Year of Award

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Science (MS)

Degree Name

Resource Conservation

Other Degree Name/Area of Focus

International Conservation and Development

Department or School/College

W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation

Committee Chair

Sarah J Halvorson

Commitee Members

Dr. Brian Chaffin, Dr. Kimber McKay

Keywords

Tanzania, pastoral women, environment and conservation, feminist decolonial theory

Subject Categories

Development Studies | Environmental Studies

Abstract

Pastoral women hold pivotal social and environmental roles within their communities. Equally and actively engaging pastoral women in processes to conserve and sustainably use rangeland resources has therefore become an important focus for integrated environment and development intervention. In northern Tanzania, pastoral women find themselves at the center of gender equality efforts, which attempt to translate gender and environment theory into conservation action that elevates pastoral women’s historically unheard voices. Along the way, particular global narratives have positioned pastoral women alternately as passive beneficiaries or as powerful allies in biodiversity conservation and natural resource management. Although the importance of integrating gender considerations into conservation work is now widely acknowledged, there remains a pressing need to examine how pastoral women are understood and meaningfully engaged in a contemporary environment and development landscape. My research attends to this need by investigating how pastoral women are engaged as actors within the integrated environment and development agenda in Tanzania. The first part of the study uses critical discourse analysis to interrupt dominant global narratives and explore local discourse that tells a multifaceted story about pastoral women and their environment. Placed in the broader context of the politics of integrated environment and development, my analysis indicates that local organizations actively resist specific limiting global discourses to create space for pastoral women to define their own identities and roles in natural resource management. In the second part of the study, I draw upon semi-structured, in-depth interviews with leaders and staff of both local and international organizations operating in northern Tanzania’s rangelands to investigate how the voices and knowledge of women pastoralists are invited to influence their environment and development work. The findings suggest that organizations operating in northern Tanzania have embraced the complexity of the role of pastoral women but have yet to match this truth with strategies to engage women across social categories and robustly measure the impacts of their involvement. Jointly, data from this study demonstrates a consistent push and pull between tradition and transformation, ultimately inviting actors to break away from dichotomous world views to design integrated social-ecological projects that more successfully honor today’s pastoral women. I conclude with recommendations for how ‘new’ conservation interventions could also incorporate new frames of work that are more responsive to local perspectives on pathways toward greater sustainability and equity.

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© Copyright 2023 Kelli Erin Rogers