- Conservation efforts can sometimes displace entire communities and upend livelihoods and ways of life, without ever consulting the women impacted.
- Some community consultation efforts only, or mostly, include men, even as displacement or changes may make it harder for women to find alternative sources of income, adapt to disrupted social structures, access pregnancy services, or pass down traditional knowledge they are entrusted with.
- The author of this commentary argues that inclusive conservation practices should require that authorities involve Indigenous women in decision-making processes, recognize their right to communal land, and support their cultural and economic needs.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
In all my travels — through coastal mangroves, tropical forests and savannas — northern Tanzania, home of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, stood out as a place of immense natural beauty and cultural significance.
While the landscape is certainly magnificent, I found the people even more so. My colleagues and I interviewed Maasai people whom Tanzanian authorities had forcibly evicted from their homes in a protected area in Loliondo, and Maasai people the authorities were forcing out of their ancestral home in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The Maasai, especially the women, endured these adversities with great fortitude.
The Maasai are seminomadic pastoralists with a long history of occupying areas of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. British colonial authorities carved out protected areas in the early 1920s. The creation of Serengeti National Park in 1929 (and its expansion in 1940) and other protected areas displaced Maasai people.
Recently, Tanzanian authorities have tightened restrictions on the Maasai’s access and use of the area, contending it’s necessary to preserve biodiversity. Since at least 2009, the government has forcibly evicted and relocated thousands of Maasai people for conservation, tourism and trophy hunting, leading to the loss of the Maasai’s livelihoods, erosion of their culture, and erasure of their heritage.
In 2022, Tanzanian authorities forcibly evicted Maasai from Loliondo, with satellite imagery analysis of the area concluding that about 90 homesteads and animal enclosures were burned. Maasai women in particular faced atrocities during this eviction, including rape and other sexual violence by security forces.
In the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the government has used varied tactics — such as banning farming, prohibiting access to certain grazing areas, and decreasing funding and resources for education and health services — to make life unbearable for the Maasai and increasing their poverty.
A Maasai woman standing near Endulen, Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), Arusha region, Tanzania, on June 22, 2023. Image © Juliana Nnoko/Human Rights Watch (2023).
The reduced availability and accessibility of health services has particularly affected pregnant women, with antenatal and postnatal care hard to find. Some women with difficult pregnancies have had to stay in Karatu, 60 kilometers (37 miles) away from their families, for weeks while waiting for labor to start.