Conservation-By-Dispossession: Conservation Policy and Its Consequences for Indigenous Kamba Farmers in the Kibwezi Region of Kenya

Increasingly tied to the UN-REDD+ programme within the general umbrella of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, wildlife and environmental conservation projects have come to operate within a general policy framework for market-based climate-change mitigation (e.g., carbon credits) and wildlife protection (e.g., ecotourism) to be carried out by private-public partnerships. The question of how these projects are implemented and potential consequences for indigenous farming communities on the frontline of conservation is not well-documented nor well-understood. This paper addresses this challenge with a focus on the wildlife and environmental protection policy implementation at the farm-forest frontier of the Chyulu Hills in the Kibwezi region of the Makueni county in Kenya. The Chyulu Hills Conservation Trust (CHCT) implements these policies in the Kibwezi region, often by employing militarized conservation practices which rely on the use of military and paramilitary personnel, armed rangers, air/land surveillance technologies, and ‘shoot-to-kill’ anti-poaching activities to protect targeted animals and plants. Based on data collected from interviews with one lead individual from each of the eight CHCT member organizations and the publicly available documents published by these organizations, the paper unpacks the political ecology behind conservation and associated relations of dispossession. It illustrates that these projects alter land use/access relations and foster an enclosure system that displaces people from their customary forestlands and valuable forest resources.