Paper short abstract:

As conservation takes on a more human dimension, greater attention must be paid to the attitudes of local people. Kenya's South Rift provides a rich site to investigate anthropological questions of identity, governance, and institutional networks.

Paper long abstract:

How do Maasai pastoralists become conservationists? What does this mean, and what might this look like? In the context of contemporary forms of neoliberal and community-based environmental conservation, how do Maasai people situate themselves in relation to the ideas, institutions, values, and discourses associated with conservation? Questions related to local perceptions of conservation were raised during three months of preliminary fieldwork conducted with the Olkiramatian and Shompole Maasai communities in the South Rift of Kenya. A number of characteristics which enabled each community to 'successfully' implement and benefit from conservation schemes were identified through informal interviews and conversations with local Maasai. It was observed that access to natural resources (i.e. water, savannah, wildlife), a sense of 'togetherness', internally developed organizations (e.g. grassroots NGO ties), and non-monetary community benefits resulted in 'conservation by default' in Olkiramatian and Shompole. Taken as a case study, these communities provide insight into how Maasai people are being empowered by conservationist pursuits and benefiting from the cross-cultural exchanges produced by increased international collaboration. Exploring the way that Maasai communities position themselves within these networks of transnational and local organizations sheds light on new forms of environmental governance emerging in Kenya and beyond. As they attempt to reconcile the twin goals of human development and biodiversity conservation, Olkiramatian and Shompole group ranches may prove to be important sites of investigation into sustainable and successful environmental stewardship.

Paper short abstract:

This paper questions how anthropologists should represent visible cases of unsustainable resource use, against the entangled backdrop of ethical responsibilities to human subjects, concerns for wildlife and biodiversity, and personal dispositions of the individual researcher.

Paper long abstract:

Environmental narratives play a significant role in shaping the political dimensions of biodiversity conservation. Project stakeholders often have diverse subjective accounts of what the most pressing problems are, how these problems should be addressed, and what the ideal solutions should look like. In many cases, the dominant narrative forwarded by conservationists is primarily informed by findings from environmental sciences. This scientific model of framing conservation problems, however, can contradict the narrative accounts of local communities, who often conceptualize environmental problems and solutions in divergent ways. Crisis narratives of extreme ecological degradation can be used to justify increased state control over resources and resource users, through top-down environmental regulation. Bearing in mind the power of environmental narratives to influence conservation practice, this paper explores the moral dilemmas facing anthropologists who conduct conservation-related research. It focuses on the question of how anthropologists should represent visible cases of unsustainable resource use, against the entangled backdrop of ethical responsibilities to human subjects, concerns for wildlife and biodiversity, and personal dispositions of the individual researcher. The paper draws from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a coastal fishing village, located inside the catchment area of a marine park in southeastern Tanzania. It discusses some of the difficulties and complexities associated with attempting to simultaneously document the socioeconomic impacts of marine conservation on a resource-dependent fishing community, and the persistence of dynamite fishing inside of the park's catchment area. Ultimately, the paper calls for greater attention to the positionality of the anthropologist in producing written narratives that could affect future conservation practice.

Paper short abstract:

Paper examines the link between corruption and invasive species in a region of Kenya heavily penetrated by conservationists. These two issues not only share in a colonial history, but work together in a mutualistic fashion that dematerializes the cactus while embedding corruption deeper in the landscape.

Paper long abstract:

In a region of northern Kenya recently dubbed the 'Naibunga Conservancy', pastoral communities cite corruption and an invasive plant species called 'opuntia' as the two greatest detriments to their livelihoods and futures. Both these pestilent entities have a discernible colonial history. Corruption, it is believed, crept into Kenya through the open windows of a ruined empire, while opuntia was similarly left behind by the British who introduced it as a remedy for the dreariness of the northern desert. But are these two scourges, today, being fought by pastoralists on separate phenomenal fronts? Or has the eminence of both issues created a political climate where corruption and cacti can feed off of each other? This paper will discuss recent efforts to combat opuntia and how they've been muddled by the incursion of local elites seeking to capitalize on the creation of the Naibunga Conservancy. The paper will contemplate the challenge of rangeland management in contexts where the landscape is heavily shaped by history and by politics. It will comment on the momentous importance of studying these crises through an ethnographic approach, as both governments and conservationists tend to separate the biological from the political - a tendency that continues to obscure the experiences of Kenya's most ecologically vulnerable communities.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to unpack with the tensions of colonial/colonized conservation from the perspective of the Agikuyu people in Kenya. The author emphasizes the need for honest community engagement for sustainable forest protection that centres and hears community voices.

Paper long abstract:

The Nyandarwa forest is one of the key five forested ecosystems (known as water towers) in Kenya. It is surrounded by the Agikuyu people on whose traditional territory it seats. This protected area was created in the colonial period and comprises of a national park, and forest reserve. Its creation marked the beginning of Agikuyu dislocation from their landscape. This began what has been an antagonistic relationship between government authorities (from the colonial period through to the post-independence period). In an attempt to address past injustices, Kenya reviewed its forest policies in 2005, and now seeks to engage with surrounding communities in forest governance. This paper seeks to discuss how Agikuyu people-forest relationships have shifted through time; from the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-independence epochs. These relationships will be juxtaposed with the values that are promoted by the government and conservationists. The author will demonstrate that there has been a sustained struggle at the community level to resist pristine wilderness preservationist doctrines. Further, the author will show how communities have self-mobilized to protect their landscape, and how identities are shaped through the forest and land. In the end, the author will make a case for honest dialogue and engagement with communities, as a critical ingredient protection of forests, arguably one of the world's most threatened resources.

Paper short abstract:

Findings from ethnographic observation of a hydro-electric dam project suggest process elements—scope, language, resources, and power, along with opportunity to explore beliefs underlying positions-- that must be attended to for just environmental decision-making and collaboration.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropologists and mediators both act as translators of perspectives; however, while conventional mediators may be wary of cultural factors, ethnographic understanding may be especially valuable in environmental conflicts and collaborations, where not only different interests, but also ontologies, intersect and often compete. For example, observation of the controversy over "Site C" (a hydroelectric dam under construction in northeastern British Columbia), and the environmental assessment process demonstrated the value of an ethnographic lens. Ethnographic interviews with both project proponents and opponents uncovered beliefs underlying the parties' positions that were not otherwise apparent, and observation of public hearings revealed the importance of process—scope, language, resources, and power—to environmental-decision making. Many participants described the process in terms of symbolic violence. Conclusions from this research reveal not only the weaknesses of this environmental assessment process, but, turned around, suggest key elements for just environmental collaborations, and the potential role of anthropologists in encouraging them.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores settler relationships to land in the Cape Breton Highlands, and their collisions with indigenous communities and Parks Canada. I argue that protection agencies must consider settler relationships to land, and would benefit from working to foster their growth in local communities.

Paper long abstract:

In the 1930s, the Nova Scotia government expropriated land from several hundred families during the formation of Cape Breton Highlands National Park (CBHNP). This resulted in widespread local resentment of the parks agency, which I argue sometimes manifested in resentment toward the land itself—feelings which persist to some extent into present generations. Following the recent popularization of community co-management, when Parks Canada in CBHNP planned a moose harvest to restore boreal forest health, it partnered with a Cape Breton Mi'kmaq organization. Some members of the local non-indigenous community responded negatively, saying they felt left out of the decision-making process and the benefits of the harvest—echoing the resentments of the 1930s expropriations.

Drawing from fieldwork completed before the conception of the moose harvest, and from news reports and media interviews about the project, I use the CBHNP case study to explore how an anthropological perspective might illuminate better ways of navigating indigenous-settler relationships in protected areas, and settler relationships to land more broadly in these areas. The latter, I argue, matter because local activities connect with protected ecosystems, and because care for place in settler communities furthers conservation goals on local and global scales. Anthropologists are well positioned to imagine how conservation projects can respect and nourish existing relationships to land; we can and should also imagine how such projects can go further and work to foster new relationships to land—what MacKenzie (2004) calls "resubjectification" in a Scottish case study—in the settler communities local to protected areas.

Paper short abstract:

We describe changes in land tenure that accompany the transition from pastoralism to agro-pastoralism in East Africa. We show that individual land allocation encourages individualism and triggers conflicts but may also be a necessary adaptation to dwindling resources and growing population.

Paper long abstract:

Maasai pastoralists are under great pressure today following population growth, land and resource grabbing, and increasing frequency of droughts. They are adapting to these changes by diversifying their livelihood strategies. They develop agriculture, a phenomenon we observed in South-West Kenya and adjacent Loliondo district in Tanzania. This development is concomitant with the division of common land into private holdings. In Maji Moto group ranch, land subdivision resulted in the division and titling of all land into individual holdings of equal size, although not equal value. It is often welcomed by the population, especially by young men willing to free themselves from village institutions controlled by village elders. In Loliondo, the shift to private property was slower and led to the apparition of a new land tenure system that combines private holdings and communal land, in a context of competition for access to land with neighbor agriculturalist communities. It did not result in land titling but a land market is appearing, revealing the irreversible character of the transition. In both cases, the allocation of land to individual households is perceived as encouraging individualism and triggering social conflicts, but also as a necessary adaptation in a context of dwindling resources. These case studies show that if proper land policies are to be designed, researchers and the policy makers they advise need to adopt a polycentric approach where the local moral economy, the global political economy, and material necessities linked to livelihood strategies need to be considered all together.