Colonial megafauna conservation displaced people while ignoring subsistence land degradation

Evidence

Maathai’s intersectional approach to environmental justice contrasted starkly with the dominant colonial tradition of conservation, which had focused on charismatic megafauna. That sharply masculinist tradition—in Kenya and, more broadly, in East and Southern Africa—was associated with forced removal, with colonial appropriation of land, and with an antihuman ecology. That tradition remains part of Kenya’s economic legacy, a legacy associated not just with human displacement but with local exclusion from elite cultures of leisure. In ecological as in human terms, Maathai’s angle of approach was not top down: instead of focusing on the dramatic end of the biotic chain—the elephants, rhinos, lions, and leopards that have preoccupied colonial hunters, conservationists, and foreign tourists—she drew attention to a more mundane and pervasive issue: the impact of accumulative resource mismanagement on biodiversity, soil quality, food security, and the life prospects of rural women and their families. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 391

Categorization

• XREF: A sharp case of ‘spectacular vs mundane’ harms — pairs with Nixon’s broader argument that dramatic, biophilic conservation crowds out slow, human-centered degradation. — connects to: Degraded forests imposed added unpaid labor on already-dispossessed women — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 395; Colonial progress destroys cultural ecosystems as thoroughly as ecological ones — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 256; Megadams divert both water and attention away from displaced communities — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 485 (+1 more)
• SEED: Angle: ‘The elephant in the room’ — how charismatic-megafauna conservation has historically functioned as a colonial land grab that erased the slower, mundane harms of degraded soil and food insecurity.

Broader Connections

• Colonial progress destroys cultural ecosystems as thoroughly as ecological ones #complicates (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 256