Conservation tourism and landscape governance in Kenya: the interdependency of three conservation NGOs

Abstract

Tourism plays an increasingly important role in the way non-governmental organisations govern landscapes, especially in decentralised conservation contexts in developing countries. In this paper, we examine the role of three key conservation organisations (the African Wildlife Foundation, the African Conservation Centre and the Northern Rangelands Trust) in landscape governance in Kenya. Our analysis of organisational strategies and practices between 2007 and 2013 demonstrates how conservation NGOs, as intermediators of various forms of conservation tourism, are subjected to multi-actor interdependencies. Our findings underpin the role of mismatching scale-making that not only hampers organisational objectives, but also contributes to a dynamic reshaping of conservation tourism landscapes. We illustrate our approach to landscape governance in the context of the Naibunga Conservancy Trust where multiple conservation NGOs are required to deal with overlapping and competing orderings.

Keywords:

• landscape governance
• conservation tourism
• scale
• Naibunga

ORCID

Arjaan Pellis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7495-9156

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dr Rita Nthiga, Swen Waterreus, Nowella Anyango-van Zwieten and Annemiek Pas Schrijver for their collaboration, assistance and/or validation of empirical findings. The authors are grateful for the ongoing support and collaboration with AWF, ACC and NRT in providing access to valuable policy documents. And we wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable recommendations that have helped to improve earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.