The Historical Contours of Conservation Policy in Tanzania

This paper discusses the political history of wildlife conservation in Tanzania with anthropological attention to the social impacts of protected areas on pastoral communities. It draws from fourteen months of ethnographic field research in northern Tanzania (2019-2022). The paper unfolds Tanzania’s historical genealogy of centralized conservation policies first implemented during the colonial period and later expanded upon by the socialist state following independence. Since structural adjustments and ‘neoliberalization’ of the economy in the 1980s and 1990s, various community-based conservation initiatives have been piloted in Tanzania over the past thirty years. The question of whether the state is actually ‘rolled back’ in the era of globalized flows and ecotourism is taken up in this paper. Top-down national parks, game reserves, and game-controlled areas still exist in contemporary Tanzania and generally constrain pastoral livelihoods through restrictions on residence and resource use. Community-based conservation areas have produced a range of positive and negative social consequences depending on their institutions for governance and management. Recent models include village-based concessions, collective land titling, wildlife management areas, conservation trusts, and community ranches. Paradoxically, the political dynamics of decentralized conservation in Tanzania are inseparable from the state’s long legacy of resource centralization.