Land Use Change in The East African Savanna: A Case Study Of Northern Tanzania

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This project supports the research of a team of anthropologists and ecologists from Colorado State University studying the degree to which indigenous peoples in Tanzania can continue to successfully pursue their traditional economic systems within the larger context of state and local government economic and environmental policies. The site of the research is the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a biodiversity conservation site inhabited by the Maasai people. The researchers will compare the tribal economic life within the Conservation Area with the life of comparable people living in an adjacent district where conservation policies are less restrictive. The project will examine the causes of the Maasai's economic difficulties, determine the extent to which they are related to conservation policies versus regional environmental and economic patterns, and assess how conservation policies, development interventions and local land use might be altered in the future to improve the people's situation while still maintaining ecosystem integrity. Methods will include qualitative participant observation and interviewing with quantitative surveys and land use analysis. This research is important because traditional people the world over often believe that conservation policies are antithetical to their own economic well-being. By explicitly comparing the economic situation of the same people, one group living under the weight of conservation policies and the other relatively free of them, but both subject to regional and national economic and socio-political constraints, the project will advance our understanding of the specific effects of conservation policies. The resulting information will be of great interest to conservation and development planners who must confront similar issues in other parts of the world.