Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania (African Issues) [Hardcover]

Dan D. Brockington (Author)

Book Description

Series: African Issues | Publication Date: June 14, 2002

Do cattle destroy a wilderness? Does a wilderness need to be devoid of people in order to be "saved"? In this hard-hitting book, Dan Brockington argues that the dominant approach to wildlife conservation in Africa has more to do with Western views of the environment than with what is appropriate for African people and herds. He focuses on the Tanzanian government's decision to evict people and cattle from the Mkomazi Game Reserve in 1988, but he also considers damaging, harmful, and unjust conservation efforts across the continent. Extensive fieldwork and archival investigations enable the author to elucidate the history of the Mkomazi reserve, assess competing explanations of the environmental dynamics of the reserve, and show the negative effects of exclusion on local populations and the regional economy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

He discusses the myth of an African wilderness that is perpetuated in a conservation discourse which is both ahistorical and depoliticised. Taken out of its historical context, Mkomazi is an area of recent occupation and utilisation. Taken out of its political context, it is deserving of conservation for posterity - a value-laden statement which connotes a hidden value for Tanzanians, many of them on the brink of destitution. But where does that leave us? Fortress conservation deprives people of previous existing rights and denies, in the face of no viable alternatives, their right to a livelihood. Community conservation offers low levels of income per capita relative to existing land usage when the numbers of people occupying areas contiguous with the reserve are too large for the paltry sums derived from tourism to have any significant impact on the levels of poverty. ... This is a book well worth reading. It covers a lot of very interesting material, ranging from a consideration of conservation as both ideology and practice (Chapter 1) and of fortress and community conservation (Chapter 6) to a detailed study of Mkomazi and its people and the history of the reserve, its land alienation and evictions and their impact on livelihoods. - Dan Taylor in DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Dan Brockington is a Research Fellow at New Hall, Cambridge.

Dan Brockington received his Ph.D. from University College London.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press (June 14, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253340799
• ISBN-13: 978-0253340795
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,790,065 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Saving an African Wilderness, January 20, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania (African Issues) (Hardcover)

The book makes a useful contribution to the conservation and development debate by tracing the history and the implications of the gazetting (closing off) of the Mkomazi grasslands of Tanzania. But rather than just tracing out this history and its sorry implications, the author goes further to make the normative claim, buttressed by evidence, that the gazetting of Mkomazi was inappropriate, indeed wrong since the existing populations were adversely affected by the loss of land and associated colonial and post colonial extortions. Maasai herders should not, therefore, have been excluded from the Reserve. An impressive body of evidence is brought to bear on the central question of effects of exclusionary conservation on local populations in this part of East Africa. Extensive fieldwork and archival investigation has been carried out, including survey-based human ecology measurement of pastoral welfare and livelihoods. The author has a sparse, clear and whimsical writing style. The book stands up well as an empirical study, although the broader literature and `debates' on African livelihood systems and resource access could be addressed more.