Following the Oakland Institute's alarming revelations about the abuses perpetrated in the Ruaha National Park extension project in Tanzania, the World Bank has announced the suspension of $150 million in funding. In an exclusive interview with Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of The Oakland Institute, Afrik21 goes to the heart of biodiversity conservation issues in Tanzania. She reveals the major challenges facing indigenous communities, as well as the shortcomings of the World Bank's response to human rights violations.
Afrik21: Can you give us an overview of the current situation in Tanzania regarding biodiversity conservation and the rights of indigenous peoples?
Anuradha Mittal: The Tanzanian government is extending ‘protected’ areas to boost the activities of safari and trophy hunting companies, with the aim of attracting five million tourists and generating $6 billion in annual revenue from the sector by 2025. Faced with forced evictions, serious human rights abuses and restrictions on their livelihoods, it is indigenous and local communities that are bearing the cost of this expansion and being driven off their ancestral lands. These efforts are not aimed at preserving biodiversity or protecting the environment, but are promoted solely to increase tourism revenues.
What are your organisation’s main objectives regarding these problems in Tanzania and other parts of Africa?
The Oakland Institute responds to requests from affected communities whose rights to land and life are threatened. In Tanzania, for several years we have supported the struggles of the Maasai communities of Loliondo and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), as well as small-scale farmers and pastoralists living near Ruaha National Park. In each case, these communities face human rights violations, evictions and restrictions on their livelihoods under the pretext of ‘protecting’ the environment. Despite having conserved the land to preserve biodiversity and ensure healthy ecosystems, indigenous communities face hunger, poverty, loss of livelihoods, displacement and violence. We are working to ensure that the government meets its legal obligations – enshrined in national laws and international human rights standards – and that the rights of these communities are respected.
What are the main challenges facing these communities as a result of these conservation projects?
Conservation” projects in Tanzania are devastating indigenous communities across the country. In October 2023, the government announced that it was extending the boundaries of Ruaha National Park. The new boundaries will now encompass at least 23 legally registered villages – forcing the eviction of over 21,000 people who did not give their free, prior and informed consent to the decision and who were not compensated or given alternative land. Thousands more people living in sub-villages are now considered part of the Ruaha National Park area and will also be evicted.
Electricity has been cut off in many villages, houses have been marked for demolition and children have stopped attending schools in desperate need of repair. These communities face crippling livelihood restrictions – limiting the areas where livestock can graze and crops can be planted – which fuel poverty and hunger. Paramilitary rangers from Tanzania’s National Park (TANAPA) patrol legally registered villages, seizing livestock by the thousands under the false pretext that they are in the park and auctioning them off. These seizures have financially ruined countless families. Attempts by villagers to protect their livestock or farming equipment have regularly been met by overwhelming force from the TANAPA rangers. Numerous murders, rapes and beatings perpetrated by these rangers are well documented. Villagers live in fear and their lives remain in limbo as the park expands.
These abuses and evictions are not confined to Ruaha National Park, but occur throughout the country. For more information, see
https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/urgent-alert-tanzanian-government-rampage-against-indigenous-people
https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/tanzania-sustained-campaign-maasai-loliondo-ngorongoro-conservation-area
What role should international institutions such as the World Bank play in promoting biodiversity conservation while respecting the rights of indigenous peoples?
The World Bank should not be funding a project to promote tourism in Tanzania – a country notorious for regularly trampling on indigenous land rights. The long history of illegal evictions and abuses to create parks in Tanzania has been well documented over the years and should have been known to the Bank before it partnered with the government and provided hundreds of millions of dollars.
How would you assess the World Bank’s response to the human rights abuses documented in the Regrow project in Tanzania?
The suspension of funding for the Regrow project was long overdue. The project was launched in 2017 and the Bank failed to do its due diligence. When informed that the Tanzanian government was completely ignoring the Bank’s own safeguards, the Bank denied responsibility and ignored overwhelming evidence for a full year. In response to our initial letter sent in April 2023, the Bank denied any wrongdoing and took no action to stop the human rights abuses and evictions it was directly financing. The Institute then filed a request for inspection with the Bank’s independent inspection panel in June 2023 on behalf of villagers in the Mbarali district. In November 2023, the World Bank’s Board of Directors approved the inspection panel’s recommendation to launch an investigation focusing on the actions of the Tanapa rangers. The investigation is underway and will be concluded before the end of 2024.
Despite repeated calls from affected villagers to freeze funding for the project since April 2023, millions of dollars have continued to be disbursed by the Bank. At least $125 million of the $150 million total budget was paid out before the suspension, including $60 million since the complaint was filed in June 2023. As well as allowing eviction plans to continue, the Bank’s lack of immediate response has resulted in serious harm to local communities. Continued payments from the project have allowed Tanapa to continue to commit murders and cattle seizures in recent months.
The Bank’s procedures for lodging complaints are excessively bureaucratic, requiring massive amounts of time and resources that local communities do not have. There remains a huge imbalance of power between the villagers affected by this project and the decision-makers at the World Bank. This should be a wake-up call for the Bank’s leaders in Washington, D.C. – you cannot continue to ignore the voices of the people on the ground who are struggling to survive because of your so-called “development” projects.
What specific measures have governments and international organisations taken to address these violations?
International condemnation has so far failed to stop the government’s continuing abuses. Donor countries have not made their support for Tanzania’s tourism development efforts conditional on respect for human rights. The United States is Tanzania’s largest bilateral donor and has been instrumental in shaping the country’s aggressive strategy to expand the tourism industry at the expense of indigenous communities. Despite repeated warnings, the US has not taken significant steps to address its role in these abuses. The Oakland Institute’s report, “Pulling Back the Curtain: How the United States is Pushing Tanzania’s War on Indigenous People”, provides more details and is available here: https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pulling-back-the-curtain
How do you see the future of biodiversity conservation in Tanzania and other parts of Africa, taking into account the current challenges?
At a time when human actions are threatening over a million species with global extinction – more than ever before – action must be taken to reduce the loss of biodiversity. However, current efforts to expand protected areas at the expense of indigenous peoples represent a dangerous path. In December 2022, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) was adopted at the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP15). A major objective of the GBF is to have 30% of the planet in protected areas by 2030. Although the Framework contains provisions recognising the rights of indigenous peoples, it does not go far enough and risks becoming the biggest land grab in history. This fear is justified by studies showing that achieving the 30×30 target could directly displace and dispossess 300 million people.
Encompassing 22% of the world’s land surface, the traditional territories of indigenous peoples coincide with areas that are home to 80% of the planet’s biodiversity, demonstrating that indigenous peoples ensure effective and sustainable conservation. To protect biodiversity, the colonisation of indigenous lands in the name of conservation must come to an end.
Interview by Boris Ngounou
