Human-Environment-Conflicts in the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Mount Elgon, Kenia
In the course of the 30by30-Agenda and the global threat caused by climate change, the establishment of reserves has become an increasingly vital instrument in the fight against the loss of biodiversity. The global network of reserves serves the preservation of threathened ecosystems and species, while parks and reserves are popular travel destinations and important sources of income for states. However, today there are predominatly more participative, compatible forms of reserves, such as the UNESCO Biosphere reserve (BR), in which nature protection interests and the socio-economic needs of the local population are supposed to be equally joint. At the same time, nature protection still poses an enormous conflict potential: It is not uncommon that the restrictive, frequently militarized approaches of fortress conservation, originating from colonial times, which can be especially characterized by tourism and Human-Nature-Dualism, lead to massive land right- and resources conflicts, in which the interests of the population often are subordinated to nature protection objectives and economic potentials.
Mount Elgon is a shield volcano of ca. 4300 m of height on the border between Uganda and Kenia with an unique afro mountainous vegetation as well as an especially high biodiversity and has been declared as a national park in 1993 (Fig. 1). It is a highly militarized and extremely conflictual protection area, which already exists in its essential features since colonial times. its establishment lead to numerous forced relocations and limits access to resources for the local population massively today, without providing sufficient alternatives. In 2005, the area conceded the status of an UNESCO BR, the national park has been incorporated in the BR. In October 2021, research work of the Institute for Geography of the University of Hamburg have shown that the interests of the population have been considered inadequately during the implementation process of the BRs and local stakeholders and the population had hardly any knowledge about the existence of the protection area. At the same time, there have been conflicts about the sensitive questions of land rights and the access to resources, in the course of which there have been massive human rights violations have been committed in the name of nature protection during the past decades.
The envisioned research deals with the socially relevant topics of sustainability of nature protection measures and Human-Nature-Conflicts with a regional focus on Uganda. The inadequate data basis and the absence of the mandatory evaluations of BRs raise the central questions of their efficiency as well as factors which influence planning, implementation and management. The project is supposed to contribute to improve the understanding of political, socio-economic and ecological conditions on the spot and to contribute to the solution of the conflict. This requires an extensive understanding of the areal conditions as well as a sense of place of the local population. Additionally, we intend to take a closer look at the colonial past of the region including the protection areas and examine how far the past and the current handling of it still influence acceptance and success of the nature protection measures. The chosen research methods are a mixture of social science mapping methods, interview approaches as well as profound literature analysis. The research will consider and analyze different stakeholders with a special focus on the perspectives of the local population in order to contribute to the sustainable improvement of the management approach of the UNESCO BR.
Student research group
- William Armando Vargas Ordonez
- Michèle von Kocemba
Mentor
- Prof. Dr. Udo Schickhoff