The world is increasingly encroaching on indigenous peoples’ traditional lands. Around the globe, indigenous communities are forced to cede ground to state development, corporate land grabs, rising sea levels, environmental degradation, and population growth. The right to land provides the basis for access to food, housing, and development. But for indigenous peoples, traditional lands are more than this; they represent essential ties to their ancestors, their culture, and their languages. Losing their land means losing their way of life.

Large-scale land acquisitions have increased in scale and pace due to changes in commodity markets, agricultural investment strategies, land prices, and a range of other policy and market forces. The areas most affected are the global “commons” – lands that local people traditionally use collectively — including much of the world’s forests, wetlands, and rangelands. In some cases land acquisition occurs with environmental objectives in sight – including the setting aside of land as protected areas for biodiversity conservation.

This report provides a synthesis of three country level case studies (Namibia, Senegal, Kenya) carried out in African countries as a part of the overall legal review of Indigenous People’s and Community Conserved Territories and Areas (ICCAs). This regional synthesis report also incorporates information and material from other African countries’ experiences with ICCAs, as documented in a range of other studies and publications.

Across the world, areas with high or important biodiversity are often located within Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ conserved territories and areas (ICCAs). Traditional and contemporary systems of stewardship embedded within cultural practices enable the conservation, restoration and connectivity of ecosystems, habitats, and specific species in accordance with indigenous and local worldviews. In spite of the benefits ICCAs have for maintaining the integrity of ecosystems, cultures and human wellbeing, they are under increasing threat.

In this publication two pioneering grassroots organisations from northern Tanzania examine and present their experiences and insights from their long-term work to secure the land rights of hunter-gatherer and pastoral communities. The case studies were presented at a one-day learning event held on 5th October 2012, when Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC) and Ujamaa Community Resource Team (UCRT) joined together to share and reflect on their work to secure land rights, to learn from each other, and to identify ways to build on their achievements moving forward.

Pastoralist and hunter-gatherer communities in Tanzania are gaining rights to own and control their land as the foundation for generating new income through REDD+ 

Through a range of local initiatives and collaborations developed over the past 15 years, Tanzania’s Yaeda Valley, the primary remaining home territory for the last community of Hadzabe hunter-gatherers, has become a model for community-based conservation. 

The increasing importance of the Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) in Tanzania, where 17 WMAs are now functioning and 22 others are in various stages of development, begs the question of what successes have been achieved and what challenges remain to be addressed if this Community-Based Conservation model is to be sustained and even scaled up. There has not been a country-wide evaluation of WMAs since the pilot-phase evaluation in 2007 at a time when most WMAs were too new to yield firm projections for the long term.

Rights-based conservation depends on institutions that give citizens clear and enforceable rights to manage lands and natural resources. Such rights hinge on citizens’ abilities to strengthen and defend their rights and on the operation of the rule of law and impersonal forms of government for legal reforms to take place and have meaning.

 This paper explores the development of a pilot PES scheme in the Tarangire ecosystem of Tanzania in response to specifi c wildlife declines and policy constraints. It charts the development of this initiative from its genesis based on PES experiences in Kenya. This paper specifi cally explores the questions of whether the utilization of free-market enterprise tools to achieve conservation goals infl uences Maasai livelihood diversifi cation in ways that are compatible with conservation.

This study documents the plight of the Maasai pastoralists who have moved to Morogoro and Kilosa districts as a result of the recent socio-economic developments and environmental changes in Maasailand. The objective of this study was to analyse how the Maasai migrants have adapted themselves to the new ecological conditions and the impact of such adaptations on their livelihoods.

This urgent alert is based on the forceful evictions of Maasai pastoralists from their homes and grazing lands in Loliondo Division, Ngorongoro District in Northern Tanzania and the gross human rights violations that are being committed. 

The eviction operation started on the 4th July 2009 and was conducted by the notorious riot police, the Field Force Unit, with assistance of private guards from the Otterlo Business Cooperation (OBC). They entered the villages by shooting in the air and using teargas before pouring petrol on the Maasai homes and setting them on fire.