Population

Human population is mentioned 50 times in the Multiple Land Use Management Plan (MLUM) that defines the fate of the indigenous residents of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It sounds like the author is trying to justify evicting people, using population as a reason.

“xiii. Analysis of maintaining the status quo revealed that with an average annual growth rate of 3.5%, human population will reach 200,000 people by 2038.” … MLUM


And in the Ladislaus F. Batinoluho document:

Increased human population

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (2017), the population of indigenous residents is 93,136. If the number of people will continue to increase unabated, the population is expected double and reach about 200,000 by 2032. This means that the well-being of the people in the area will worsen further and fail to sustain their existence as established by the national and global standards of human welfare. In the face where conservation of natural and cultural resources as well as tourism promotion seem to fairly succeed while condition of resident pastoralists’ deteriorates, demonstrates that the multiple land use model that has existed for 60 years can no longer be upheld without making adjustments in its current status. Otherwise, individuals or groups without goodwill to the NCA will take advantage of the deteriorating state of resident pastoralists’ wellbeing to obtain unfair sympathy as well as financial and political gains.60


Changes in the status quo need to be considered before this claim can be made. Humane measures - that are already being done, to some degree - which lower population growth -- need to be considered first. Failure to provide adequate social services should not be blamed on the indigenous community. These same measures, if they were sufficient, would contribute to the well-being of the residents, as well as to lower population growth.

In addition, 40% of the resident population are immigrants, not indigenous, or are non-Maasai staff, making the NCA Maasai population only 60% of 100,000 or 60,0000.


There has been pressure for years against overpopulation from UNESCO for the NCA to maintain the World Heritage Site designation:

The World Heritage Centre and IUCN consider that the impacts of human population pressure and tourism need to be addressed urgently. If current degradation patterns are not stopped, the OUV* of the property will be jeopardized and the World Heritage Committee may have to consider the inscription of the property on the List of World Heritage in Danger. .. 2010.18


*OUV = Outstanding Universal Value = "Cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity. As such, the permanent protection of this heritage is of the highest importance to the international community as a whole."


What a wonderful thing is the Outstanding Universal Value! So inspiring! Something we wish for all humanity! It describes the Maasai culture so well. But when it is used by the NCA Authority as a reason to remove the Maasai from their home, especially when the development needed (such as health, education, nourishment, and control over one’s own environment) - to curtail population growth -- then the reason for removing them is miserably insufficient.

Maasai population growth is 2.8% - slower than the Tanzanian population growth rate or the 4% cited for cultivators (1987).82


From 1980 to 2010 UNESCO reports concluded that the increase of the human population posed a threat to the ecological value and integrity of NCA as a WHS (Olenasha, 2014; UNESCO, 2009; WHC, ICOMOS and IUCN, 2012).2


For 40 years UNESCO has been predicting this threat! Have you ever heard of “calling wolf?”

March 2019 UNESCO: 4.2.3.1 Sustainable livelihoods and Sustainability in the NCA


While commending the State Party for actively and 1. consistently supporting the Maasai with financial capital and other subsidies for their livelihood needs, this model appears to have a sustainability risk, which cannot be guaranteed with the 2. increasing population and the expansion of new settlements which require additional supportive infrastructure such as clinics and schools.


This matter requires NCAA and the local communities to 3. explore alternative sustainable socio-economic beneficiation models, in addition to 4. encouraging voluntary resettlement of Maasai outside the property, consistent with the policies of the Convention and relevant international norms, in order to reduce the risk of failure of the current model, hence deepening tensions and areas of conflict.


If this risk/threat is not addressed, it may result in the unintended consequences of a dependency syndrome on the part of the local communities, thereby suppressing the spirit of creativity and sustainable entrepreneurship (NCA Livestock Strategy, 2019). 5. Such alternative models should consider that change has been constant and inevitable since 1959, hence the need to have an inclusive stakeholder and holistically driven approach responding to these changes with a view of retaining the balance between conservation and socio-economic livelihoods.


If this matter is not addressed in a holistic and inclusive manner, it increases threats to the site and could be catastrophic if not proactively dealt with. However, this holistic and inclusive approach should be sensitive to the political context of this matter, and the 6. need to assist the State Party in resolving such matters in a harmonious way.


Joint WHC-ICOMOS-IUCN Mission to Ngorongoro Conservation Area.pdf page 31.


  1. Consistently supporting the Maasai with financial capital and other subsidies for their livelihood needs - The NCA took over the Maasai Land; they owe the Maasai for having to share their land with tourists.

  2. Expansion of new settlements which require additional supportive infrastructure such as clinics and schools - they would not have had to expand if they had sufficient clinics and schools to begin with.

  3. Explore alternative sustainable socio-economic beneficiation models - their way of life was sustainable until they were confined in a smaller area by the NCA. In addition, they should be benefiting from tourism because they were forced to give up the Crater to please tourists.

  4. Encouraging voluntary resettlement of Maasai outside the property - Resettlement before was a failure. Most good places are already taken by game ranches or agriculture. Agriculture people and pastoral people have conflicting livelihoods.

  5. Such alternative models should consider that change has been constant and inevitable since 1959 - Change could have been better or worse, depending on the NCAA, not on the Maasai who were disenfranchised.

  6. Need to assist the State Party in resolving such matters in a harmonious way. - The only way that this can be harmonious is to start listening to the voice of the Maasai, not just the NCAA.


June 2019 UNESCO: 4.2.6.1 Increased human population within NCA


The State Party, in consolation with the local communities, has developed strategies and measures to control the human population growth in and around the property. The mission recommends that the State Party should continue to (i) promote and encourage voluntary resettlement of communities, consistent with the policies of the Convention and relevant international norms, from within the property to outside by 2028; (ii) promote family planning and reproductive health to the community to control birth rate and family size in the property with the aim to decrease population by 2028; and (iii) collaborate with the local community and village governments adjacent to NCA in controlling migration of people into the NCA by 2028.


In addition, the restriction of grazing at Ngororongo, Empakai and Olmoti craters, has

limited the total grazing areas available to pastoralists who are now forced to concentrate into few areas that are dominated by noxious weeds including the Eleusine jaegeri (Makutiyani).

Understanding that livestock define and provide social identity and security for the Maasai (Hesse and MacGregor, 2006), there is a need to consider the impact of climate change on the landscape and its implication on both livestock and wildlife, access to water and other resources, which may become scarce. Addressing the grazing pressure is already embedded in the three strategies previously agreed upon between the State Party and stakeholders concerned. While diseases and frequent droughts due to climate change have remained a challenge (GMP 2019), the State Party has collaboratively made a number of interventions targeting livestock improvement within the property in the past decades.


  1. Promoting family planning is good, but it won’t work to slow population growth without health care and girls education, which means more classrooms and teachers houses are needed (i.e.more development).

  2. Voluntary resettlement has been tried before, but there was conflict with people who were already living there. And conflict frequently happens when pastoralists and agriculturalists live next door to each other.

  3. Not enough has been done about noxious weeds, especially burning, which the Maasai used to do to improve the rangeland. This will increase the palatable rangeland for both the cattle and wildlife.

  4. Not mentioned is cultivation. The Savanna model has shown that when 3% or less of land is cultivated, wildlife are not affected. This would end the dependence of the residents on the NCAA for sustenance.


Well known are the factors behind controlling population growth: quality health care, lowering infant and maternal mortality, girls education through secondary school, changing gender and family size norms, and rising out of abject poverty. In addition, such investments in these factors have been shown to improve well-being of the community and the economy of the region.


This is why the population is so high: These things should have been done 19 years ago:

(2001) Despite the fact that NCAA gets a lot of revenue from tourism, only a very small part is used for the development of the Maasai. The NCAA earns approximately TSh 6.5 billion per annum (equivalent to US $8 million) from the tourist industry, of which 52,000 pastoralists are allocated 12% according to the budget but not in reality. Health and veterinary services are also lacking. A single TB centre in Endulen and a few scattered dispensaries, without drugs or specialised doctors, serve the pastoralists. When it comes to education the situation is no better. Only a few primary schools are in place and most have no teachers or teaching materials. Only now is a secondary school being constructed and nobody knows when it will get finished. There are only two university graduates against a population of 52,000. The roads that are constructed are mostly those used by tourists. The district that the NCA is located in is the least developed in Tanzania. ...6.2 Social services .. Case Study 4 Tanzania


The NCAA currently earns 140 billions of which 3 billion goes for the community for development and social issues financing …(Participant "O" WhatsApp)


The NCA is home to roughly 90,000 Maasai people and one million diverse species of fauna and flora.2 Meanwhile, their livestock, which is their main livelihood, have remained almost constant – resulting in fewer livestock per capita. While a few herders own massive herds, the vast majority of the families live well below poverty levels, and under increasing need for outside food and livelihood support. In addition, in its 2005–2016 performance report, the NCAA noted the status of wildlife to be stable; the forest has remained intact.


The Sustainability of African Savannas

From the early 1900s people questioned the sustainability of the African savannas in regards to wildlife, livestock and the people who depended on them.

It was assumed that the pastoral people’s attachment to cattle was irrational because they saw livestock as a form of wealth and strived to maximize livestock numbers resulting in a perceived degradation of the range conditions. Melville Herskovits, in his 1926 paper, called this the “cattle complex”. It was assumed that pastoral people overstocked the range, and that it wasn’t sustainable unless the number of livestock were checked. All development programs included efforts to force a reduction of the number of livestock of the people who were the intended beneficiaries of the project.

Garret Hardin in his 1968 article on the “The Tragedy of the Commons," claimed that individual ownership coupled with communal management of resources would lead to over exploitation due to environmental degradation. This argument claimed that the pastoral system was “unsustainable”.

However, this sustainability concept is overly-simplistic.

In contrast to the Malthus theory that claims when the food supply reaches exhaustion, extra people have to die, a woman Danish economist named Ester Boserup argued that if a population was increasing, and land was limited, the people would just intensify their cultivation (adding labor for example). They will invent their way out of the Malthusian crisis.

Malthus was talking about the potential for a population to run up against environmental limits. Boserup is talking about overcoming those limits through culture and technology.

Subsistence systems based primarily on nomadic livestock herding have given way during the last 40 years to more diversified economies incorporating cultivation, wage labor, and migration. Sustainability should no longer be in question.

Terms like “carrying capacity” assume a fixed number to mean things will crash if that number is exceeded.

The rangelands are non equilibrium ecosystems - meaning they have no equilibrium in their carrying capacity.

When herbivore numbers periodically crash, their numbers fall below the number of the previously-defined carrying capacity.

That is why carrying capacity is not solidly defined.

These herbivore crashes means each generation of the NCA Maasai becomes progressively poorer unless other sources of food or income are adopted into the livelihood strategy. This alone should provide a very strong incentive to diversify a livestock-based livelihood.68


93000 is the Total population of Native Maasai and other people. This includes NCAA work persons, camps and lodge workers, dispensary and other persons doing both casual and permanent jobs, like teachers, who were to be counted during census and even on National Household Base survey that was conducted by National Bureau of Statistics(NBS) in 2017 which showed that there is high population increase. NCAA has a number of 700 to 1000 work persons from the office of Secretary-Chief Conservator of which, the Maasai account for only 70.… (Participant “O” NCA Concerns WhatsApp group)


Nyoo pee iyeu nipungusasa iltunganak endai ilaasak lemamlaka ooyengingate neleku tiatu korongoro. [Maa]

Also if you want to reduce the numbers of people then remove the retired authority staffs that are when retired they remain in the NCA. …(Survey participant #NSE)


Also counted in the 93,000 were the men who left the NCA to find work, and the students attending secondary school and universities most of the year outside the NCA. There are also a number of people who were counted and who work for NGOs but live outside the NCA (in modern housing). If their spouses and children were also counted, that would add up to a big difference.


Also consider that, if the NCA replaced the 630+ NCA employees who are not Maasai, with Maasai employees, wouldn’t those Maasai employees be able to live like the former 630 employees live - in modern houses? For many it would be the same employee houses that are already there, or they would be outside the NCA. Don’t Maasai deserve to live in houses like that? There would be 630 people (plus their family household members) less in the NCA, and no difference in the number of houses.


If Maasai were treated fairly, and education was sufficient, you would see many more Maasai living in modern houses, either outside the NCA or inside (just like NCA employees do now).

In the NCA, the number of people is not what is contributing to the degradation of the property. Degradation is made by people with large ‘footprints’ tourism, wild and domestic animals, and failure to burn unpalatable grasses. But the cattle numbers have stopped growing, due to restrictions. Wildlife numbers are stable, and the “footprint” of the Maasai is small (you will see in the following section) so the value of the “property” is still the same.

The country of Tanzania has sustained relatively high growth, averaging 6–7 percent a year, over the past decade. At the same time, the East African nation of 55 million people already has one of the world’s highest birth rates - around 5 children per woman. These numbers of people are putting pressure on the park property from the outside.


In 2019, the fertility rate for Tanzania was 4.8 births per woman. Rural women have, on average, 3 more births than their urban counterparts (2005).

Tanzanian President John Magufuli has urged women to stop taking birth control pills... because the country needs more people. “I know that those who like to block ovaries will complain about my remarks. Set your ovaries free, let them block theirs.”


Tanzania’s population is projected to grow to 100 million by 2038 and by 378% by 2100.


Biblia imeandika nendeni mkazae mkaijaze dunia, sisi ni nani tusiotakiwa kuzaa?

The Bible says go and be fruitful and fill the earth, who are we not to be fruitful?. …(Survey participant #MSN)


Why are we restricted from giving birth while increase is happening in the other places in Tanzania? …(Survey participant #EOE)


“The government of Tanzania simply does not have the capacity nor can it afford to support 100 million citizens. Resources for supporting such population growth in terms of health, education, housing, jobs, food, water, and security do not match the growth Tanzania is facing. In certain areas, the resources aren't even enough for the current population.”


This growing population will force Tanzania to make a choice: improve the lives of the people by making wildlife preserves smaller, so more crops can be grown, or let more people fall more deeply into poverty. Benefiting from tourism is a strong incentive; this strongly suggests that the choice will be to keep wildlife preserves free of pastoral people. However, if it can be shown that wildlife and Maasai people can live together, the best choice may be to let the tourists get used to it, and forget about following the too demanding qualifications of being a World Heritage Site.

In 2007 the United Nations recommended that “the NCAA determine a so-called "human use carrying capacity" (the maximum number of people who can live in the area without degrading the environment) and moving inhabitants out on a voluntary basis to ease the strain on wildlife”. Following that, a controversial study by the International Livestock Research Institute and the Colorado State University “led the Tanzanian government to propose relocating 40,000 Maasai who currently live in the zone”, to reduce the population to 25,000 people.


Humane Population Solutions


Population would not be such a big problem if the Government and the NCAA had provided sufficient Education, Nutrition and Health care.


In Tanzania, 26% of girls aged 15-19 are pregnant or have already had children.


The difference between a woman with no years of schooling and with 12 years of schooling is almost four to five children per woman.


Unfortunately the NCAA/government has not built nearly enough classrooms. Classrooms and teachers are needed for -- at least -- about 30,000 more children. Many, if not most, of the classrooms were funded by NGOs.


Projects from the Tanzanian Government such as SEDEP or PEDEP, for constructing educational facilities, or LGCDP and PHSDP/MMAM, for health facilities, have been developed in the last decade and will probably have an effect in reducing the demographic pressure on resources. While the population of the NCA area, which is the Ngorongoro Division of the district is currently 100,000 people, the whole district population is 200,000 (The district is divided into three divisions: Ngorongoro; Loliondo; Sale.). This means 50% of the population resides in each part of the district.


Looking at the 2014 primary education enrollment we see the Ngorongoro Division has 40,372 students, and the Loliondo Division has 33,292 and Sale Division has 36,388. This means that only 36.68% of the primary education students are in the Ngorongoro Division, and that about 30,000 more should be enrolled in Ngorongoro if Ngorongoro Division was to keep pace with the schooling rate of the rest of the district. Keeping with current education trends means the NCA will continue to have problems regarding high fertility rates and high pressure on natural resources.


Improvements that will lower fertility rate: education, health care, family planning, birth spacing, nutrition, lowering infant mortality rate, reducing poverty, ending child marriage.


The population growth is not only grown in Ngorongoro or any Maasai Land; it’s all over the country. Why? it’s because poor Education when you look at educated family you can see how they are practicing Family Planning but our community is with no Education - it’s a challenge (Participant M Whatsapp)

Tragedy of the Commons

The Maasai of Ngorongoro are victims of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ theory of the 1960s-1970s.


The tragedy of the commons is a “situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action.” An common example of the Tragedy of the Commons is herders sharing a common parcel of land, which, it is assumed, would lead to overgrazing. The theory began in an 1833 essay, but in 1968, Garret Hardin, an ecologist, applied his version of the theory in an essay called "The Tragedy of the Commons" which applied to human population growth.


Of Garret Hardin, a blog in April 2019 Scientific American magazine said “The man who wrote one of environmentalism’s most-cited essays was a racist, eugenicist, nativist, [white nationalist] and Islamophobe—plus his argument was wrong.” And: “Hardin believed the rich should throw poor people overboard to keep their boat above water.”


Implicit in Hardin’s theory was that we must abandon the “Commons” system in breeding. People must no longer be free to add unlimited numbers of offspring to the total load on the earth's ecosystems.

The over-simplistic theory of the Garret’s Tragedy of the Commons disregards the size of people’s ecological footprints, overlooks the real solution to overpopulation, instead blames people for having too many babies, and prevents them from using resources in the “commons”.

These things are implicit in the Garret’s Tragedy of the Commons theory:

  • Biophysical limits dictate we must stabilize population.

  • The more people there are, the less each person's share will be.

  • Individuals in a commons will seek to maximize their own gains.

  • People who have more babies are leaving less of the Commons for others.

  • The Commons is a system of welfare that insulates individuals from bearing the full costs of over-reproducing.

  • When every individual believes and behaves in this manner, commons are quickly filled, degraded, and ruined.

  • Letting individuals choose as they like will destroy the Commons.

  • The individual "right" to determine the size of one's family must be rescinded.


Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist who won the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her work on the commons, found that locals have often come up with solutions to the commons problem themselves. For example, a commons in the Swiss Alps has been run by a collective of farmers to everyone’s benefit since 1517, in spite of the farmers also having access to their own farmland. The users of a commons want to keep it functioning and so they invent complex social schemes for maintaining them at optimum efficiency.

Ostrom’s work was based on the principle that common resources are well managed by those communities that benefit the most from them and that their regulation should be addressed at the local level, through the farmers, communities, local authorities and NGOs.

Douglas L. Johnson, a geographer who specialized in nomadic pastoralist societies of Africa and the Middle East said nomads had management practices that avoided excess concentrations of people and animals, rotated grazing pressure seasonally between major pasture zones, protected dry season resources that were critical to their survival, and limited access to pastoral resources. He said their ethno-scientific wisdom should be used as a basis for development, so as to protect zones critical to the survival of pastoralists, retain mobility and flexibility in contemporary pastoral systems, and strengthen common property systems developed by nomadic pastoralists. This would halt land degradation in dryland rangelands, he said. The nomads "balanced local stocking ratios against seasonal rangeland conditions in ways that were ecologically sound", reflecting a desire for lower risk rather than higher profit.

By retaining mobility and flexibility in contemporary pastoral systems, and strengthening common property systems developed by nomadic pastoralists, land degradation in dryland rangelands can be halted.

Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons influenced population and conservation policies for many years. And there are still people who embrace his theories today.

In 1994, The Cairo Conference on Population and Development developed a Programme of Action which was adopted by 179 governments. This new program would demonstrate that enhancing individual health and rights will ultimately lower fertility and slow population growth.

A feature of this “Programme of Action” is the recommendation to provide comprehensive reproductive health care, (includes family planning); safe pregnancy and delivery services; abortion where legal; prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (including HIV/AIDS); information and counseling on sexuality; and elimination of harmful practices against women (such as genital cutting and forced marriage).

The Cairo Program of Action said that reproductive health care should enhance individual rights, including the “right to decide freely and responsibly” the number and spacing of one’s children, and the right to a “satisfying and safe sex life.”

Most organizations that feature reduction of population growth, or reproductive health, or women’s rights follow this Programme of Action.

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., legendary civil rights leader in the US, said in 1966:

“Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess,” he wrote. “What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims.”