African community leaders endorse study alleging racism, discrimination and marginalisation in global conservation

In December 2025, four lions died from suspected poisoning in Lesoma Village in the wildlife-rich Chobe region of Botswana. Such suspected acts of retaliatory killing, usually by angry farmers, that are very common in most communities abutting wildlife conservancies, result in international outcry. Yet there had been no such outrage earlier in the year when Masiyaleti Siluka and three other Batswana villagers had been separately killed by elephants within a month. If anything, in all cases of human-wildlife conflict (HWC), the general sentiment in the West is that these villagers should be removed from the wildlife habitat that they are supposedly encroaching on. 

According to findings of a recent study by a team of 21 international researchers, these attitudes are a result of long traditions in which conservation has been founded on systemic racism, discrimination and marginalisation against Blacks, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC). 

'Our rural communities live on the frontline of conservation, bearing the costs of human-wildlife conflict while global audiences celebrate iconic species from afar,' said Dr Moreangels Mbizah, the study’s lead researcher, in an opinion piece published in The Herald. 

Mbizah, who is the founder Wildlife Conservation Action, a non-profit organisation that is promoting peaceful co-existence between humans and wildlife in Zimbabwe, says beneath the noble objective of conservation lies an uncomfortable truth that the global conservation community can no longer afford to ignore, which is that conservation – as historically practised and sometimes still implemented today – has too often marginalised the very people who live closest to nature and depend on it most. 

'If conservation is to be truly sustainable, it must also be fair – leaving communities safer, more empowered and more hopeful than before,' Mbizah said.  

Prioritisation of animals over humans 

The study, which kicked off in the backdrop of the global Black Lives Matter protests, examined how exclusion in conservation persists across intersections of race, class, urban-rural divides, nationality and power dynamics from local to global levels. It concluded that ‘othering’ disproportionately affects BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) communities, especially in the Global South, with the expansion of protected areas and prioritisation of individual animals over human beings worsening such inequalities. 

It pointed out that these discriminatory practices often weaken conservation outcomes themselves.

‘Perpetuating colonial preservationist practices’ 

Citing examples from Zimbabwe, India and Uganda, the study says conservation in its current form emerged during the European colonial era, where systemic racial oppression was widespread in the setting up of protected areas. 

'Preservationist (colonial) practices helped to create and perpetuate a false notion of a pristine wilderness without human occupation that casts local people as enemies, rather than custodians, of nature,' the study suggests.  

'This preservationist framing is inconsistent with many long-standing cultural practices of BIPOC communities and does not recognise the value of human-environment relationships in shared spaces. IPLCs can be – and often already are – very effective stewards of nature, especially if adequately supported.' 

The study says the marginalisation and racist attitudes in conservation are a manifestation of ‘othering’, which is the tendency to treat individuals or groups as fundamentally different from each other through the creation of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ social boundaries.  

According to the study, this ‘othering’ in conservation has mostly been directed towards BIPOC communities, and it is worse in the Global South, where governance systems and the rule of law, as well as the protection of both individual and collective rights are usually very weak. 

‘It’s true, we are side-lined’ 

Oaitse Nawa, the founder of Elephants Protection Society, an NGO focused on the conservation and protection of wildlife of Botswana, in email responses to FairPlanet, said that he agrees with the findings of the study. He says the research highlights problems that the citizens of Botswana – home to the world’s largest elephant population and countless other animals – face on a daily basis. 

'We, as a locally owned NGO, raise our voice on behalf of the Indigenous San and Local communities who continue to live in poverty while hunting safaris charge millions for animals that belong to our people and our land,' Nawa wrote. 

He said most decisions about hunting and conservation are made without their involvement, adding that the communities hardly benefit from revenue generated from conservation initiatives. 

Ishmael Chaukura, the director of the Community Campfire Association of Zimbabwe (CCAZ), also agreed that the study amplified the issues that local communities in the Global South have always felt strongly about. The CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources) is a Zimbabwean community-based natural resource management programme. 

'Wildlife conservation is still facing numerous challenges; there is no justice when we look at policy formulation at the international level,' Chaukura told FairPlanet through the phone. 'Blacks and minority groups have no access to decision-making about issues that directly affect them.' 

He cited the continued resistance by Western wildlife conservationists under the CITES framework to allow local communities to sell products of wildlife killed under the Problem Animal Control (PAC) interventions in HWC for the benefit of the affected communities and conservation purposes.  

'If there was justice, they were supposed to allow African countries to sell these products and generate income to support conservation efforts and survivors of wildlife attacks,' he said. 

Dr Rodgers Lubilo, director of Conservation Coalition Zambia, in email responses to FairPlanet, said it is true that conservation has not adequately addressed the imbalance between people and nature, and in the case of Africa, the governments of the now independent states have done little to dismantle the colonial infrastructure that denies people access and rights over their land and natural resources. 

'There is more focus on species conservation, expansion of conservation areas, limiting of access by local communities, in many instances with no regard to the plight of the local communities,' said Dr Lubilo, who is also the chairperson of Zambia CBNRM (community-based natural resource management) Forum.  

'Local people are already paying a big price by embracing conservation efforts in their areas, yet more benefits are accrued by external people and elites,' he said.  

‘Conservation must be fundamentally rethought’ 

Fiore Longo, the Senior Research and Advocacy Officer at Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples, wrote to FairPlanet that the study’s findings strongly resonate with what her organisation, many Indigenous peoples, and independent journalists have been documenting for decades. She said conservation, as it is too often practised in the Global South, continues to reproduce colonial patterns of land control, exclusion, and violence against indigenous and local communities. 

'Across Africa and Asia, conservation initiatives – led by large conservation NGOs and funded mainly by donors from the Global North – often prioritise a Western, wildlife-centred agenda, while disregarding, or actively undermining, the rights, livelihoods and survival of the people who live there and who are in fact protecting those landscapes,' Longo said. 

She said conservation must be fundamentally rethought so that justice, human rights and indigenous self-determination become central to conservation.

Longo added that pressure and violence on Indigenous lands are now being further intensified by the commodification of nature promoted by conservation NGOs, including the sale of carbon credits from the parks they manage.  

A RACE framework proposed 

The study proposes a framework for addressing these racial and other inequalities in conservation. It proposes the RACE framework – Rights, Agency, Challenge, and Education – as a way to rethink conservation so it works better for both people and nature.  

Its arguments are grounded in practice. Dr Mbizah, the study’s lead researcher, through her non-profit, has for years worked with local communities in northern Zimbabwe, where community-led initiatives have reduced livestock losses by as much as 98 per cent, contributed to a 50 per cent decline in retaliatory wildlife killings, and used low-cost predator-proof structures called bomas to protect livestock, among other interventions. 

'The future of conservation,' said Mbizah, 'depends on our willingness to confront uncomfortable truths and to reimagine our relationship with both people and nature'.