Wildlife parks date back to colonial rule – established as hunting grounds, with no regard for indigenous people. Africa is now looking for its own way.
Seronera/Tanzania – The conservationists last struck in June. Once again, the Masaai should give way to an expansion of the Serengeti Park. When they refused, the Tanzanian police fired live ammunition and killed a member of the legendary people, whose tall shepherds with long sticks are in every Serengeti advertising brochure.
Ever since the park was founded, with the significant involvement of the Frankfurt zoo director Bernhard Grzimek, the Masaai have repeatedly had to give way to the protected area. Most recently in favor of a hunting ground for Arab oil sheikhs, whose dollar banknotes beguiled the government in Dodoma. After all, the money needed to protect wild animals has to come from somewhere, they say.
The incident sheds a harsh light on the absurdity of conservation in Africa. A people that has lived in a natural paradise for thousands of years and has protected it is driven out for reasons of nature conservation. In this case in favor of wealthy foreigners. The oil potentates have paid for a hunting ground and are allowed to shoot one or the other lion for it.
Colonialist way of thinking: Interpretation sovereignty over nature conservation in Africa
However, the Masaai see nothing of the money. That goes to the government in Dodoma – who knows where the petrodollars end up? An “incomprehensible process”, says the managing director of the “African Wildlife Foundation”, Kaddu Sebunya: “We have to change the way nature conservation is carried out on our continent from the ground up.”
The Kenyan conservationist organized the “Congress for Africa’s Protected Areas” which took place in Rwanda’s capital Kigali last week. It was the first time that government representatives from 52 African countries and managers of the continent’s approximately 8,500 nature reserves met in their own circle and not under the aegis of foreign nature conservation organizations.
African experts have long had a thorn in the side of the “First World” interpreting nature conservation: They trace their way of thinking back to colonialism – and its understanding of nature conservation as a “fortress”. Europeans see the people of Africa as the greatest enemy of their continent’s magnificent fauna and flora. They have to be kept out of the protected areas through forced resettlement, firearms and barbed wire fences. The fact that it was the local people who preserved their flora and fauna for thousands of years (in contrast to the practice in Europe) goes unmentioned. Just as the Europeans during the colonial period decimated the African game stocks by up to 90 percent with their hunting guns.
Africa’s National Parks: Conservation vs. Hunting and Adventure Interests
Another accusation is that the wildlife parks were set up less to protect nature than to protect their hunting and adventure interests. After all, Africa’s national parks are geared exclusively to the needs of foreign tourists – whether they come with cameras or bolt-action rifles. On the other hand, the Africans in the reservations appear primarily as dancing girls in raffia skirts, as waiters or at most as trackers. For them, elephants are only interesting as meat in the soup, pale faces like to scoff. The discrepancy between the holiday life of white nature lovers in the parks and the poor life of African villagers beyond the parks could not be greater.
The international nature conservation lobby is currently calling for at least 30 percent of the entire earth’s surface to be protected in order to counter global warming and species extinction. Tanzania has already reached its goal: a third of the country’s area is under nature protection. A local rancher is not allowed to graze his cattle there, nor is the state allowed to search for mineral resources. If a dam is built in a protected area to supply the population with electricity, the rest of the world will scream.
Conservation in African wildlife parks: The role of money
As long as the interests and needs of the local population are not taken into account, nature conservation can only fail, says Kaddu Sebunya: The reason for the paradigm shift. Among other things, the economy in the regions around the parks must be coordinated with the protected areas, says the social scientist. Because nothing is more dangerous for wild animals than poor and dissatisfied people.
For some time now, international nature conservation organizations have been trying to find out what the coexistence of humans and wild animals could look like. It’s not easy, but it’s doable, that’s the core of their insight. Of course, the money that is available for the integration of human economy with wild nature also plays a role. Until now, almost exclusively foreign governments and nature conservation organizations have been in charge of the finances. That should change now.
One of the most important decisions of the more than 2000 African delegates in Kigali was the formation of a pan-African fund to finance nature conservation and into which foreign governments and conservationists can pay. Africa would then, for the first time, be able to decide for itself how to protect the continent’s unique nature. They will definitely have more success than the European hunter-colonialists. (Johannes Dieterich)
