Safari vehicles crowded around elephants leaving a watering hole in the eastern Serengeti.

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Petrostate Seizure of the Serengeti

Kang-Chun Cheng | Tanzania, United Republic of

One of the world’s most iconic wildlife tourism destinations, Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and its adjacent conservation areas, are facing increasingly brutal human rights violations against the indigenous Maasai population––all under the name of ‘conservation.’

Western conservation organizations and donors have extended millions of dollars in funding to Tanzania. The East African nation has one of the biggest land-based carbon credit projects in the region; Sheikh Ahmed al-Maktoum, Dubai royalty, has struck a deal selling carbon credits from forests across 8% of Tanzania. These efforts––done without the consent of local populations, who have already been displaced from their ancestral lands (Maasai were banned from the Serengeti in 1959 when it was legalized as a national park)––take huge tolls on local communities. 

Conservation organizations and donors, including the Nature Conservancy, have funnelled millions of dollars in funding to Tanzania. Under President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s outward-looking foreign policy, Tanzania has become a magnet for foreign-driven carbon credit projects and luxury tourism areas, constituting 8% of the nation’s landmass.

kang.chun.cheng.95@gmail.com

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