Environmental Justice and the Market: The Politics of Sharing Wildlife Revenues in Tanzania

ISSN： 1521-0723

Source： Society and Natural Resources, Vol.21, Iss.7, 2008-08, pp. : 583-596

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Abstract

In northern Tanzania in the late 1980s and 1990s, rural communities displaced by the creation of wildlife protection areas advanced a number of grievances centered on equitable access to resources and compensation for wildlife-induced property loss and injuries, only to find their concerns largely ignored by policymakers. Instead, the country's elite cadre of wildlife managers has formed a consensus around the idea that community concerns can best be addressed “through the market” by redistributing wildlife-sector revenues. This article explores three different initiatives whose proponents enjoy different levels of tenure security vis-a-vis wildlife resources. A comparison of these programs demonstrates that they stress quite different and sometimes competing and contradictory rationales for pursuing revenue-sharing strategies, with varying degrees of emphasis on the environmental justice claims of Tanzania's rural citizens.