Gendered Impacts of Community-based Conservation Initiatives in Kimana/Tikondo Group Ranch outside of Amboseli National Park

Megan Clemens

Abstract

Community-based conservation (CBC) has become a common solution to addressing local communities needs and concerns when it comes to conservation initiatives associated with, or outside the boundaries of national parks. However, a critique of CBC initiatives points out that they often assume community homogeneity. Assumptions of community homogeneity lead to inequities in benefit sharing and the exclusion of subgroups (women, ethnic minorities); in some cases, CBC can even exacerbate marginalization. Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya is one of the first and most important examples of CBC, where local communities were included in conservation initiatives and the benefits of conservation were to be shared with local communities. Despite the centrality of Amboseli to our understanding of CBC, little work has explored the gendered impacts of CBC initiatives. This study fills this gap with an examination of the gendered impacts of community-based conservation initiatives in the Kimana/Tikondo Group Ranch near Amboseli National Park. The results from this study show gender disparities in the most frequently mentioned benefits and costs associated with community-based initiatives including school bursaries, employments, payments for ecosystem services and human-wildlife conflict.