Conservation, green/blue grabbing and accumulation by dispossession in Tanzania

Abstract

This article shows how wildlife and marine conservation in Tanzania lead to forms of ‘green’ or ‘blue grabbing’. Dispossession of local people's land and resources has been gradual and piecemeal in some cases, while it involved violence in other cases. It does not primarily take the usual form of privatization of land. The spaces involved are still formally state or village land. It is rather the benefits from the land and natural resources that contribute to capital accumulation by more powerful actors (rent-seeking state officials, transnational conservation organizations, tourism companies, and the State Treasury). In both cases, restrictions on local resource use are justified by degradation narratives, while financial benefits from tourism are drained from local communities within a system lacking in transparent information sharing. Contrary to other forms of primitive accumulation, this dispossession is not primarily for wage labour or linked to creation of a labour reserve. It is the wide-open spaces without its users that are valued by conservation organizations and the tourism industry. The introduction of ‘community-based conservation’ worked as a key mechanism for accumulation by dispossession allowing conservation a foothold in village lands. This foothold produced the conditions under which subsequent dispossessions could take place.

Keywords:

• accumulation by dispossession
• conservation
• wildlife
• coastal
• Tanzania

Notes

¹It is, however, interesting to note in policy debates that African land is generally claimed to be either ‘overpopulated’ or ‘abundant’ depending on the agenda that is being promoted.

²The whole of chapter 27 in Volume 1 of Capital is devoted to this example.

³The projects are ‘’EKOSIASA: Political Ecology of Wildlife and Forest Governance in Tanzania’ and ‘Coastal fisheries of Tanzania: the challenges of globalisation to resource management, livelihoods and governance’. Both projects involve the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and the University of Dar es Salaam, while the former also includes the Sokoine University of Agriculture. Both projects are funded by the Norwegian programme of academic research and educational co-operation (NUFU) for the period 2007–2012.

⁴There are currently 21 WMAs in Tanzania in various stages moving towards formal establishment. The number of villages in each WMA varies from 2 to 30.

⁵There are also stories circulating about elite capture of these revenues, but most villagers seem to welcome safari tourism (Trench et al.2009), probably because, after all, in some cases it meant a substantial amount of revenue, which also benefitted ordinary people through various shared development projects.

⁶Northern Hunting Enterprises has Mohsin Abdallah, also known as ‘Sheni’, as its main owner. Abdallah is known to have close allies in government and the ruling political party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). He also sits on the Board of Directors of Tanzania National Parks.

⁷The main owner of Tanganyika Wilderness Camp is Willy Chambulo, who is a Tanzanian resident of German/Maasai origins.

⁸In Enduimet WMA, there are two hunting companies that each control one hunting block: Old Nyika Safaris (owned by Danny McCallum) and Northern Hunting Enterprises. While the former company agreed to share financial information with us, the latter declined.

⁹Game Controlled Areas (GCA) have until the adoption of this new act been a purely nominal protected area category that only has restricted wildlife utilization and not human activities such as settlement, grazing or cultivation (Nelson and Ole Makko 2005). GCAs are also areas where village land and hunting blocks overlap.

¹⁰The District has almost 100,000 inhabitants according to its own records.

¹¹We were then offered police escorts for our protection to visit these villages, but we declined. In the course of our research, all villagers, including these supposedly ‘troublesome’ villagers of Mafia Island, turned out to be courteous and hospitable, so we have endeavoured to understand the reasons for and implications of the existing contradictions and counterclaims that have emerged in this situation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tor A. Benjaminsen

We would like to thank Hanne Svarstad and four referees for very useful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the manuscript. The research was funded through two projects under the Norwegian programme of academic research and educational co-operation (NUFU). We are grateful to our research subjects, Tanzanian and Norwegian colleagues, as well as the students participating in the two research projects.