The story of wildlife conservation in East Africa is often told through spectacular images of beautiful scenery and the region’s charismatic animals. But seldom asked is the question about how those efforts include and impact the communities that live alongside wildlife.At the core of Africa’s rich biodiversity are Indigenous communities, which include pastoralists and forest peoples whose ways of life and knowledge are critical to conservation. A giraffe in the Maasai Mara National Reserve in southern Kenya. (Kariũki Kĩrigia) However, these communities have historically been blamed for biodiversity loss. Pastoralists such as the Maasai are often blamed for keeping “excessive” amounts of livestock, overgrazing and land degradation. Such tropes against African Indigenous communities linger and continue to shape conservation, which has led to strict and often punitive regulations. My ongoing research in the Maasai Mara region of southern Kenya looks into wildlife conservancies. The region is home to the Maasai, as well as other Indigenous Peoples, and rich biodiversity. My research examines how conservancies impact local communities on whose land conservation is practised. Read more: Tanzania’s Maasai are being forced off their ancestral land – the tactics the government uses What are wildlife conservancies?The decline in wildlife in Kenya led to the birth of wildlife conservancies on both community and private lands. Kenya’s 2013 Wildlife Conservation and Management Act defines a wildlife conservancy as “land set aside by an individual landowner, body corporate, group of owners or a community for purposes of wildlife conservation.”Organizations like the Kenya Wildlife Conservation Association (KWCA) view them differently. They see conservancies as land that is not set aside, but rather managed for the well-being of wildlife and communities. In essence, the government maintains the view of fortress conservation that entails separating humans from nature, while the KWCA imagines communities co-existing with wildlife.At the core of wildlife conservancies is land. Land ownership largely determines the type of conservancy that is established, which are either private, community, group or co-managed conservancies.Private conservancies Kariũki Kĩrigia explains his research into wildlife conservancies in Kenya. (University of Toronto Black Research Network) In northern Kenya, private conservancies have largely been established in the highlands that were settled by white farmers during the colonial period.These private conservancies have been criticized as “settler ecologies” built on a “big conservation lie” because they obscure the history of violent, colonial land dispossession, the criminalization of Indigenous pastoralist livelihoods and the exploitation of land and biodiversity to profit from conservation. Additionally, the normalization of militarized violence in conservation, appropriation and control of conservation revenues meant for communities, and restriction of access to scarce water and pasture from pastoralists even during droughts, amounts to what is known as green colonialism.The contradiction is that it was British colonial rule in Kenya that created the need for wildlife conservation starting in the 1940s. Extensive devastation of wildlife through sport hunting, wildlife trade and culling meant animals needed greater protection from humans, primarily through state-protected national parks and reserves. Read more: Operation Legacy: How Britain covered up its colonial crimes Group conservanciesGroup conservancies are mostly found in southern Kenya, where individual plots are amalgamated through long-term land leases to conservation investors who, in turn, establish wildlife conservancies.In the Maasai Mara, local communities typically lease their land for conservancies in exchange for lease payments, regular access to pasture and investment in initiatives such as school bursaries and infrastructure development. One such example is the Nashulai Maasai Conservancy, established in July 2016. It’s the first Maasai conservancy in the Maasai Mara created by Maasai peoples. Wildlife conservancies in Kenya are an important way to enhance land security and conservation built around communities. Community and group conservancies are based on the idea of using the land, water and pastures in ways that support humans, livestock and wildlife. As part of my research, I interviewed community members who told me about some benefits brought by the conservancy. These included access to post-secondary education through a community college, women empowerment projects such as soap made from elephant dung, river restoration for household water access and food aid during the COVID-19 pandemic. Challenges faced by group conservanciesMany group conservancies employ strict access rules and hefty fines against human and livestock presence. These practices often agitate communities as they echo fortress conservation’s tactics of separating humans and wildlife.Land lease agreements between conservancies and landowners are often crafted in complex legal language that only a few community members can comprehend. It is critical that communities are provided with a detailed explanation of what leasing land to a conservancy entails beyond the benefits promised.In addition, community benefits are undermined through land dispossession by local elites during land subdivision, who, in turn, benefit unfairly from leasing the unjustly acquired land to conservancies. Biodiversity conservation in East Africa and the Global South more broadly depends significantly on external funding from organizations in the West, especially non-governmental organizations, which British conservation scholar George Holmes calls “conservation’s friends in high places.” However, Indigenous communities face onerous requirements and processes to access funding for conservation and climate change initiatives.In a recent guest lecture at the University of Toronto, Kimaren Ole Riamit, the director of the Indigenous Livelihoods Enhancement Partners (ILEPA), explained how African Indigenous communities experience the negative impacts of climate change despite being the least responsible for global warming, lose land to conservation and carbon projects and face significant hurdles in accessing resources to address climate-related challenges.Initiatives meant to empower communities are often captured by local elites and corporate interests that appropriate and control resources and benefits expected to flow to communities. Carbon offsettingWildlife conservancies have also gained the attention of carbon offset markets, which are expanding fast in Kenya. The Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project and the One Mara Carbon Project are some of the main carbon projects in the country’s northern and southern rangelands. Kenya’s rangelands sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is then measured and verified by certification bodies such as Verra, and converted into tradeable carbon credits. These are sold to organizations seeking to offset their carbon emissions. Carbon projects enter into long-term contracts with landowners, typically around 40 years, and spell out how the landowners should utilize the land to ensure adequate carbon sequestration and storage. Landowners receive expert knowledge that employs technologies and measurements of carbon that are foreign to local communities. A zebra in the Maasai Mara National Reserve in southern Kenya. (Kariũki Kĩrigia) On the contrary, the same communities that have long managed lands and ecosystems sustainably are treated as lacking the ecological knowledge necessary for biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration. The outcome is that the owners of the technologies and what is deemed “expert” knowledge become the owners of the value generated from the land owned by communities. While such initiatives generate millions of dollars in revenue, it has been shown that less than two per cent of climate finance reaches Indigenous Peoples, smallholder farmers and local communities in developing countries.To create genuinely sustainable ecological conservation and improved quality of life for local communities, the government must focus on empowering communities through meaningful participation in initiatives.Organizations like ILEPA and the Nashulai Maasai Conservancy are working to empower Indigenous communities in Kenya. These kinds of community-led efforts exemplify how conservation can, and must, include the people who call East Africa’s rich biodiverse landscapes home.Kariuki Kirigia has received funding from the Black Research Network at the University of Toronto, the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund, and SSHRC-IDRC through the Institutional Canopy of Conservation research project.