This paper examines the ways in which Tanzanian conservation authorities utilise biodiversity “extinction narratives” in order to legitimise the use of violence in redrawing protected areas’ ...boundaries. Militarisation and violence in conservation have often been associated with the “war on poaching”. Drawing on the history of conservation and violence in Tanzania, and using an empirical case from Loliondo, the paper suggests that violence in conservation may be legitimised when based on extinction narratives and a claim that more exclusive spaces are urgently needed to protect biodiversity. It argues that the emerging militarisation and use of violence in Tanzania can be associated with both global biodiversity extinction and local neo‐Malthusian narratives, which recently have regained predominance. When combined with “othering” of groups of pastoralists by portraying them as foreign “invaders”, such associations legitimise extensions of state control over contested land by any means available, including violence.
•Historical views that stigmatize local practices push people to seek privatization.•Privatization made land tradable and led to the introduction of conservancies.•Conservancies further pushed some ...locals into smaller spaces.•Fencing emerged as a way of protecting livelihoods against this trend.
In the Maasai Mara National Reserve, a state-controlled protected area in Kenya, and in its surroundings, a particular concern in recent years has been the proliferation of fencing in what once was an open landscape. The fencing poses challenges to both wildlife and the traditional pastoralism practised by Maasai communities, which were dependent on the presence of open communal land. The purpose of the article is to identify the root causes of the enclosure of former common land and the increasing fencing of plots of land owned by individual Maasai. The study is based on empirical material from extended fieldwork conducted in two villages adjacent to the reserve and a review of relevant documents. The main finding is that the history of land division, the introduction of wildlife conservancies, and the materialization of an ageold discourse about the ‘end of pastoralism’, through the process of privatization and commercialization of land, have played major roles in pushing the Maasai to fence their land. The authors conclude that fencing can be seen both as an active form of resistance to dispossession in the name of conservation and as evidence of the acceptance of the discourse on the ‘end of traditional pastoralism’, which has been promoted by a range of state and nonstate actors since Kenya gained independence from colonial rule.
It has been a year since a devastating war broke out in the Tigray region, Northern Ethiopia, where hundreds of thousands of Tigrayan civilians are killed, millions internally displaced and tens of ...thousands have fled to seek refuge in neighboring Sudan. An alarming development linked to this war is the manmade famine in Tigray that now threatens the lives of the millions of civilians who survived the horrific atrocities during the war. This piece is an attempt to explain why millions of Tigrayans from all walks of life face famine and concludes that famine was from the start an end goal of the Ethiopian and Eritrean regimes and they employed different tactics to ensure that it unfolds the way it does now. Among others, the tactics include (1) the systematic looting and destruction of Tigray’s basic economic infrastructures, (2) implementation of different financial measures to deprive people in the region of access to cash, and imposition of a complete siege that hindered access to supplies including lifesaving humanitarian assistance.
Wars have serious negative effects on the total environment. This study reviews 193 case studies worldwide in order to better understand these impacts and their potential management before, during ...and after war. The synthesis of the evidence shows that military actions damage landscape resources. Aerial bombings have great negative impacts by damaging environmental conservation efforts, destroying trees, disturbing soilscapes and undermining soil health. In addition, war exterminates wildlife and their ecological niches and contributes to atmospheric and water pollution. Overall, military leaders and personnel have shown little concern about these impacts. Limited postwar restoration activities are also undertaken to reduce war-driven environmental impacts. The study highlights some good practices on how to manage the total environment during the warfare. Therefore, communities must share best lessons to remain in a sustainable peace, restore the war-damaged environment, and enhance sustainable economic development.
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•The impact of the war on total environment has been overlooked in developing countries.•193 case studies worldwide reveal that the total environment has been “alone” during war.•Deforestation and soil erosion are the most cited environmental impacts of warfare.•Limited restoration efforts have been undertaken to reduce war-driven landscape impacts.•Management practices of environmental resources during tension, active fighting and peace are shared.
This paper seeks to answer the question: how does land become grabbable and local people relocatable? It focuses on the historical and current conditions of land tenure that enable land grabbing. ...While recognising the important contributions thus far made by the critical literature on land grabbing, this paper moves forward towards understanding specific processes that befall before land is grabbed and its original users relocated. Based on an empirical analysis of policy and practices of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, the paper proposes that land grabbing, particularly in the context of conservation in rural Africa, is not an instantaneous phenomenon and does not happen in a vacuum. It is a result of long-term structural marginalisation of rural land users that produces scarcity and the deterioration of life conditions, which make people relocatable and land grabbing justifiable. Local people either relocate themselves because they could not make a living due to systematic disinvestments on basic social services or life is made unbearable through restrictions imposed on their production practices to make “voluntary” relocation possible. The paper highlights the need to focus on the stealthy dispossessions in addition to major events of grabbing as starting points of analysis. Insight from this study can be useful in analysing other cases of land grabbing where large swathes of ostensibly empty land are made available for investment.
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