Safeguarding tenure and access on communal conserved lands: Case studies from Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia

Indigenous people and local communities own only 3% of the African continents land and natural resources. This is relatively low when compared to their peers in Asia (23%) and Latin America (18%). Most of Africa’s wildlife... [ view full abstract ]

Indigenous people and local communities own only 3% of the African continents land and natural resources. This is relatively low when compared to their peers in Asia (23%) and Latin America (18%). Most of Africa’s wildlife (70%) now reside outside protected areas and some are found on communal lands. Most of its forests and fisheries stock, are utilized through de facto customary management systems. Despite some African Governments enacting laws that promote the recognition of communal ownership of land this has rarely translated into practice.  

In East and Southern Africa, many community conservation programs whose central objective is to help communities get resource rights have been implemented. Despite this design, very few rights have been given to communities in practice. One of the overarching problem stems from programs designed on weak communal tenure systems. Communities are rarely given strong ownership rights and have therefore very little stake in community conservation approaches.

To address some of these challenges, The Nature Conservancy has over the last few years supported community programs that devolve tenure rights to land and natural resources in three countries. Operating in four landscapes in Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia, TNC’s strategy is to secure land and natural resource rights for communities and support their capacity to manage, govern and benefit from these landscapes. This presentation will focus on presenting an overview of how TNC in Africa is strengthening land and resource tenure rights in three countries. The presentation will focus on three case studies and provide an overview of the lessons learnt, best practices on tenure and community conservation and how it is scaling its lessons to other parts of Africa.