Human-Wildlife Conflict in the Serengeti: The Environmental Consequence of Inequality from the Twentieth Century Until Now

This thesis aims to explore the role power disparities between the local communities and the conservation industry has played in contributing to the issue of human-wildlife conflict in the Serengeti from the beginning of the twentieth century up until now. Human-wildlife conflict encompasses any instance in which humans and wildlife come into conflict over resources and leads to negative consequences for both humans and wildlife. These conflicts have become more prevalent in the Serengeti over the last few decades and have been understood to result because of factors such as growing human population, climate change, land-use change, and many others. However, there are structural conditions and power relations that underly these conflicts which have not yet been explored. The local communities that are most affected by these conflicts and have had to take on the burden of conservation, have the least power in deciding how conservation is carried out in the Serengeti. These local communities are excluded from the decision-making processes which directly affect their lives and livelihoods and this exclusion stems from the colonial era. This thesis will investigate these underlying structural conditions and power relations using a political ecology approach to uncover the effects environmental change can have on people and the economic and structural conditions that underpin this, Drawing upon different sources including Tanzanian government documents, policies, acts and strategies that involve conservation as well as various petitions and letters sent to human rights organizations from the local communities and a documentary that accounts for the lived experiences of those on the ground dealing with human-wildlife conflict , this thesis will employ a qualitative analysis to investigate the power relations that exacerbate human-wildlife conflict in the Serengeti. By investigating the historical context and evolution of conservation in the Serengeti, this thesis aims to illuminate the ways in which the local communities were excluded from participating in conservation and how this has been reproduced by the subsequent administrations. Furthermore, this thesis will examine how this exclusion is implicative of the power disparities that exist between the conservation industry and the local communities and how this has led to tensions in the last few decades. Finally, this thesis will explore how this tension has contributed to the presence of human-wildlife conflict in the Serengeti. Drawing these different elements together, this thesis aims to deepen the understanding of human-wildlife conflict as not just a dichotomy between human versus wildlife but also because of people harming other people.