Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyse the manifold struggles over land in southern Ethiopia's Nechisar National Park (NNP). The formal creation of NNP in 1974 fundamentally altered the scene, and congregated pastoralists, farmers, hunters, and conservationists in the struggles over resource access and use. While 'ancestral rights' continued to be invoked by those who had used the land previously, the NNP management and other actors could now call upon the imperatives of conservation to either curtail access to the Park and its resources or evict people from the Park. Following the downfall of the Derg regime in 1991, when Ethiopia adopted an ethnic federalism, attempts were made to assign a designated territory to each ethnic group. Thus, the struggles over NNP were further complicated by the renewal of the significance of ethnicity and the meanings of actors' strategies, given that the Park straddles the border between two regional states established under the new system of governance. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and around NNP. It demonstrates how attempts to introduce territoriality to hitherto unterritorialised spaces and ethnic groups resulted in the multiplication of the number of actors struggling for access to, and/or governance authority over, NNP and in the intensification of these struggles. The article argues for a shift in understanding people-park conflicts from a merely ecological and economistic approach to one that also situates these conflicts in the national politics of ethnic territorialisation.
Highlights
A PARK WITH CONTENDING ACTORSNechisar National Park (NNP) is situated in southern Ethiopia in a region marked by a wet climate
The efforts by the African Parks Foundation to reach an agreement with the Guji to grant them seasonal access to grazing were viewed with suspicion by the Gamo Gofa zone administration and considered as a hidden strategy “confirming the land transfer deal” and completely rejected (Kebede Chinkilo; Arba Minch; June 2016)
NNP has been claimed by various groups with different narratives and views about the parkland
Summary
Nechisar National Park (NNP) is situated in southern Ethiopia in a region marked by a wet climate. The efforts by the African Parks Foundation to reach an agreement with the Guji to grant them seasonal access to grazing (along the buffer areas in the eastern corridor in the NNP) were viewed with suspicion by the Gamo Gofa zone administration and considered as a hidden strategy “confirming the land transfer deal” and completely rejected (Kebede Chinkilo; Arba Minch; June 2016) On this matter, Vlissingen and Pearce describe the competing interests during the relocation: “The wish for resettlement springs from an ethno-federalist fixation harboured by the local authorities. One of the other problematic policies of current government is the objective of “ensuring food security through effective utilisation of land and land-based resources across the country”, as stated in the country’s official rural development and food security strategy.14 This specific programme was selectively mobilised by Oromia regional state officials and militates against the Gamo Gofa zone’s eviction proposal, arguing that the eviction would result in human and livelihood insecurity of the previously food secure Guji in the NNP (Jarso Bakalo; Tore; August 2017). The crux of the various struggles discussed here is a matter of ensuring a human-free park or of protecting communities from eviction and a register of claims and contestations over land in the NNP that are promoted and manipulated under various pretexts
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