most aid agencies and their personnel (Nelson and Agrawal, 2008: 579).

NGOs both coerce state agents and enter into the patrimonial relationship; they engage in

community-based conservation but also operate above it – what this amounts to is an

understanding of international conservation organisations that operate according to their own

agenda and objectives.

  29 

Comparative analysis

This final chapter looks at broader issues of governance and representation, aiming to

demonstrate that it is feasible to question the extent to which the devolution of authority has

really been granted to local communities in the matter of conservation. Furthermore, while

community-based conservation may theoretically promote democratisation and the strengthening

of society (or may do so in other parts of he world), in Tanzania political structures, agents and

systems prevent it from doing so.

In African states such as Tanzania, narratives appear to be frequently used by the central

government. Anti-colonial discourses, ‘Father of the Nation’ or ‘Mwalimu’ [Teacher] as Nyerere

was called, all serve to construct power relations. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the

Tanzanian government would apply the same practice to conservation, “Narratives serve to

standardize, package and label environmental problems so that they appear to be universally

applicable and to justify equally standardized…solutions” (Leach & Mears, 1996: 8).

From the perspective of environmental NGOs, it was established that they used moral

narratives to define and achieve their aims; but further to this, Brockington (2002: 126) adds, in

Tanzanian “conservation uses depoliticising rhetoric to escape the complex ethical and political

considerations that lie at the heart of policies that ultimately result in land and other resources

being targeted for wildlife conservation.” This relates back to the personal rule of Nyerere and

the moral impetus he injected in conservation; further, there exists out of this a clear dichotomy

between NGOs using depoliticising rhetoric and local communities who wish to use highly

politicised rhetoric whether this be for rights to remain, local empowerment or democracy.

The difficulty for local communities is that they do not dominate the public discourse or

the financial power over conservation projects. This is an obstacle that Bryant and Bailey accept,

  30 

In effect, states and other powerful actors seeks to maintain or enhance their power over

the environments of other actors by controlling what J. Scott (1990) terms the “public

transcript” – that is, “socially accepted” versions of events represented in public

documents, legal political ideologies, popular music and theatre and so on (Bryant &

Bailey, 1997: 42).

But where Bryant and Bailey might assume that community-based conservation involves

the devolution of enough power to enable local communities to adapt the narrative; the process is

likely to be less clear-cut. Kallonga et al (2003: 8,9) suggest in Tanzania “statements and actual

practices do not support local empowerment and greater rural economic opportunities, but rather

exclusive, centrally controlled uses of wildlife tourism activities at the expense of local

opportunities”.

The centrally controlled nature of conservation in Tanzania as claimed in reports like that

of Kallonga et al, backs up the assertion suggesting community-based conservation has only been

supported and implemented rhetorically. The power over conservation remains within the central

government that shares the benefits with international-conservation organizations, in return for

their financial assistance. In effect, “The ownership of community conservation has tended to

remain external to national conservation agencies…as an idea imposed from outside.” (Barrow et

al, 2000: 139). The data from previous chapters on what local communities believe the benefits of

conservation to be and how they are shared, backs up this allegation. Following this the external

ownership of conservation infers that any effects from community-based conservation represent a

‘fait accompli’ for local communities as they have been induced externally.

Within this comparative analysis, what has been established is that among the unequal

relationships of power, this patrimonial network is more detrimental to local communities than

NGOs; “international conservation NGOs have similar incentives in terms of needing to maintain

close relationships with government; supporting state conservation initiatives has always been a

  31 

raison d’être of these organisations” (Nelson, 2007: 18). That being said, “governance is not

simply a process of operating within a single institutionalized strand but rather a process of

navigating across strands that can vary dramatically in their normative content” (Conca, 2005:

195). If this argument can be accepted as fundamentally true, and further it is possible to define

community conservation as, “those principles and practices that argue that conservation goals

should be pursued by strategies that emphasize the role of local residents in decision making

about natural resources” (Adams & Hulme, 2001: 13), then it should be the case that the

governance of community conservation should indeed be drawn across a number of

governmental layers from the local to the global.

Brockington provides two statements on the problem of this in Tanzania; firstly is the

“need to recognise the existence of an ‘environmental-conservation complex’, where,

symbolically and politically, environmental and conservation concerns are dominant”

(Brockington: 2005: 102). More importantly, he explicitly states that, “Conservation funds oiled

the gears of political patronage and fed patron-client networks which people expect from their

politicians.” (Brockington, 2005: 106) For example,

The Presidential Commission of Inquiry Into Corruption, formed in early 1996 to make

findings on the nature and state of corruption in the country, noted the numerous dubious

transactions in the hunting industry that are not commensurate with sound management

of such a vital industry (Majamba, 2001: 17).

There is an argument to be made, then, that the governance of conservation would be

penetrated at every level by patrimonialism. For Bryant and Bailey (1997: 145), “the growth of

an ‘environmentally conscious’ middle class in the Third World is also linked to the advent of

‘democratic’ or ‘quasi-democratic’ political regimes in many parts of the Third World since the

1980s”. This statement is symptomatic of much theory from political ecology; in essence it is

informed more by philosophy than political context. An ‘environmentally conscious middle

  32 

class’ must surely form some aspect of civil society. Yet, Kasfir, who wrote more generally on

civil society in Africa, said that

The presumption is that since civil society plays an important role in enriching Western

democracies, it would have the same effect in Africa. But, the notion of civil society

that both donors and scholars consider desirable seems to be an idealised version,

rather than an application of what is actually happening in the countries they take as

their models (Kasfir, 1998: 128).

Indirectly, Kasfir calls into question one of the central pillars of political ecology: that

community-based conservation can empower and promote democracy in local communities.

However, corruption, patrimonialism, and a lack of what may be recognizable in the West as

‘civil society’, may well demote this tenant from a political objective to a theoretical aspiration.

There is an additional difficulty in suggesting devolving power will ultimately reverse

the top-down process of conservation. This is most evident in the Wildlife Policy of Tanzania

which explicitly states, “The role of the public is to support the government efforts in the

conservation and management of the wildlife resources” (MNRT, 1998: 34). It seems self evident

that community-based conservation in Tanzania would be systematically inferior in power and

finance to international conservation organisations; where “wildlife generates only small indirect

development benefits at the whole-community level through the implementation of government-

implemented benefit-sharing mechanisms” (Emerton and Mfunda, 1999: 13). International NGOs

on the other hand provide most of the finances, the moral impetus and the political influence to

dictate to local populations what conservation should be and how it should be done then

providing them with the means to make conservation self-sustaining; this is not the same as a

conservation program that is devised and implemented, bottom-up, by and for the community. So

it stands to reason that NGOs represent an ‘obstacle’ to the kind of community-based

conservation that political ecology wishes to see implemented.

  33 

Conclusion

This dissertation began with the assumption that in order to make a statement on the governing

processes in Tanzania, the account needs to have considered some key theoretical debates on the

‘African state’. Specific to this inquiry, political ecology is very much a “Western” construct that

has failed to adequately assimilate concepts such as neo-patrimonialism, corruption and state

centrality into its thesis. As such, it has been argued here that political ecology currently does not

constitute a sufficient theory for the assessment of conservation practices and policy in Tanzania.

By providing a genealogy of conservation in Tanzania, the opening historical section

demonstrated the centralized management process of conservation that has always been prevalent

in Tanzania. The concluding three chapters further demonstrated that despite a strong rhetorical

support for devolved power over conservation to the local community, the central government

and influential international conservation organizations have retained the centralised control over

the definitions, knowledge and practice of conservation. The empirical data demonstrated that

local knowledge of the objectives of conservation in Tanzania is weak; further, government

policy and the mission aims of NGOs highlight how conservation policy is conceived and

managed externally from local communities. This abates the democratic credentials of

community-based conservation and prevents wildlife use being fully managed at a local level.

Throughout the dissertation, various benefits of community-based conservation have

been highlighted and not denied conceptually; however, the case study evidence provided shows

in practice, the disruptive and manipulative influence of corrupt elites and neo-patrimonial

networks prevent this theory converting into a functioning project. This is not to say that

community-based conservation is entirely ineffective nor that it cannot become more efficient

and inclusive for local communities in Tanzania, rather political ecology is not the model for

such analysis. The focus on class structures instead of ethnicity, race or gender; the assumption

that community conservation can foster democratic values in society; and the assumption that

  34 

community-conservation are practices conceived locally, all reveal a theory which has not

understood the localised contexts in which it must operate within Tanzania. Broad statements on

relationships of power or structured hierarchies add little to the discussion on how the effectively

deal with them, as is the case of conservation in Tanzania. Corruption and neo-patrimonialism are

specific problems that manifest themselves uniquely in every State, the evidence presented in this

thesis shows the negative impact they have had for conservation in Tanzania. For community-

based conservation to be more successful in practice then, a different theoretical model needs to

be applied.

Despite the obstacles to devolved conservation such as corruption or neo-patrimonialism,

progression towards a more open and empowered local form of conservation is entirely

achievable. The outcome of this dissertation is to present the case that community-conservation is

more likely to become possible when developed from a theoretical position that is also

constructed from the bottom-up; this is now appears to be the case with developing indigenous

and land rights for the Maasai, whilst ensuring wildlife remains protected. Going beyond these

anthropological observations, the national politics and history of Tanzania should be the base for

how to understand conservation; as conservation is part of a broader socio-political process it has

to be placed within a contextualised socio-political framework, not a generic or globalised one.

Getting the approach right is vital for Tanzania, as it further opens post-liberalisation and for the

country to make the most of the natural resources it owns.

  35 

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