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By Jack Graham [[link removed]] | Deputy Editor, Funded Projects

In the name of conservation

In the Ngorongoro crater, a pristine wilderness in Tanzania, a vast national park exists to conserve and protect crucial biodiversity from black rhinos and elephants to lions and cheetahs.

But according to the Indigenous Maasai people, the original land guardians, these nature protections have come at their expense.

As our correspondent Kim Harrisberg reports this week, the Maasai are protesting their eviction [[link removed]] from the land - which they say is a "militaristic" implementation of conservation.

"We have been intimidated, assaulted, arrested, fined, beaten by military and conservation officers," Maasai lawyer Denis Oleshangay told Context.

After a history of land struggles and restrictions placed on the Maasai people, now the Tanzanian government wants to evict tens of thousands of them from Ngorongoro to make more space for conservation sites, lucrative luxury tourism and trophy hunting.

Tens of thousands of Maasai gather to protest against their eviction from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, August 22, 2024. Julius Laitayok/Handout via Thomson Reuters Foundation

Wearing their traditional red shuka cloths and armed with placards, microphones and mobile phones to document their peaceful protest, Maasai took to the streets in peaceful protest, blocking the road for tourists.

Some 70,000 Maasai were evicted in 2022 to make way for trophy hunting lodges in the Loliondo ancestral lands, and Oleshangay said a further 100,000 in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area now face intimidation and abuse from authorities to relocate.

The Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and has previously said the relocation was voluntary [[link removed]] and done to protect against overpopulation and cattle grazing.

But rights groups, including Amnesty International [[link removed]] and Human Rights Watch [[link removed]], have documented cases of what they say is coercion and violence, and restrictions on Maasai access to food, housing, healthcare and education.

"It's a cultural genocide, a crime against humanity," said Oleshangay.

30 by 30

Known as "fortress conservation" - when local communities are considered obstacles to be removed to conserve a natural area - this issue is not unique to Tanzania.

In fact, more than a quarter of a million people are thought to have been evicted to make way for protected areas between 1990 to 2014, according to data from the Rights and Resources Initiative [[link removed]].

Tanzania was one of 195 countries to adopt a global pact to protect nature at the 2022 U.N. COP15 nature summit in Montreal by pledging to conserve at least 30% of the planet's land and oceans by 2030, also known as 30x30 [[link removed]].

Members of the Maasai ethnic community in Kenya march during a protest against the eviction of their compatriots from their ancestral land in Tanzania in Nairobi, Kenya, June 17, 2022. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

But the 30x30 framework also states that Indigenous people need to be included in that protection, and human rights groups are concerned that these nature guardians could be sidelined.

In a couple of months’ time, countries will meet again at COP16 in Colombia, talks which must strengthen its protections of Indigenous communities, said Jennifer Corpuz, managing director of Policy at the non-profit Nia Tero.

She said that means directing funding to Indigenous groups, adopting "indicators" that help protect Indigenous rights, and hiring people in the community to monitor them, said Corpuz.

That may offer little reassurance for the Maasai people in Tanzania, as the gap between global promises and local implementation seems wider than ever.

See you next week,

Jack

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