Introduction
Conservation and development issues are commonplace in Africa. Always, they are viewed in opposition to one another, pitting wildlife and western ideals against peasant farmers, traditional customs, and basic human developmental needs. The result has been anything but a success. Western pressure to conserve or preserve "global" resources, using methods of exclusion, creating questions of ownership and priority, have left local inhabitants bewildered, angry and resentful.
Whereas historically these local people had access to wildlife and natural resources as a community owned and regulated resource, they now see these resources taken away from them, controlled by a distant government, and often seemingly reserved for the use of western interests, as tourists, hunters or for global consumption. This sense of alienation leads to resentment of western ideas and of conservation in general. Thus, where it was once socially unacceptable to poach wildlife, as the hunter would have been taking from the community, now poachers are often highly regarded for their bravery and for taking back the resources that are rightfully theirs. Thus, the hunter becomes the hero instead of the outcast.
One example of misjudgment to come out of Uganda was a circumstance where the community of Mpokya had become established within the boundaries of the Kibale Game Corridor and was also encroaching upon the Kibale Forest Reserve. Driven by western influences and ideals of proper management of natural areas, the government of Uganda made some bad judgment calls in dealing with this situation. This case will be examined in greater detail and will be taken in the context of other studies of African people living with or in conflict against wildlife, conservation and the vision of appropriate natural resource management in Africa.
Mpokya: A case study from Uganda
About the size of the State of Oregon, Uganda is a relatively small country in Central/East Africa. In spite of its size, however, Uganda is home to an incredibly diverse array of plant and animal species. This includes holding the second most mammal species, the third most bird species and the fifth most swallowtail butterfly species of any country on the continent. They also rank in the top ten in reptile and angiosperm biodiversity.
Perhaps as a result of this incredible biodiversity, Uganda is home to ten national parks, eleven game reserves and over 700 forest reserves. However, twenty years of civil war have ravaged much of the wildlife, leaving many parks depleted of prominent animal species. This has resulted in severe measures controlling hunting of wild game, cutting of timber and collecting of firewood and other forest products.
Additional measures taken to protect Uganda's biodiversity have included the re-designation of major forest reserves, especially Kibale Forest, Mount Elgon and Semliki Forest, as national parks. The benefits of such a move are debatable. Intended to provide greater protection, these areas are shifting from the intensive protection of the well funded Forest Department, to the more poorly funded and managed National Parks system. Indeed, National Parks did not want to assume responsibility for these areas. Even international funding sources, such as USAID questioned the wisdom of this move. Kibale Forest was being developed by the Forest Department as a newly designated forest park, which would keep control under the Forest Department. This designation would provide for multiple uses of this resource, while at the same time preserving sensitive core areas of the reserve, namely the Ngogo Nature Reserve. As National Parks, access to these natural resources are restricted to tourists, western tourists, who are able to pay the entrance fees.
Aside from the loss of access to natural resources, National Park designation has had other consequences. One that will be addressed in this paper is the impact on human settlements in and around reserves. In April of 1992, 31,538 people were evicted from the village of Mpokya. This village was located in the Kibale Game Corridor, a game reserve connecting Kibale Forest Reserve (now a national park) with Queen Elizabeth National Park. Mpokya was first settled in the 1970s during Idi Amin's rule and by 1992 was well established with schools and workshops. The majority of the settlers were from Kabale District, a densely populated area of southern Uganda, and were of the Bakiga ethnic group.
The evictions were conducted over a six day period by the Local District Administration and the Game Department, with the assistance of the Forest Department and Uganda Police. The operation was carried out under the authority of the Forest Act and the Game Preservation and Control Act which prohibit people from settling in gazetted reserves without a permit. During the eviction, all buildings, including houses and shops, were burned and destroyed. Cultivation was left intact. In addition to numerous threats of eviction during the 1970s, which the government never followed through with, the people were warned of this impending eviction in major rally in 1988 and again in the months leading up to the actual eviction in 1992. The settlers were asked to register for resettlement by the Uganda government but refused to do so believing they would be allowed to remain in the reserve should they not sign up for resettlement. This was based on advice from a local lawyer who instructed them that signing up for resettlement would amount to admission of guilt of encroaching on the reserves. As a result, all of the settlers were left homeless after the eviction. They were, however, allowed to return to their farms to harvest their crops, but not to maintain the crops.
The evicted people appealed to the Uganda Government and the European Union about the eviction through the NGO Oxfam UK/Ireland. Oxfam took the issue up with the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna where the Ugandan Inspector General of Government was asked to explain the manner in which the evictions were carried out. The people were later resettled in Kibaale District with the help of Oxfam and funds from the Uganda Government. However, the damage had already been done.
As a result of the evictions and the involvement of Oxfam and other international organizations, the European Union suspended its funding of the Forest Department, bringing many important projects to a stand-still, including a project assessing the biodiversity of the forest reserves of Uganda. On top of this, the Forest Department, which played only a minor role in the whole eviction process, had its image tarnished as the primary player of the whole affair. With this affair in mind, this paper goes on to explore other cases and other options for resolving similar situations involving people and wildlife.
Pastoralism
Competition between people and wildlife for land resources is not new in Africa. Traditional people in Africa have lived in conjunction with nature for thousands of years. These include such present day examples as the Bushmen of the Kalahari, the Pygmies of the Congo and the East African pastoralists. However, in the past century it has become more than competition and entered into the realm of exclusion. The political causes of this shift will not be discussed here, but the implications for the groups of people this exclusionary trend is affecting will be addressed.
Pastoralists, or herders, are often seen as a threat to wildlife resources. This perceived threat is presumed to come from hunting of wildlife and severe disturbance from over grazing and trampling of natural vegetation, turning wild grasslands into dust bowls. As described by Homewood and Rodgers (1987) most of these accusations against pastoralists cannot be proven. They cite that pastoralists, livestock and wildlife have coexisted for thousands of years, without negative impacts on the wildlife populations. Indeed, some studies have demonstrated just the opposite to be true and that there has developed a mutual dependence among wildlife and human populations. A peaceful coexistence.
In Amboseli, according to Collett (1987), the pastoralist Maasai have fought for the rights to free movement throughout their homelands, without intervention from the government. Kenyan policy makers are attempting to restrict Maasai movements though a program of "sedenterisation" intended to confine the herders to well defined areas. Resentment on the part of the Maasai for having their traditional lifestyles altered and their lives disrupted has only turned them against any efforts to resolve the issues of possible overgrazing and disturbance of the natural environment. Collett concludes that the administration could learn something from the Maasai regarding proper management by simply allowing them to live as they have for over 2000 years, coexisting with wildlife instead of competing against it.
Selous Game Reserve Resettlements
A case study of a village in the Selous Game Reserve area (Matzke 1977) provides a different view of the conflict between human development and wildlife conservation. In this region, the people seemed resettle themselves voluntarily, moving further up the Horowe River, beyond the boundary of an ever expanding game reserve. Ultimately, the people moved out of the region, leaving the wild game in sole possession of the region.
As the people settled in areas around the reserve, they found abundant populations of antelopes, buffalo, elephants and other large mammals, which often damaged their crops. As time went on, the abundance of these animals decreased, and only the elephants were causing problems. It is assumed that the presence of the settlements were negatively impacting the wildlife populations. In fact, Matzke demonstrated that the areas within the reserve most favored by five species most dependent on short grass vegetation were abandoned settlement areas. Two months after the last settlers moved out of the Horowe Valley village, wildlife had returned to the area that had been previously absent.
Despite these findings, it was difficult to determine what was the cause of the animals absence from these areas when settled, and the re-emergence of these populations shortly after the people departed. The two primary causes presumed to be responsible for their absence, hunting and landscape modification from agriculture, were both inconsistent with the findings of the study. Hunting continued in the area after the people resettled elsewhere and the agricultural cultivation was not producing anything that might attract wildlife, and was, in fact, left quite barren. None-the-less, wildlife quickly returned to these newly unsettled areas.
Lower Tana River Basin, Kenya
This study, by Hughes (1987) shows the conflict between development and conservation in a different light. In this case there are no reserves directly involved. However, the demands of a growing human population on the existing natural resources still provide an example of the problems that are created as people develop without proper consideration of man's place in the bigger picture of the natural environment.
Kenya was developing an irrigation program to provide water to increase rice production in the village of Bura. The region was already consuming wood resources from local forested areas to the point of depletion. The planners of the Bura irrigation scheme failed to recognize the increase in demand on wood resources this program would create. Hughes study predicted that wood resources from most of the forested areas would be depleted within five years. Had the government conducted the proper studies in advance, fuelwood plantations could have been established to prevent this looming tragedy.
Kruger National Park, South Africa
One final brief note on the conservation/development conflict comes from South Africa's Kruger National Park (Koch 1991). Here local hunters, deemed poachers, are shot on sight. Hardly a friendly handling of the situation. In fact, one park officer is quoted as saying, "We had poachers in 1982 and 1983, and we killed them off." There is still a tremendous amount of resentment on the part of local citizens living around the park, where people are shot at or beaten for poaching or simply collecting firewood. They see Kruger as a terrible reminder of the horrors of the Apartheid period. But a glimmer of hope has also emerged from this once oppressive country.
In South Africa's Richtersveld National Park, pastoralists have been allowed to remain, a limited amount of stock farming is being permitted within the park, and in exchange, agreements have been made that will protect unique plant species. With this positive turn of events we can begin to see that there is hope for the future in Africa for compromise between. Before going on to the future, we return to Mpokya to see how lessons learned elsewhere might be applied to the circumstances there in Uganda.
Mpokya Revisited
The circumstances of each of these case studies are very different from each other as well as from the Mpokya case. But common problems and lessons can be observed and learned from in each of these cases. The first mistake made in Mpokya was in allowing the people to settle there in the first place. The repeated threats to evict them during Amin's administration without subsequent follow through only strengthened the residents resolve to remain. It can hardly be surprising that they would fail to take the government threats to evict them in the late 1980s and early 90s seriously given this history. Compare this to the circumstances of the Selous Game Reserve, where the people were quickly moved upon incorporation of their villages into the boundaries of the reserve, seemingly voluntarily. If quick action had been taken in Mpokya, perhaps all of this could have been avoided.
Given that the administration which carried out the evictions had no control over the past events, and could only deal with what they had before them, other considerations should have been made. First, since the evictions were followed, almost immediately, by the redesignation of Kibale Forest as a National Park, it might be surmised that the new national park status played a role in urging forcing the evictions. Since the Forest Department was already planning to make Kibale Forest into a Forest Park, the conservation measures for protecting the unique species of the reserve were already in place. This would have allowed continued use of the forest resources, and would have left open the door for allowing the settlers to remain within the game reserve, bordering the Forest Park. This situation would have been an acceptable compromise similar to what was observed in Richtersveld National Park in South Africa.
Before this arrangement could have been made it would have been essential to determine the exact impact of this community within the boundaries of the reserve. The case of the pastoralists demonstrates that perceived impacts could be misinterpreted. However, these settlers are not pastoralists, so it is likely that the circumstances of their impact on the environment would be similar to that of the Selous residents. But this is something that would have to be investigated. Even the Selous people were historically living in harmony with the wildlife, when they had dispersed residences, as opposed to the settlements which lined streams and created a barrier to movement. This could be looked into to form a sort of biosphere reserve. This option and others will be discussed further in the next section which looks at the future of conservation and development in Africa.
Signs of Success
Cartwright (1991) has a cautiously optimistic perspective of the future of conservation in Africa. A key component, as he sees it, is the involvement of the community living adjacent to the protected area. They need to be actively involved in the planning and protection of the reserve, while not losing anything in the process. Access to the resource for local needs is important. Any financial burden must be compensated. For example, if they must refrain from certain activities that traditionally provide a portion of their income, they must be compensated for any money they will lose as a result of their agreement to help in the conservation of the resource. This may take the form of Richtersveld National Park in South Africa, or it may be approached in a program like ADMADE (Administrative Management Design) of Zambia which incorporates the traditional views of land and wildlife. Other such projects include CAMPFIRE in Zimbabwe.
Tourism has been used to raise funds for local development projects. One example of this is the gorilla tourism project in southern Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (Nowak 1995). Through this project, the local communities benefit through tourist revenues, giving them a stake in the success of the project. This allows the to benefit from keeping the gorillas and their habitats intact.
Fourie (1994) again stresses the importance of involvement of the local community. He goes so far as to recommend that the National Parks be reorganized so that they not only involve the local community, but assist in their development. He argues that governments must be willing to set aside out-dated misconceptions of locals as abusers of the resource in order to bring them into the process, giving them a stake in the conservation of natural resources.
Discussion and Conclusion
The problem of conservation in Africa stems from colonial rule and the imposition of western ideas onto a context where they are inappropriate. Simbotwe (1993) discusses this point describing how wildlife management laws favored big game hunters from overseas, while excluding local populations from accessing their own "God-given" resources. Whereas the Africans have lived in harmony with wildlife for hundreds, even thousands, of years, creating their own systems of conservation, western notions of what is right and wrong have disrupted local perceptions of wildlife.
Traditionally, African societies used tribal laws which controlled harvest of natural resources. These laws were often reinforced by taboos with consequences aimed to demean an individuals position in society. These laws did not, however, criminalize these acts as is the case with the laws introduced with colonial rule. This is partly what has happened in Mpokya where the exclusionary traditions of western concepts of national parks and resource conservation have superseded local customary practice of living within the means of the resources capacity.
Frequently, families or communities would be organized into clans, each having their own totem or sacred animal. As a result, the clan would act to protect the species with which their clan was identified. This served to moderate the harvest of certain animals. In other cases, a species of animal might attain royal status whereby only the royal family of the kingdom would have access to these animals. This was often the case of animals which were less common or considered highly desirable, such as the eland, elephant and hippopotamus (Mwenya 1993).
When taken from the broader perspective of the history of wildlife conservation in Africa, it becomes easier to understand why the Mpokya evictions resulted in the myriad of problems which were created. Western concepts of wildlife management and conservation are simply not applicable in the African context. Indeed, to the extent that they have failed to prevent environmental degradation and destruction in their own countries, western "experts" are hardly the best source of inspiration for solving Africas environmental concerns.
By incorporating local customs and the opinions of local inhabitants, African governments could go a long way on their own toward successfully managing their natural resources. Such actions would not only serve the people of their own countries, but might also provide insights and important lessons for westerners.
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