When community falls apart: conservation aid as an instrument of land fragmentation and control in the rangelands of Kenya

Le résumé fourni par la source

This paper discusses the properties and political effects of conservation aid as it contributes to shape meanings of community, making it a fictive homogenous unit, the recipient of conservation aid, de-facto instrumental in land fragmentation and political control in the rangelands of Kenya. The analysis reflects on development discourse promoting participatory, indigenous, localised or community-based conservation projects against the background of Kenyan land tenure reform processes, promoting land individualisation and privatisation since late colonial times, but recently opening up to the possibility of rethinking community ownership and group rights via the Community Land Act of 2016. The (non-)implementation of this law provides excellent sites of observation as it spurs a debate on the future of community’s land and shared life. This paper argues that the conservation aid narratives and programmes provide legitimacy and material means to networks of powerful actors operating to convey one particular vision of both the law, the community and the future of the rangelands of Kenya, which essentially favours their economic and political interests and undermines reciprocity that binds local population, their cultural practices, livelihoods and environmental stewardship.

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