How "Community Conservancies" and Safari Tourism Devastates Land & Lives in Northern Kenya

OAKLAND, Calif., Nov. 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As protests of local communities swell against the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), one of Kenya's largest conservation agencies, a new report from the Oakland Institute – Stealth Game: "Community" Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya – reveals the devastating impact of privatized and militarized wildlife conservation on Indigenous pastoralist communities.

Despite claims that conservancies are community driven, the report exposes how NRT and the Kenya Wildlife Services have dispossessed pastoralist communities of their ancestral lands for conservation dollars.

Since its founding in 2004, NRT has set up 39 conservancies on over 42,000 km² in Kenya – nearly eight percent of the country. While NRT claims that its goal is to "transform people's lives, secure peace and conserve natural resources," pastoralist communities accuse NRT of dispossessing them of their land and deploying armed security units involved in serious human rights abuses.

"NRT, in collaboration with big environmental organizations, epitomizes a Western-led, neo-colonial approach to conservation that creates a profitable business at the expense of local communities who have lived on these lands for centuries," said Oakland Institute Executive Director, Anuradha Mittal.

Based on extensive field research, Stealth Game provides a comprehensive review of Kenya's land and wildlife conservation laws and details human rights violations surrounding the privatized model of conservation.

Created by Ian Craig, whose family was part of an elite white minority during British colonialism, NRT's origins date back to the 1980s when Craig's family-owned, 62,000-acre cattle ranch was transformed into its first conservancy. NRT receives millions in funding from donors such as USAID, the EU, Danish and French development agencies and big NGOs, including The Nature Conservancy and Space for Giants.

Impacted communities have held protests, signed petitions, and initiated legal action against the presence of NRT on their lands. They ask for justice after years of being ignored by the Kenyan government and by the police when reporting human rights abuses. Stealth Game calls for an urgent independent investigation into land and human rights related grievances around NRT's conservancies – including allegations of involvement of NRT's rapid response units in inter-ethnic conflict.

The Oakland Institute is an independent policy think tank and does not accept government or corporate funding. www.oaklandinstitute.org

SOURCE The Oakland Institute

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