Precolonial Meru Subsistence

1
Pre-colonial Meru Subsistence

• area divided into territories controlled by
  different clans, patriarchal heads of clans
  controlled access to land and water
• Basic unit of land kihamba (individually owned
  plots passed down through generations within
  families, each plot centered on an ancestral
  shrine
• settled agriculturalists (bananas, maize, sweet
  potatoes, beans, millet)
• also grazed cattle on common pastures
• gathered resources in nearby forest
• HONEY (bee-keepers honey hunters)
• FUELWOOD
• BUILDING MATERIALS
• MEDICINE

2
Impacts of Colonization on the Meru

• hemmed in by European estates and forest game
  reserves displaced and living on a fraction of
  their former territory
• traditional kihamba plots divided among sons
  (instead of being inherited by one) amount of
  land available per household decreased
  dramatically with each generation conflict and
  POVERTY
• spurred a moral crisis in the community
  conflict over changes in traditional inheritance
  practices, generational conflicts because parents
  could not bequeath suitable amounts of land,
  women saw few benefits in marriage since men had
  no means to support a family
• agricultural production intensified began
  intercropping coffee, bananas, and food crops
  (bananas, beans, maize, squash, papaya, millet,
  potatoes)
• increased involvement in external labor markets
  (i.e. jobs in factories in Arusha)
• migration to less densely populated mountain
  areas
• tension over land grew until conflict with
  colonists inevitably erupted? Meru Land Case
  (1946)

3
Meru Land Case (1946)

• Meru living in an agricultural slums grew
  food crops to support population working on
  European export (i.e. coffee) plantations
• Some native friendly colonial officers proposed
  allocating land to the Meru to alleviate poverty
  but government did the opposite
• evicted 3,000 Meru to make room for a European
  settler colony
• Rationalization?
• Africans should understand that the loss of
  land . . . is an inevitable part of the price
  they must pay for their advancement.
• Political uprising led by Christianized coffee
  growers activists argued the case before the
  United Nations in New York eventually won
• semi-mythologized in local culture united
  local people first major fight against colonial
  land annexation fueled the development of the
  nationalist party that would assume control after
  independence

4
History of Conservation in Tanganyika

• Germans established Forest Reserves where all
  African settlement, cultivation, and grazing were
  outlawed
• allowed one concession any forest produce taken
  by Africans for their own use only
• laws not heavily enforced (but British would
  later assume that they had been)
• Conservation under the British colonial
  government
• Original ordinance recognized the moral right to
  kill a piece of game for food
• Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the
  Empire protested this liberal policy
• 1921 made Mount Meru a Complete Game Reserve
  outlawed settlement, grazing, and honey hunting
  but allowed gathering and bee keeping
• 1940 created a new category of protected area,
  the national park, still allowed native hunting
  source of major controversy between human
  rights activists and conservationists IN EUROPE
• 1960 portion of present-day Arusha NP designated
  a national park
• Why not squelch African use of parks entirely?
• No British invested more heavily in colonies
  elsewhere (i.e. Kenya)
• Fear of rebellion
• kept African wages depressed women and children
  gathered wild foods, fuel, building materials,
  etc. to subsidize mens wages

5
History of Conservation in Tanganyika

• General pattern increasing state intervention
  and steady erosion of Meru resource rights BUT
  colonial state strongly divided on this issue
• 1963 parks and game reserves turned over to
  non-Meru TANU (Tanganyika African National Union)
  party officials at independence
• all revenue from these reserves funneled into the
  district treasury
• new laws further restricted land use rights (i.e.
  1973 prohibited migrating pastoralists and
  traders from using a path through the park)
• 1984 access totally eliminated
• Why would the independent African government
  continue to support this type of conservation?
• To earn the respect of the international
  community
• expected parks to pay for themselves, wanted
  revenue from TOURISM
• expansion of parks system fit with other govt
  agendas efforts to relocate and control rural
  populations

6
Meru Resistance to Loss of Rights

• grazed livestock within boundaries of the
  protected area
• moved forest boundary inward to expand
  settlements (perfectly replicated trenches,
  signs, etc.) well-planned, tactical maneuvers
• Meru guards allowed friends and family into the
  park, did not arrest offenders

7
Conservation Today?

• national parks seen as being for white people
  (meant to generate revenue)
• nature tourism theoretically very important to
  Tanzanian economy BUT
• generates few jobs
• local people not given these jobs fear that
  they will cooperate with neighbors/friends
• General trend worldwide toward development of
  COOPERATIVE MANAGEMENT schemes that incorporate
  (or are ideally run by) local people
• social science researchers have helped to
  generate this change!

8
Export Coffee Production in Tanzania
9
Environmental Degradation Marginalization
Thesis in PE

• Otherwise environmentally innocuous or
  well-adapted local production systems undergo
  transition to overexploitation of natural
  resources in response to
• state development intervention and/or
• increasing integration in regional and global
  markets (Robbins 2004 131).

10
Defining Development

• efforts to assist nation states, and their
  citizens and institutions to "modernize, reduce
  poverty, and improve standard of living
• usually focused on projects to make "developing
  countries" more similar to "developed countries"
  
• specific efforts in such areas as infrastructure
  construction (i.e. roads, communication lines),
  industrial capacity, governance, poverty
  reduction, market reform, education, health.
• Examples of development projects dam
  construction, growing flowers in Kenya,
  maquiladora factories on Mexican border
• financed by institutions such as the World Bank
  and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as
  well as a number of other agencies (i.e. USAID,
  UNDP) and govts sometimes given as aid,
  usually LOANS
• Humanitarian aid or a way of expanding the power
  and influence of developed nations? BOTH
• Creates new markets in developing world, provides
  access to resources and labor that fuel First
  World development, Third World governments have
  incurred massive debt by borrowing to fund failed
  development projects

11
Understanding Integration into Regional Global
Markets Commodity Chain Analysis

• researchers trace a commodity (a product traded
  on the market) from production to consumption
• i.e. Napolean wrasse caught in Sulawesi seas,
  sold to fish camp brokers, traded on market in
  Hong Kong, bought by restaurant owners, consumed
  by wealthy patrons
• How does the global demand for this product fuel
  changes in local social practices and ecological
  conditions?
• Who holds the power within these chains and who
  is to blame for ecological degradation? poor
  fishermen or wealthy consumers, govt officials,
  and fish camp operators?

12
Live Fish Trade in the Togean Islands, Indonesia
13
Live Fish Trade in the Togean Islands, Indonesia

• local fisherman sometimes use cyanide to stun
  fish for the live fish trade (shipped to markets
  in Hong Kong)
• causes harm to coral reefs, threatens fish
  populations
• well-publicized conservation issue Indonesian
  government and conservation groups blame local
  people for process of degradation
• Sama characterized as pirates plundering reefs
  and coastal seas, or as maritime primitives
  (Lowe 243)
• concentrate enforcement efforts on punishing
  local community members will this be
  successful???

14
Live Fish Trade in the Togean Islands, Indonesia
15
Cyanide Fishing
16
Lowes Findings

• consumption end of commodity chain degradation
  driven in part by extreme value placed on these
  fish by consumers FAR AWAY (do not live with the
  effects)
• People of many ethnicities involved in cyanide
  fishing (NOT just the Sama)
• NOT all Sama fish with cyanide (most still use
  handlines) and many OPPOSE the practice
• Local people actively recruited by wealthy
  (sometimes foreign) owners of fish camps
• recruit YOUNG men (generational conflict)
• provide them with expensive outboard motors (must
  fish to pay off debts)
• fishermen feel trapped and exploited by
  relationship with fish camps
• Local government officials derive PERSONAL INCOME
  from permits issued to fish camps
• only poorest fishermen prosecuted, punishment
  largely symbolic and borders on extortion
• Sama possess in-depth ecological knowledge of
  fishing and could sustainably participate in the
  live fish trade
• including them in conservation efforts is CRITICAL

17
Changes to Syllabus

• NO reading assignment for Friday catch up on
  previous readings
• Quiz MONDAY!
• study guide distributed via email by 3 pm today
• Read pages 1-33 in From the Ground Up for E-Post
  Discussion following quiz
• Wednesday Guest Lecture, Dr. Devon Pena,
  Environmental Justice Beyond Toxics