Decolonizing Conservation: Evictions of Indigenous Maasai in Tanzania
episodePreviously titled “UNESCO World Heritage Status Fuels Maasai Evictions with Paul Renaut” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 12, 2026
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What is UNESCO and how is it supposed to promote global peace and security?
Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by Global Justice Ecology Project. UNESCO is the United Nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization. It is tasked with the promotion of global peace and security through international cooperation in education, science, culture, and information. Yet, recent reporting by Survival International has highlighted how UNESCO has used its influence to support the forced relocation of the Maasai from their land in Tanzania. The Maasai, who are an indigenous people of the Serengeti, are again being brutally repressed and their herding culture intentionally dismantled in favor of a fortress conservation model that promotes trophy hunting and tourism over the rights of the Masai who have lived on the land from time immemorial.
On this episode of Breaking Green, we will speak with Paul Renault. Paul Renault is a researcher with Survival International where he has worked extensively since twenty nineteen on the campaign to decolonize conservation in Africa. Paul's efforts have included working extensively in the field with the Maasai. He currently joins us from Paris. Paul Renault, welcome to Breaking Green. Thank you. So Paul, um, tell us a little bit about Survival International. It's been a while since we've done an interview with your organization.
Yes, of course. So Survival is a human rights uh NGO campaigning on the rights of indigenous peoples. Um so we do various campaigns on various topics around the world. Um and today I will speak um more precisely on our campaign to decolonize conservation, um which is fighting against human rights violations that are committed in the name of nature protection, but most um most accurately um that are um um following um a colonial uh system that leads to the systemic eviction of um of indigenous peoples from their lands and um of um a lot of of of violence.
Yes, uh colonial conservation. So I think uh having interviewed Fiora Longo before, uh a lot of that has to do with the idea that uh s uh what a lot of people would associate with uh the conservation movement, uh that there's this this idea that there's these pristine lands that exist or should exist without people. Uh but people have always been part of the land. So what we see with conservation is moving rightful uh landowners, caretakers, uh indigenous people off that land with the idea that we're going to have a a natural state. So could you address, you know, what's wrong with that picture?
Yeah, as you were saying, the whole premise is to say that indigenous peoples or local communities are destroying the land um that they live on, and that in order to protect nature, but this abstract idea of nature that would be empty of people, um, we would have to to evict them. But the truth is that these spaces that we consider or that the West uh considers um as the most um uh wild places on earth uh or even the most biodiverse um are actually the lands of indigenous peoples. And if they are in such good shape, it's because they have um not only lived in them, but also protected them and shaped them. Um so that's what that's why from a conservation point of view it makes no sense to evict uh the best uh guardians of these spaces.
It's just um a model that um is based on again colonial um colonial history um and uh increasingly um the goal is to include these places in the capitalist system and try to make profit from them. So once um the original inhabitants are evicted, then um there is room for all kinds of uh exploitation, whether it be extractive industries or tourism. Um
How does “fortress conservation” lead to forced evictions of the Maasai?
Um or yeah, that kind of thing.
The treatment of the indigenous people is quite brutal. And I think people would be surprised to learn that some of these wildlife or conservation organizations that uh everyone thinks of as or many people think of as as preserving nature, uh working for good, actually can support uh or even be part of uh brutal um r repression.
Yeah, it's actually very concrete when we say that um these people are evicted or or framed uh as a threat to the environment.
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