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Paper long abstract:

In Kenya, communities have been supported mainly by the State and NGOs to convert their communally held land into conservation areas called conservancies. The incentive is for communities to draw direct financial benefits from conservation-related businesses. Critical scholarship show that the economic outcomes of conservancies is hardly achieved. How can we then explain the continued State and NGO support to and community acceptance of existence of conservancies and support their expansion?

I draw from fieldwork in Maasai conservancies in the Amboseli conservation area in southwestern Kenya to show that the continued existence and expansion of conservancies is motivated by two interdependent narratives hinging on land tenure transformations in the area. After land subdivision, conservancies remain the only hope to protect wildlife migratory corridors and dispersal areas from agricultural expansion and settlements. Pastoral Maasai are motivated to maintain and expand conservancies to avert land sale to prevent future Maasai landlessness and protect communal livestock grazing areas for the continuity of pastoralism. My analysis suggests that a holistic evaluation conservancy benefits in Kenya must go beyond financial gains, taking sociocultural and ecological benefits into account as well. I conclude that policies and practices that promote conservancies should attune themselves to a new narrative that lay emphasis on protection of land and pastoralism as well as the recognition that communities remain vital for the future of conservation of wildlife.