Human Dimensions of Wildlife Management in East Africa: What Can a Human Security Framework Offer?

The first clear conceptualisation and articulation of human security as a concept can be traced back to the 1994 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Unlike national security, which is... [ view full abstract ]

The first clear conceptualisation and articulation of human security as a concept can be traced back to the 1994 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Unlike national security, which is focused on state security, human security is concerned with security of the people from pervasive threats emanating from environmental degradation, disease, poverty, political instability and conflict. It can be understood in a narrow sense as being concerned primarily with threats from violent conflicts of all kinds or in a broader sense as being concerned with an array of threats including but not limited to conflict, environmental degradation and poverty. This paper relies on the latter conception of human security. Its main objective is to ignite debate on the value of a human security framework for understanding the human dimensions of wildlife management.
A systemic review of peer reviewed case study research journal articles on wildlife conservation in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania forms the paper’s backbone. The case studies were sourced from Google Scholar and limited to the period 2005-2015. The first decade of human security i.e. 1994-2004 was omitted under the assumption that human security was not yet well established. Thus, 2005-2015 was selected under the assumption that human security is an established framework.
Additionally, the paper relies on a review of current wildlife management legislations in the three countries and a content analysis of a purposively sampled documentary about community-based wildlife conservation in Tanzania – included primarily for analytical enrichment purposes.
It finds that aspects of human security framework are exhibited in the data. However, it does not find widespread explicit reference to or reliance on a human security analytical framework in the data.
The paper argues that by moving the referent object from state to people, human security enables the recognition of agency (in terms of empowerment and provision of security) in other actors; not just the state alone. Therefore, human security analytical framework is better poised to articulate the contribution(s) of community-based conservation towards ensuring peace and livelihood security in, for example, the rather poverty and conflict prone rangeland areas of Northern Kenya.