“They take away our land for sustainable ecotourism”

The new frontier for biodiversity conservation in Europe, the United States and the United Arab Emirates is East Africa. In Maasai lands, there is a proliferation of so-called eco-sustainable tourism projects and carbon offset programmes. Between Tanzania and Kenya, thousands have become victims of abuse in the name of green colonialism, even though the areas inhabited by indigenous people are among the least polluted on the planet. Confirmation comes from Maasai activist Yannick Ndwenyo, executive director of Test, Survival of Traditional Ecosystems in Tanzania, and anthropologist with NGO Survival International Fiore Longo. The ExtraTerrestrial team met them while visiting Rome.

Yannick Nduyono, you have come a long way from the Loliondo-Ngorongoro region, in northern Tanzania, to give your first-hand testimony. What is happening in his village?

The biggest problem is land theft in the name of conservation. Authorities and conservation organizations say it is a matter of life and death. So they steal our land. They are used for trophy hunting, photography, and luxury tourism by very powerful people from the Gulf countries, UAE. People, organizations, and governments from the North use conservation to steal the land, and eventually use it for tourism. What kind of preservation is this? The Masai are probably the only people who make conservation. My presence here gives me the opportunity to explain that we have had enough! They cannot keep stealing indigenous lands using fake ideology.

Who is behind these alleged conservation projects?

It is promoted by conservation organizations and foreign governments. There is the World Wide Fund for Nature for example. There is the Frankfurt Geological Society (Fzs), which is a German organization. It’s the first time this land theft has been facilitated, since the 1960s: it took over the Serengeti in 1969, it took over Ngorongoro in the 1970s, it took back Ngorongono in 2022, it took over Luleondo in 2022, and it all goes on. They give land to Arab royal families for their bounty hunting in Loliondo, while in Ngorongoro they use the land to build accommodation for tourists who mainly come from Europe, USA and Canada. They are now promoting tourism from Asia, China, Japan and India. European tourists don’t know what’s going on, they come to go on safari, see animals and beautiful landscapes, but they don’t know that people are being expelled, persecuted and threatened from these places.

How has the life of your people changed?

120,000 people live in Ngorongoro, about 100,000 in Loliondo. Our way of life, identity and livelihood depend on the land. We are patrons. Without the land, we cannot say that we are a people. The Earth is part of us, and we are part of the Earth. When it is taken away from us, we end up completely disappearing into other societies and losing our identity. We lose our livelihoods. We depend on the land to graze our cows. If we don’t have cows, we can’t sell them and so we can’t send our children to school and we can’t get medical facilities. This is what is happening now: after taking our land, they are now taking our cows as well. They take the cows and confiscate them and sell them to make us poor. They use the police and the army, shoot us to drive us out, arrest people and keep the leaders in jail for six months. The Maasai pose no threat to nature, we have lived with it since time immemorial.

Why did he come to Italy?

let me. Europeans should know that what is happening to us is not an isolated case. What they do with conservation and tourism affects people in Tanzania and across Africa. I am part of the problem. Everything outlined here on conservation, tourism, and development affects people across Africa. This conservation model is a form of colonialism and it must stop. Europeans and Americans should not think that they can teach us how to do conservation. On the contrary, we are the ones who can teach them, but they don’t learn anything. I don’t know how you can destroy so much biodiversity so quickly under the guise of development. I have been arrested twice. They were checking me all the time for my activity. There are people who died or disappeared. Our fathers and grandfathers were already fighting for the land. My concern is that our sons and daughters should too. We want them to live a decent life and be able to live with their families in their land in peace.

Fiore Longo, you helped write Survival International’s report “Blood Carbon: How a carbon offset scheme is achieving millions on Indigenous lands in northern Kenya.” What is happening?

The solution to dealing with climate change by creating protected areas affects indigenous peoples. Today emissions are not reduced but compensated for. The real change that needs to be done is to question the model of endless economic growth for the white population. Instead of reducing emissions, consumption, resource exploitation and changing the way we produce, we create these projects that destroy the lifestyle of the people least responsible for the climate crisis. That’s why we talk about carbon in the blood. In Kenya we’ve seen a project called revolutionary, one of the first carbon offsets on Earth. Netflix and Meta, for example, buy these carbon credits to offset emissions.

Do the Maasai pay for our sins?

It is a corrupt system. Only the less guilty are the ones who lose their way of life so that we can continue to pollute and produce climate change. The Maasai people are losing out to climate change due to increasing drought, they are losing out on the wrong solutions because they are being blamed for something they did not produce, they are being driven off their land and taught how to graze. They are transfer societies. This is the racism of conservation. Nomadism in Europe is a cultural heritage. In Kenya spoils the soil. Indigenous people move to the areas with the highest rainfall by moving up to 100 kilometers, and even travel 100 a day. Instead, just like that, they are locked in restricted areas. Meanwhile climate change continues and they lose their cows. There is a return to land grabs in the name of nature. It is inconceivable that we will be able to tackle the climate crisis if we do not change the way we live.