- 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.
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. In some crisis and emergency situations, the outcomes have been dire, even fatal.
Moreover, by restricting the Maasai’s access to spiritual and cultural sites on their land, the government is disrupting their traditional way of life and severing their connection to the land, dismantling their cultural identity. This is particularly difficult for Maasai women, who play a crucial role in the transmission of cultural knowledge and practices. Displacement from traditional lands disrupts cultural practices, including the loss of traditional ecological knowledge, which is often passed down through generations of women.
Despite international legal protections of Indigenous communities, including related to land and relocation, the authorities often exclude Indigenous communities from the planning process and implementation of conservation policies, even when they are affected. And women are given a subordinate role in what little decision-making occurs.
Who asked the women?
The Tanzanian authorities use a head-of-household designation that, in assuming the head is a man, inadvertently gives only men the power to register for relocation, sometimes without their wives’ knowledge or consent. Women’s exclusion means their specific needs are not considered, leading to policies that do not address their challenges and may even further embed gender inequality. In the course of my research, I heard about women who had refused to leave their homes in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area at the designated time for relocation and became homeless when the authorities destroyed and cleared their family’s homestead.
Globally, Indigenous women face many risks to their human rights, ranging from social and economic marginalization to physical violence. Without access to their traditional lands and resources, it may be harder for Indigenous women than for the men in their community to find alternative sources of income. The loss of their land, forests, including forest-based resources, and water often leads to health problems, decreases their resilience to natural disasters and other shocks, and heightens food insecurity.
For example, in Indonesia’s Jambi province on the island of Sumatra, some Orang Rimba women whose lands and forests had been cleared and converted into oil palm plantations had resorted to scavenging for palm fruit to sell or begging for money along the main highway, exposing them to further risks. In Cambodia’s Koh Kong province, Indigenous Chong women faced arrest and the threat of criminal charges for farming on their ancestral land, which was fenced off for Cambodia’s largest carbon-offsetting project, the Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project, forcing their families into food insecurity.
Socially, displacement and relocation to unfamiliar areas, as is the case for the Maasai, can disrupt social structures and support networks that Indigenous women rely on. This can lead to increased isolation, vulnerability, and risks of violence and exploitation. Heightened tensions within a community facing displacement or the disruption of its social structures during eviction may also increase the risks of violence against women, including intimate-partner violence. Knowing the potential threats that have endangered Indigenous women in similar situations, I wonder how the Maasai women will manage their futures.
Of course, conservation is crucial for environmental sustainability. However, conservation efforts should not — and do not need to — come at the expense of Indigenous women and their communities. What Maasai women and their communities in northern Tanzania need is a balanced approach that integrates their needs and rights; this is essential for sustainable and equitable conservation.
The government of Tanzania, as well as of other countries creating and implementing conservation efforts, should adopt more inclusive and community-centered conservation approaches that respect and integrate the rights and knowledge of Indigenous peoples. Inclusive conservation practices should require authorities to involve Indigenous women in decision-making processes, recognize their right to communal land, and support their cultural and economic needs.
Juliana Nnoko-Mewanu is a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, focusing on women’s and land rights.
Banner image: Two Maasai women at their village in Kenya. Image by Matt Biddulph via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
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