Conservation and Globalization: A Study of National Parks and Indigenous Communities from East Africa to South Dakota

by Jim Igoe

CONSERVATION AND GLOBALIZATION opens with a discussion of these two broad issues as they relate to the author's fieldwork with Maasai herding communities on the margins of Tarangire National Park in Tanzania. It explores different theoretical perspectives (Neo-Marxist and Foucauldian) on globalization and why both are relevant to the case studies presented. Readers are introduced to the practice of multi-sited ethnography and its centrality to the anthropological study of globalization. While drawing on examples from specific Maasai communities, the book is more broadly concerned with the historical and contemporary links between these communities and a global system of institutions, ideas, and money. The ecological incompatibility of Western national park-style conservation with East African savanna ecosystems and Maasai resource management practices, are highlighted. The concept of national parks is traced temporally and geographically from Maasai communities to the enclosure movement in 18th century England and westward expansion in 19th century North America. The relationships of parks to Judeo-Christian assumptions about "man's place in nature," colonial ideologies like Manifest Destiny and the Civilizing Mission, and capitalist notions of private property and "The Tragedy of the Commons," are explored. The book also looks at the latest conservation paradigm of "Community-Based Conservation," and explores its connections to the Soviet Collapse, economic and political liberalization, and the global proliferation of NGOs.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology, Africa

200 pages, Paperback

First published August 29, 2003

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a book with such a bland, uninspired title, "Conservation and Globalization" is packed with insights and compelling narratives. The book's central thesis is that conservation in East Africa has been just one more way that colonizers have imposed their cultural constructions and economic imperatives on their subject peoples. Igoe documents first the traditional Maasai pastoral land use techniques in the Tarangire-Simanjiro area (his study site). Then he examines how this system was disrupted by the imposition of the national park. The conclusion: excluding Maasai and their cattle from the Tarangire River forced the Maasai to overgraze pastures they formerly only grazed in the wet season, that are really only grazeable then, since they are otherwise too dry. The lack of dry season watering holes bottlenecked Maasai livestock populations, reducing herd size below what the Maasai needed to survive, forcing them to switch to subsistence farming of very marginal lands. As farmers, the Maasai then had an incentive to exclude wildlife from the area, something they had never done before.

The unjust theft of the Tarangire River resource could perhaps be justified by effective conservation outcomes - if it were really a case of Maasai v. elephants, perhaps elephants might win. However, Igoe's evidence suggests that the national park conservation model has accomplished precisely the opposite of what it was intended to. It has increased active conflicts between humans and wildlife by causing poverty (which drives poaching, for meat and for ivory) and overuse in areas outside of parks (which are also the wet season pastures of the animals the park is meant to protect). Thus, many of the modern issues facing conservation in East Africa are results of conservation in East Africa.

The next part of the book is a broad but effective explanation of why Western conservationists imposed the national park model and why they continue to suggest it even after Western science has proven they are destructive. He cites the English enclosure movement, which similarly alienated peasants from their land, aristocratic game parks (Kenya and Tanzania were popular places for aristocrats like Teddy Roosevelt to go prove their manliness by shooting Rhinos etc), Romantic ideals of wilderness and sublime landscapes, and the racist notion that poor and indigenous peoples are not sophisticated enough to appreciate nature or to effectively manage their resources. The last idea especially is traced to Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons," which is more ideology than science, and the main examples from which are directly opposed by historical evidence. Thus the national park in Africa is a misguided notion from the start, a mixture of good and selfish intentions informed by no realistic understanding of the land.

Igoe raises a really wonderful point here about the way power dichotomies between the Maasai and British colonialists (or any other colonized-colonizer pair) privilege the Western viewpoint as "scientific, informed, and objective" where knowledge of the Maasai, is downplayed as unscientific, culturally specific, and ignorant of how the world works. This despite the obvious, inevitable fact that the Maasai have spent centuries observing the land where they live. While the Maasai could surely stand to learn plenty from Western science - its techniques and its accumulated observations - they should clearly be regarded as the experts on conserving resources in their homeland - again, over and above their right to the self-determination of their landscape. Thus, while in this case the English were being thoroughly unscientific - justifying their cultural and economic desires with "science" that was uninformed and precisely backwards - their position as the civilized arbiters of knowledge (and their guns) gave their theft legitimacy.

So far so obvious - colonizer steals land to benefit themselves culturally (tourists get to see landscapes clean of primitive natives and/or "civilization") and economically (rich investors get to run lucrative hotels) and the natives "are moved into the money economy without the means to participate in it fully . . . and assimilated into the lowest ranks of national cultures." But the story gets really interesting when Igoe traces the ideologies and realities of post-colonial conservation.

After colonialism, the backlash against economic imperialism became vogue in charity circles. Gradually, aid money became enlightened, at least theoretically, so the days of chasing people from their homes to make room for tourists in the name of conservation should have been over. However, “the problem is that the ideas attached to [aid] money are almost always those of powerful people who run the institutions in this global network [NGOs and TGOs]. The ideas of marginalized people are almost never considered or implemented, although there are important exceptions to this rule.” Even native-run NGOs became oriented to Western donors' ideas and values rather than their missions and visions and the needs of their communities.

“This situation is complicated by the fact that money needs to be spent and accounted for within a certain period of time. . . . Community participation takes a lot of time. Involving local people in every stage of the process would thwart the funding cycle. . . . Consulting with communities, and doing a really thorough job, takes so much time that producing quantifiable results at the end of a year or two is nearly impossible. The unfortunate outcome is that community consultation is reduced to a very superficial process. . . . many organizations targeting Maasai communities worked hard to construct an appearance of popular participation without actually involving local people very much.” Thus, while the ideals of conservation in regards to indigenous peoples had experienced a 180 degree flip, the realities for communities were often exactly the same.

The next important point Igoe makes is that his result is generalizable. There are substantial differences between the contexts of national parks around the world, but in most cases, especially in the third world, conservation follows this unfortunate model. The final chapter surveys other examples of community-led conservation, from cases in Australia and Alaska where indigenous communities hold some title and direction over parks co-managed by national park services to parks wholly established and designed by indigenous communities. Each of these models is better in certain ways than the standard exclusionary one implemented most places in the US and around the world. However, none of them achieves the goals they were established for - to protect the autonomous sustainable use and lifestyle of an indigenous community from exploitation.

The reason for that is intuitive from a relativist point of view. Creating gazetted parks, with trained administrators, visitors' centers, educated conservation biologists, and fighting the legal battles to establish and defend the integrity of a park are all activities that are firmly outside the skill set, comfort zone, and resource capacity of indigenous communities. They give the exploiters a heavy handicap. Further, they are premised on the notion that conservation must be an assertive use of land. The whole situation is entirely backwards. This is the value of a system of human rights, since a community doesn't need to be in a park to legally have its resources protected from extractive industry and alienation.

This point, made more assertively by Mac Chapin in "A Challenge to Conservationists" - http://watha.org/in-depth/EP176A.pdf - leads to the conclusion that global biodiversity will only be effectively protected if conservationists stop attacking indigenous land rights by establishing protected areas and start attacking the people who are actually destroying global biodiversity - extractive and polluting industries, chiefly. The problem for conservationists is that those industries are their funders, so they are effectively precluded from attacking them. They justify this unforgivable silence by claiming that such issues (often mediated by corrupt post-colonial national governments) are "too political" for them to speak on.

Igoe makes all these points in clear, comprehensible language and without recourse to academic jargon. The stories that comprise his evidence are humanized and often rather hilarious or otherwise interesting. While it may be somewhat problematic that his own viewpoint is so prominent in the text (it really reads more like political advocacy than anthropology, since his field data is almost invisible), it's clear that his viewpoint is considerably more informed than at least most of the voices opposing his conclusions (advertising and fundraising materials from the conservation NGO community and misguided apologists for the status quo). This book is highly recommended.

[Jillian Hazlett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provided a detailed explanation of the challenges faced by indigenous peoples whose homelands are encapsulated into national parks. East Africa was a primary focus, but the situation there was compared to that of the United States, Panama, Brazil, Australia, and Nepal, among other countries. Issues of eviction, land use, conservation, NGOs, and park management were discussed. The information was valuable, but the presentation was often dry, with a number of typos.

[Ellie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for class. Interesting information but the writing is incredibly boring and unnecessarily complicated. Hard to get through.

[Melissa Kidd · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a long summary. And I was thinking the same thing while reading most of this book: what long chapters. Unfortunately I found that I didn’t enjoy this book. It was too dry for me. I don’t think it is meant to be dry but for me the technical jargon got in the way. Perhaps the book cover and the black and white photos in the book cause me hesitance before even getting far in the book. Color makes a book more expensive, but it also brings the book to life sometimes. Black and white photos don’t stand out for me. The book did make me aware of a number of issues and inform me on the scenes tourists don’t see when they visit national parks. I will certainly never look at a national park the same way again. I will always wonder who we have pushed out of those lands and disregarded to make it a national park. I am glad I have a new understanding of the issue, but I feel that this book perhaps just isn’t for beginnings in the topic. It is very in depth and detailed. It could also be so due the sheer fact that it is almost an ethnography, books that almost always end up very detailed. For the right kind of audience, the book is probably fantastic. I however was not the right audience.