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Paper short abstract:

By focusing on sacred forests conservation mechanisms in North Pare, Tanzania, this paper discusses local knowledge and worldviews that provide environmental ethics responsible for ecologically sustainable outcomes, and which should complement recent (and Western dominated) conservation efforts.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on sacred forests in Northern Tanzania and questions the future of their conservation amidst vanishing local customs and traditions. Despite not being officially gazetted by the State, studies show that these sacred forests have a wider variety of endemic flora and fauna and are better preserved than national forests reserves. Although they are small in size, sacred forests are important globally, with the Eastern Arc Mountains declared one of the world’s 25 “biodiversity hotspots”. However, many forests have lost their caretakers due to either religious conversion, the introduction of Western philosophical concepts, or age. Scholars and, more broadly, the Global Forest Goals see forest law enforcement and legally established protected areas as the preferable solution to halt deforestation. Yet, this study reflects on the limits of the modern conservation agenda, which, based upon a mechanistic worldview (antithetic to a holistic visualisation of reality), disregards intrinsic meanings and layers of local forest conservation. The findings of my research, collected by means of an ethnographic fieldwork, show that Pare customs and traditions have not completely vanished and the punitive power of ancestors spirits is still the primary mechanism behind sacred forests conservation: the concept of interconnectedness of all beings and the interrelations between the visible and non-visible worlds, upon which the eco-centred African holistic vision of creation exist(ed), needs to be considered and complement recent conservation efforts, which focus only on tangible benefits and reproduce colonial boundaries, neglecting the worldviews that provide environmental ethics responsible for ecologically sustainable outcomes.