Community Wildlife Management in Tanzania: An Analysis of Devolution, Adoption: Costs and Benefits of Conservation and Intra Household Dynamics in Communities around Burunge Wildlife Management Area

Abstract

Most of Africa’s biodiversity is found outside the protected area network of national game parks and game reserves on local community land. Therefore, success in the conservation of Africa’s biodiversity depends on shifting goals and priorities to the local level in a way that allows participation and collaborative partnerships with local communities to community based natural resource management (CBNRM) initiatives. These initiatives take different names in Sub-Saharan Africa but are all coined under the same principle of participatory development and conservation to achieve several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In Tanzania where I conducted this dissertation research, CBNRM takes the form of Community Wildlife Management (CWM) with gazettement of Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) managed and operated by communities on communal village lands. In this dissertation, I focused on three areas: 1) devolution through procedural and distributive justice and effectiveness of the governance structure; 2) motivational factors for adopting community wildlife management, benefits and costs of conservation; and 3) conservation enterprise projects and their effects on intrahousehold bargaining power for Masai and Mbungwe women using Burunge Wildlife Management Area as a case study. Through my research, I found that one, devolution in CWM has only partially been successful through procedural and distributive justice with various challenges. Two, several factors are important for communities to adopt CWM into their livelihoods, although most benefits are at the community level and some households experience huge losses from human wildlife conflicts due to crop and livestock depredation and various opportunity costs. Three, conservation enterprise projects have great potential to improve women’s intrahousehold bargaining power in the decision-making process although social and cultural gender norms pose major challenges. Based on my results, I discuss the implications and provide future recommendations for community wildlife management in Tanzania to contribute to several SDGs through wildlife conservation and participatory development involving livelihood diversification activities for indigenous communities living with wildlife on their land.