Conservation Myths, Political Realities, and the Proliferation of Protected Areas

8/14/2019 Conservation Myths, Political Realities, and the Proliferation of Protected Areas

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African Environments Lecture, African Environments Programme, Oxford University Centre for the

Environment (OUCE), University of Oxford, 24 November 2006

Conservation Myths, Political Realities, and the Proliferation of

Protected Areas

Martin WalshDepartment of Social Anthropology

University of Cambridge

Conservation myths,

political realities, &the proliferation of

protected areas

Martin WalshDepartment of Social Anthropology

University of Cambridge

African Environments Lecture, OUCE, 24 November 2006

To begin, Id like to thank Dr. Daley and the Centre for inviting me to give this lecture, and

Hassan Sachedina for coordinating the arrangements for my visit.


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Martin Walsh (2006) Conservation Myths, Political Realities, and the Proliferation of Protected Areas___________________________________________________________________________________

1998 2002

MBOMIPA = MatumiziBora ya Malihai Idodi naPawaga= SustainableUse of Wildlife Resourcesin Idodi and Pawaga

MBOMIPA staff, the Iringa DistrictGame Officer, and resident hunters

Between 1997 and 2003 I worked as the Field Manager and Social Development Advisor of

MBOMIPA, a community wildlife management project in Tanzania. MBOMIPA was a

partnership between Tanzanias Wildlife Division and TANAPA (Tanzania National Parks),

and was supported by DFID (the UK governments Department for International

Development).

The basic task of MBOMIPA inherited from an earlier project (REWMP, the Ruaha

Ecosystems Wildlife Management Project, 1992-96) was to develop community wildlife

management in villages bordering Ruaha National Park, contributing to the development of

national policy and legislation in the process.

One aspect of this was to pilot a new kind of protected area on village lands, a community-run

Wildlife Management Area (WMA) that would replace the existing Game Controlled Area

(GCA) that was managed directly by the Wildlife Division and Iringa District Council.

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Usangu Game Reservegazetted 1998 pr

opos

edWildl

ifeMan

agem

entA

rea

Lund

a-Mkw

ambiGam

eCon

trolledA

reaSouth

disputed area

RuahaNational Park

disputed

THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNITYWILDLIFE MANAGEMENT IN TANZANIA

LESSONS FROM THE RUAHA ECOSYSTEM

Martin T. WalshMBOMIPA Project, Iringa, Tanzania &

Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, U.K.

disputedProtected area boundary dispute, 2000

This work presented us with a number of challenges, not least of which were the

consequences of the creation of another protected area to the west. Usangu Game Reserve

was gazetted in 1998 and one interpretation of its boundary description suggested that it might

swallow a large chunk of our Game Controlled Area and the richest area for wildlife with

negative consequences for village incomes from hunting. The hunting company operatingUsangu Game Reserve pressed their claim by bringing clients to Mkupule (the disputed area),

ignoring a request from Wildlife Division headquarters to stay out of the area until matters

could be settled.

I discussed this and other challenges to the project in a presentation to an international

gathering (the conference onAfrican Wildlife Management in the New Millennium) at the end

of 2000. I talked about the negative consequences of this dispute (especially if it wasnt

settled in our favour), other problems caused by the creation of Usangu Game Reserve (not

least the ejection of livestock-keepers and others), and pointed to the precariousness of our

position for as long as our work was in a legal limbo and the legal and institutional

frameworks for community wildlife management remained undeveloped.

The following is a quote from the written version of my presentation:

To donors and other stakeholders in the wildlife sector nationwide, a negative outcome may

well be interpreted to indicate lack of real government commitment to developing community

wildlife management. If one of the wildlife sectors most important donor-funded projects

can lose a case like this, then what hope is there for other initiatives in the country? (2000)

The assembled grandees of Tanzanias wildlife bureaucracy were less than pleased by this

and responded by arguing that the Usangu Game Reserve represented an opportunity rather

than a threat. After the meeting I was taken aside and told off for washing their dirty linen in

public. My next performance in a workshop was closely monitored.

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2002

2003

2000

The offending presentation was made in a conference session entitled Community-based

Conservation the New Myth? Debate about the pros and cons of community wildlife

management and fortress conservation is still very much alive in Tanzania, and the process

established to create community Wildlife Management Areas is about to be subject to a major

review.

In my presentation today, though, I want to use the same set of events to point to some of the

difficulties associated with conservation myths of a different order the grand narratives

that are widely used as explanatory tools in our political ecologies and economies of

conservation, in particular the resort to neo-Foucauldian and neo-Marxist understandings of

environmentalism and globalisation to describe and explain events such as the ones I

experienced in Tanzania.

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20052004

I cant claim any particular credit for this critical tack. Anthropologists (some

anthropologists) have long questioned what my Cambridge colleagues Harri Englund and

James Leach (2000) refer to as the meta-narratives of modernity, explanatory narratives

which anthropologists themselves have helped to create. In my own sub-field, the

anthropology of development, nearly a decade has passed since Ralph Grillo (1997) attackedthe oversimplifying myth of development found in the work of Arturo Escobar and others,

and called for more ethnographies of development to provide an increasingly multi-sited and

multi-vocal alternative to Foucauldian constructions of the discourses of development.

Grillos call has since begun to bear fruit. On the slide Ive drawn attention to two recently

published studies. Christine WalleysRough Waters (2004) is a study of the political

conflicts surrounding the creation of Tanzanias Mafia Island Marine Park which questions

the adequacy of an explanatory framework focusing on the impacts of global on the local.

David Mosses Cultivating Development(2005) is an ethnography of aid policy and practice

in a DFID-funded agricultural project in western India, a project that Mosse himself worked

on. Mosses former employers and colleagues were extremely unhappy with his public

washing of their own dirty linen, and tried to block publication of this book. An article by

Mosse in the current issue of theJournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (Anti-socialAnthropology?, December 2006) provides some interesting reflections on this. The

argument of the book itself is that development practice is not driven by policy but shaped by

the exigencies of organisations and the need to maintain social relationships. Walley makes

similar points when analysing the social drama of park development in Mafia.

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Tanzania:Protected &Open Areas

(Baldus &Cauldwell 2005)

My own argument is illustrated by select moments in the proliferation, expansion and

upgrading of wildlife (as opposed to forestry) protected areas in south-central Tanzania,

around Ruaha National Park.

More than a quarter of mainland Tanzania is covered by officially-gazetted protected areas.This map (see slide), poached from a report on hunting, gives some idea of their extent,

though it omits some recent additions as well as forest reserves.

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yesyesyesWildlife Conservation Act, 1974 & Wildlife

Conservation (Wildlife Management Areas)

Regulations, 2002 / Wildlife Division

Wildlife Management

Areas

n=4 (of 16 pilot areas)

yesyesyesWildlife Conservation Act, 1974 / Wildlife

Division

Open Areas

n=?

yesyesyesWildlife Conservation Act, 1974 / Wildlife

Division

Game Controlled Areas

n=43

noyesnoWildlife Conservation Act, 1974 / Wildlife

Division

Game Reserves

n=33

nononoNational Parks Ordinance, 1959 / Tanzania

National Parks

National Parks

n=14

nonoyesNgorongoro Conservation Area Ordinance,1959 / Ngorongoro Conservation Authority

NgorongoroConservation Area

n=1

Resident

hunting?

Tourist

hunting?

Villages?Legal mandate / government authorityCategory of Protected

(or other) Area

Tanzania: Protected & Open Areas(Severre 2000; 2003; Nelson et al. 2006; URT 2006)

This table (see slide), adapted from another report (Walsh 2006), shows the principal

categories of terrestrial wildlife protected area and some of their uses:

National Parks for non-consumptive utilisation of wildlife, mainly tourism and game-

viewing; Game Reserves especially for profession tourist hunting;

Game Controlled Areas both tourist and resident hunting;

Open Areas hunting areas that can be declared without gazettment;

Wildlife Management Areas the new category of community-managed area, that will intheory replace many Game Controlled Areas (where not created from scratch).

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Rungwa GameReserve - 1946

Kisigo GameReserve - 1991

Muhesi Game

Reserve - 1996

Ruaha NationalPark - 1964

UsanguGame

Reserve- 1998

Lunda-Mkwambi

Game Controlled

Area - 1984

proposed Idodi-Pawaga

Wildlife Management Area

formerly Utengule SwampGame Controlled Area - 1953

formerly RungwaGame ReserveSouth - 1951

Utengule SwampOpen Area

Protected areas aroundRuaha National Park

formerly Iringa GameControlled Area - 1951

Izazi Open Area

This map (see slide) shows the current cluster of protected areas around Ruaha National Park.

As the dates indicate, the development of these has a colonial as well as postcolonial history.

I havent tried to show all the details of this history.

Ive already introduced Usangu Game Reserve and the Wildlife Management Area that wewere planning for Lunda-Mkwambi Game Controlled Area south. Iringa Game Controlled

Area was short-lived, and turned into an Open Area for a time. Izazi Open Area is something

of an anomaly, apparently declared within Lunda-Mkwambi Game Controlled Area.

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Proposal for Ruaha National Park, 1949

George Rushby

The creation of a National Park was first proposed in 1949 by George Rushby, a Senior Game

Ranger (and the subject of a bad docudrama, The Man-eating Lions of Njombe, which first

aired on television last year). Rushby made his proposal in response to policy developments

in the colony, ultimately stemming from the 1933 Convention for the Protection of African

Flora and Fauna and subsequent lobbying by the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna ofthe Empire. His main thought seems to have been that a park would primarily help protect

people (and economic development) from wildlife rather than the reverse, a view which he

shared with many game officers engaged in wildlife control.

Following Rushbys proposal, the existing Game Reserve was extended. The extension (not

the whole Game Reserve) wasnt upgraded to National Park status until 1964, after

independence, with the help of grants from the New York Zoological Society and a sister

organisation.

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Rungwa GameReserve - 1946

Kisigo GameReserve - 1991

Muhesi Game

Reserve - 1996

Ruaha NationalPark - 1964

UsanguGame

Reserve- 1998

Lunda-Mkwambi

Game Controlled

Area - 1984

proposed Idodi-Pawaga

Wildlife Management Area

formerly Utengule SwampGame Controlled Area - 1953

formerly RungwaGame ReserveSouth - 1951

Utengule SwampOpen Area

Protected areas aroundRuaha National Park

formerly Iringa GameControlled Area - 1951

Izazi Open Area

At a distance the influence of (in this case) colonial policy and environmental discourses is

apparent, though the details tell a more complex story. Matters become even more involved

when we fast forward to the recent past and cases which are accessible through more than

official documentation (and having worked for a number of years in government offices that

continue to employ colonial-era filing systems, Ive seen what gets written and what doesnt,and what gets lost or thrown away, accidentally or otherwise).

Lets have a look at the new protected area that was causing me problems in 2000 Usangu

Game Reserve (see map).

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Great Ruaha River

Usangu catchment

Rufiji River

The Rufiji Basin

The Great Ruaha flows out of the permanent swamp in the north-east of Usangu, along the

south-eastern side of Ruaha National Park, and on to the Mtera and Kidatu Reservoirs. In

December 1993 the river dried up for the first time in living memory, and since then has

become a seasonal river, much to the consternation of the park authorities and other

downstream users. This became a cause for national concern in 1995 when power rationingin Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar was blamed by TANESCO (the Tanzania Electricity Supply

Company) on the low level of the reservoir at Mtera, which was blamed in turn on reduced

flows in the Great Ruaha, and ultimately on environmental degradation in its catchment,

including the wetlands of Usangu.

As subsequent research has shown, however, dry season changes in the Great Ruaha had had

little impact on reservoir levels, which were poorly managed by TANESCO using outdated

operating procedures. And livestock keepers were being unfairly scapegoated for the drying

of the river, which has largely been caused by the expansion of rice cultivation and dry season

irrigation in the south of Usangu.

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But the anti-livestock narrative was good enough to justify the creation of the Game Reserve

and repeated efforts to evict the livestock-keepers and other residents of the wetland.

Although I knew that this narrative chain was flawed, I also acquiesced in the use of part of it

the alleged impact of resource use in the catchment on hydroelectric power in the country to justify DFID investment in a project designed to tackle resource use conflicts in Usangu.

This was SMUWC the Sustainable Management of the Usangu Wetland and its Catchment

a project I helped to develop in 1997.

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Usangu Safaris Limited

I also expressed my disagreement with the plans for a new Game Reserve. By this time it had

become clear that there was another set of interests pressing for it a tourist hunting company

founded in 1989 by a member of Usangus long-standing Baluchi community. This company

was engaged in a bitter struggle with resident hunters over access to game quotas in Usangu.

The creation of a Game Reserve would give the company exclusive access to hunting rights,excluding other hunters as well as livestock-keepers and others.

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Usangu Safaris Ltd. hunting blocks

The author of the Usangu proposal was widely supposed to be acting on behalf of the Baluchi

hunting company, and his behaviour throughout this affair was cited as evidence for this. The

company also had a fair amount of political clout at higher levels, and in 1998 it purchased

the privatised parastatal TAWICO, the Tanzania Wildlife Company, acquiring many of its

assets, hunting block included, in the process.

In supporting the Game Reserve proposal, the Ruaha National Park warden was motivated by

the desire for a more effective buffer zone along the southern boundary of the park. Ironically

the hunting company and its clients were said to be responsible for many of the incidents of

bad practice (like hunting animals close to the park boundary) that the park authorities wanted

to guard against.

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Usangu Safaris Limited

The Game Reserve was gazetted in 1998 and the Baluchi company began to encroach on the

hunting block managed by MBOMIPA Project villages. The legal description of the new

reserves boundaries suggested that this was their due, although this description had been

developed without consulting villagers and ate into the Game Controlled Area that was being

developed on their behalf. As it happens the Wildlife Division had made funds available in1996 for resolving this boundary dispute. But these were not taken up by the District Natural

Resources Officer responsible, allegedly because he had a personal stake in unauthorised

logging in the disputed area.

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Usangu Game Reservegazetted 1998 pro

posedW

ildlife

Managem

entA

rea

Lund

a-Mkw

ambi

Game

Contr

olled

Area

South

disputed area

Protected area boundary dispute, 2000

Ruaha National Park

My verbal intervention in December 2000 hastened the release of funds by the Wildlife

Division for the work of a specially-convened committee to investigate and recommend a

solution to the dispute. Although this committee came under a number of pressures, we lost

our case on a technicality. Lunda-Mkwambi Game Controlled Area had first been proposed

in the 1970s. Boundary descriptions were bounced back and forth until 1980 when the finalverbal description landed on the desk of an officer at Wildlife Division headquarters.

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Lunda-Mkwambi boundary description, 1980

Although this wasnt a legal requirement (as he later admitted), he decided to add map co-

ordinates to the description, and went to the Mapping Division in Dar es Salaam to do this.

Unfortunately he didnt know the area and placed the co-ordinates far to the east of the

verbally-defined boundary. When the gazettment went through in 1985 everyone simply

followed the verbal description with its named points of reference. When the gazettment wasscrutinised in 2001 the map co-ordinates took legal precedence over the verbal description.

We were left with no grounds on which to challenge the Usangu Game Reserve boundary,

short of asking for both gazettments to be revised. Perhaps not surprisingly, there was no

political will to support such a move. MBOMIPAs Game Controlled Area and proto-

Wildlife Management Area shrank overnight.

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Usangu Game Reserve

Ruaha National Park

Kitulo National ParkMpanga / KipengereGame Reserve

Lunda-MkwambiGame Controlled Area

Protected area proliferation

Before I hasten to a close, let me add a little on subsequent developments. Many years after

his mapping mistake, the man in question came to work in Iringa as our Regional Game

Officer. In part to keep himself busy at a time when he had relatively little else to do (as a

consequence of local government decentralisation), he set about proposing a new Game

Reserve in the upper catchment of Usangu. The creation of this reserve, Mpanga/Kipengere,was justified in part by an environmental degradation narrative linked to that deployed in

Usangu itself.

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Cattle in Usangu

The original narrative has changed in the hands of different actors, but continues to be used in

various ways. At the Rio+10 Preparatory Meeting in London in March 2001, influenced by

the work of the SMUWC Project, the Prime Minister of Tanzania committed his government

to restoring year-round flows in the Great Ruaha River by 2010. In 2001 the WWF started a

Ruaha Water Programme with the same objective, and subsequently began to support thedevelopment of Mpanga/Kipengere and Usangu Game Reserves.

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Usangu Game Reserve

Ruaha National Park

Mpanga / KipengereGame Reserve

Protected area upgrading

More recently, Mpanga/Kipengere has been annexed to Usangu Game Reserve. Following

the election of Tanzanias new President (Jakaya Kikwete) late last year, efforts to eject

livestock-keepers from Usangu were redoubled. And in July the Game Reserve Manager

announced plans to upgrade the enlarged Usangu and incorporate it within Ruaha National

Park.

It remains to be seen how and when (and if) this will happen, and what the response of the

Baluchi-owned hunting company will be. Im sure that there will be a lot more to come.

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Fishing in the Usangu Game Reserve (before eviction)

Ive got relatively little information on these recent developments and cant provide the kind

of detail that I can for earlier events. Ive only sketched the outline of these and what I

understand of them. I would argue that when personal observation, ethnography or the

historical record allow us to pick apart events and describe the intentions and/or actions of

individual and collective actors, and the unintended consequences of these actions, then itbecomes increasingly difficult to interpret these events as effects of a conspiratorial

modernity. I fail to find what my good friend Dan Brockington has called Tanzanias

environmental-conservation complex. This may be because I was (and am) a part of it, but

I prefer to think that the political realities that Ive experienced are more complex than that.

The simplifying meta-narratives of environmentalism and globalisation are all to readily used

as substitutes for careful ethnographic and historical description and the analysis of local

causes and effects.

Recent writing on the global proliferation of protected areas and Im thinking here in

particular of papers published by Dan Brockington, Jim Igoe and Paige West (not necessarily

in that order) in Current Anthropology and theAnnual Review of Anthropology has been

weak on the causes of this phenomenon but perhaps stronger on some of its effects, althoughthey also recognise the general lack of detailed information on social impacts. But they are

happy to explain the proliferation of protected areas as an effect of neoliberality and the top-

down imposition of a series of global -isms environmentalism, virtualism, and the

demands of late capitalism. But I think that this is a simplification too far. Of particular

significance is the way in which these discourses are appropriated and reinterpreted and

conjoined with other, sometimes local discourses by different social actors and groups. (And

Dan Brockington has himself written interestingly on this subject in his paper on The Politics

and Ethnography of Environmentalisms in Tanzania (2005).)

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This is exactly what has happened to the narratives produced to explain the drying-up of the

Great Ruaha and its supposed impacts on hydropower generation. Far from functioning as an

anti-politics machine (Ferguson 1980), these discourses of development and

underdevelopment are the very stuff of political contestation. But you wont see this without

dwelling in at least some of the details that close-up research supplies. This includes (orshould include) ethnographic research in the sites of policy and decision-making at higher

levels than those that Ive described today. The appeal to global -isms and the meta-

narratives of modernity to explain everything is a symptom of ignorance of the details, and

one which can foster further ignorance by discouraging the kinds of research that can free us

from intellectual laziness.

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Conservation Myths, Political Realities, and the Proliferation of Protected Areas