From disrupted to emblematic ICCAs: restoring community conservation in transboundary landscapes of the Albertine Rift

The story of conservation in Africa has historically been externally-driven, looking at colonial game reserves and parks as examples of a North Atlantic approach to fortress-model conservation implemented in tribal wildlands. In reality, conservation was embedded in many cultures across these landscapes, but these knowledge systems and practices have not been well-protected against political, economic, and social changes in the last decades (and arguably, hence, has resulted in significant environmental change).

The role of traditional and local communities in modern African states is uncertain and even long-recognized communal lands are fragmenting into fenced private properties. Yet, if conservation is left to a few State agents in sequestered parklands, the state of the environment will only continue to decline. It is imperative that conservation take root outside and in between protected areas, i.e. connectivity, and for systems of environmental governance and stewardship to be driven by people and not just a regime of paramilitaries and penalties that may or may not be effective. These are the issues that underlie my motivation to focus this research on community conservation and its revitalization.

This project explores the disruption and revitalization of ICCAs (areas and territories conserved by Indigenous Peoples and local communities) in and around national parks in Rwanda, particularly in terms of strengthening socio-ecological connectivity, resilience and peace in the broader transboundary landscapes of the Albertine Rift.