Frontier NGOs: Conservancies, control, and violence in northern Kenya

Schetter, Conrad; Mkutu, Kennedy; Müller-Koné, Marie

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105735

Cited by 18 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…There have been many studies of the diverse and destructive ways in which evictions such as these are carried out (Kenrick, 2019; Weldemichel, 2021; Kitelo, 2022; Schetter et al, 2022). As Ostrom (1990) and others have pointed out (Dawson et al, 2021, pp.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘We are our land’—Ogiek of Mount Elgon, Kenya: securing community tenure as the key enabling condition for sustaining community lands

Kenrick,

Rowley,

Kitelo

2023

Oryx

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We outline how securing the community tenure rights of forest peoples can create a rapid, rights-based route to the effective and sustainable conservation of their forests. We draw on the different skillsets and experiences of the authors (long-term fieldwork, mapping and monitoring, and a lifetime of experience) to identify the conditions that enable the Ogiek of Chepkitale, Mount Elgon, Kenya, to sustain and be sustained by their lands. We also identify the conditions that drive the disruption of this sustainable relationship through an appropriation of Ogiek resources by external interests that threaten to degrade, alienate and destroy their ecosystem. It is increasingly recognized that securing sustainable conservation outcomes can be best achieved through the deep knowledge, connection and commitment that ancestral communities have regarding their lands. Evidence from Mount Elgon and more broadly shows that Indigenous Peoples are better guardians of their forests than international or state protection agencies. This challenges the idea that evicting forest peoples is the best way to protect forests. Other studies, including those conducted by the Kenyan governmental Taskforce on Illegal Logging, highlight the way Kenyan state agencies such as the Kenya Forest Service have been responsible for the severe depletion of Indigenous forests. We examine how de facto collective community control can enable decisions to be made in line with taking care of community lands over the long term, but also highlight how this ability is under constant threat until and unless national law and practice recognizes the collective tenure rights of such communities.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘We are our land’—Ogiek of Mount Elgon, Kenya: securing community tenure as the key enabling condition for sustaining community lands

Kenrick,

Rowley,

Kitelo

2023

Oryx

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“…The British sought to simplify community networks and territorial claims by partitioning peoples along ethnic and economic lines, and they pressed the Maasai to shift production toward the market and raise cattle on smaller stationary ranches as commodities that could be held, used, or divested privately (Behnke, 2018; German et al., 2017; Lesorogol, 2005; Shetler, 2007: 81–95). In Kenya, group ranches that initially reconciled private lands with communal ownership have since largely been dismantled, as privatization incentivized individuals to shift from politically organizing water and pasture access toward increased personal enclosure (Galaty, 1980; Schetter et al., 2022). Destructive effects snowball as Maasai landowners fence private lots, breaking up remaining communal access (Weldemichel and Lein, 2019).…”

Section: Commodification: Reshaping Land and Governing Timementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, when British land alienation caused cattle deaths that migration could have prevented, they instead blamed Maasai “overstocking” or “laziness” (Börjeson et al., 2008: 547). From Tanzania’s NCA to Kenya’s northern rangelands, when conservation projects conflict with pastoralists, they accuse them of impeding poverty reduction efforts, damaging the environment, disrespecting land rights, stifling export-focused development, or even causing seasonal droughts and consequences of climate change (Askew et al., 2013; Greiner, 2012; Mittal et al., 2021; Schetter et al., 2022; Weldemichel, 2021). Indigenous groups and wildlife are either bound together through romanticized imagery of primitive peoples living in perfect balance with the land, or opposed in neo-Malthusian anxieties about overpopulation and development.…”

Section: Commodification: Reshaping Land and Governing Timementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Kenya, some NGOs still portray them as “belligerent and backward … bypassed by time and still living in the stone age” like “part of the African wildlife” (Akama, 2002: 44–45). Other pastoralists are similarly belittled as they get into conflicts with “Kenyan Cowboys,” the predominantly white private ranchers (Schetter et al., 2022). In Tanzania, Thomson Safaris dismisses Maasai conflicts over resource access using quasi-anthropological language that instead blames “inter-clan rivalries,” “ethnic conflict,” and being “stuck in the middle of clan warfare and politics” (Gardner, 2016: 114; Renton, 2009).…”

Section: Proletarianization: Marginalization and Relegation To The Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The creation of capitalist time: Rethinking primitive accumulation through conservation

Suell

2022

Environ Plan D

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Scholars have revived the concept of primitive accumulation to describe how explicit violence is an ongoing and structural, rather than simply historical, tool for capitalist domination. However, the relationship between the logic of capitalism and history of capitalism remains obscured. Capitalism is politically enforced and hegemonic, but ongoing instances of capitalist violence repeatedly appear as though they were breaking new ground or finding new frontiers for capitalist growth. In this paper, I offer a novel framework for understanding how primitive accumulation not only creates a capitalist material order but also a temporal order that motivates and reproduces capitalist violence. Focusing on Maasai conflicts over conservation lands in Kenya and Tanzania, I describe how primitive accumulation imposes the historical narratives that naturalize capitalism, ecological rhythms that suppress competing lifeways, and identity categories that marginalize dispossessed populations by characterizing them as primitive. This account advances key debates about settler-colonialism, racial capitalism, and potential resistance by clarifying how disproportionate harm against particular populations is justified, how those justifications reproduce and naturalize capitalist domination, and how temporality represents not only a site of domination but also political struggle.

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“…In 2016, Ivory Coast's Comoé National Park experienced a three-year long conflict between farmers and herders over access to water and land that resulted in three dozen people losing their lives and about 2,500 people displaced (Agence France-Presse 2019). On the other hand, some evidence suggest the militarisation of conservancies for anti-poaching and the protection of private property can also provide security for communities, deterring incursions and reducing violence between communities (Schetter et al 2022). However, such assumptions surrounding communal violence in and around conservancies have not been empirically tested using a large- N study.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservancies, rainfall anomalies and communal violence: subnational evidence from East Africa

2023

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Are conservancies hotspots for communal violence and if so, do rainfall anomalies increase the likelihood of violence? The consensus from a rich number of case studies suggests that conservancies (e.g. national parks, game reserves) increase tensions between communities, which often lead to violent conflicts. Yet, these insights remain to be empirically tested using a large-N study. We examine this claim and explore if rainfall anomalies have an amplifying effect on violent conflicts. We contend that the spatial convergence between conservancies and rainfall variability can spark conflicts over access to resources in times of scarcity and create strategic opportunities to satisfy secondary goals in times of abundance. To test our expectations, we use sub-national data from East Africa between 1990 and 2018. Our results suggest that regions with conservancies are somewhat more prone to communal violence and find strong evidence that positive rainfall anomalies increase the likelihood of violent communal conflicts in regions with a conservancy.

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Frontier NGOs: Conservancies, control, and violence in northern Kenya

Cited by 18 publications

References 56 publications

‘We are our land’—Ogiek of Mount Elgon, Kenya: securing community tenure as the key enabling condition for sustaining community lands

‘We are our land’—Ogiek of Mount Elgon, Kenya: securing community tenure as the key enabling condition for sustaining community lands

The creation of capitalist time: Rethinking primitive accumulation through conservation

Conservancies, rainfall anomalies and communal violence: subnational evidence from East Africa

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