Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ranges. During the past several centuries these same landscapes have been inhab-
ited by pastoralist groups such as the Maasai whose livestock management
strategies also reflect the ecological importance of seasonal mobility and spatial
flexibility (Homewood and Rodgers, 1991). These livestock production systems
are highly compatible with mobile wildlife populations and have been an impor-
tant force shaping the region's savannahs and grasslands. However, extensive
pastoralist land use systems have come under increasing pressure through state
land appropriation and investment schemes, starting in the 1960s and 1970s, and
increasing after the economic reforms of the mid-1980s (Shivji, 1998). In key
wildlife dispersal areas such as the lands to the east of Tarangire National Park,
rangelands have been fragmented as land has been sold and allocated to agricul-
ture, resulting in both the loss of wildlife habitat and less viable livestock
production systems (Borner, 1985; Mwalyosi, 1992; Igoe and Brockington,
1999).
A few pioneering tour operators recognized these growing socioeconomic
pressures on wildlife and pastoralist land use systems, and the need for wildlife to
provide direct economic returns as a way of encouraging local communities to
maintain large unfragmented and uncultivated land holdings.
2
The result was a set
of pilot initiatives by two relatively small, high-end tour operators to formulate
tourism agreements with pastoralist communities located adjacent to Serengeti
and Tarangire National Parks (Dorobo Tours and Safaris and Oliver's Camps Ltd,
1996). These agreements were based on the legal framework for local governance
and land tenure in Tanzania, which makes village councils the elected representa-
tives of the community and gives them corporate powers to enter into contracts
and own property.
3
Village councils also are the chief statutory decision-making
authority over local community lands held under customary rights of occupancy.
4
The essence of the agreements was that the tour operators would be granted a
concession area for camping and walking safaris where traditional livestock
grazing (mainly dry season use) could continue but agricultural cultivation and
settlement were excluded.
5
In return, the communities received a fixed annual
rent and bed-night payments based on the number of clients entering the area.
The agreements ran for 5 years on a renewable basis; some of them have now
been operating for 17 years, making them the longest-running community-based
tourism ventures in the country.
These initial community-based tourism agreements were motivated princi-
pally, at the outset, by broader conservation interests on the part of the individuals
and companies involved, and the desire to build a socially and ecologically
sustainable approach to community management of rangelands using tourism as
the economic lever to promote conservation. The companies noted early on that
the agreements could not be justified from a purely commercial perspective, as a
result of the time-intensive nature of community negotiations and the logistical
challenges to providing a high-end tourism product in remote communal lands
(Dorobo Tours and Safaris and Oliver's Camps Ltd, 1996). At first, the initiatives'
conservation objectives received strong backing from government authorities,
including the Wildlife Division in the Ministry of Natural Resources and
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