Struggles over resource access in rural Tanzania: claiming for recognition in a community-based forest conservation intervention

Abstract

This article draws insights from access, claim-making and critical environmental justice scholarships to reveal how community-based conservation (CBC) may provide strategic openings for marginalised individuals to claim recognition. Empirically, we ground it in the context of a Sustainable Charcoal Project in rural Kilosa, Tanzania. In our study villages, Ihombwe and Ulaya Mbuyuni, the project provided an opening for the marginalised to claim recognition based on contested migration-and-settlement histories. These histories produced intra-community differentiation as firstcomers (mis)used the project for political domination, cultural status and material benefits. When the project opened governance spaces, latecomers embraced CBC institutions and processes as strategic openings to contest their marginalisation and claim for recognition. We suggest that CBC may produce political benefits where (mal)recognition of rights to resource access occurs as some people hold a sense of belonging more to the land than others.