The World Bank has withdrawn a $150 million tourism development project in Tanzania’s Ruaha National Park following reports of human rights abuses by park authorities.
The decision marks a significant setback for the initiative, which aimed to boost tourism and conservation efforts in one of Tanzania’s largest national parks.
According to msn.com, under the Tanzanian government’s plans to expand Ruaha, 21,000 local people could be displaced.
The Oakland Institute, a U.S.-based advocacy group, called the decision to cancel the project a “landmark victory” for people living in and near Ruaha.
The project, called Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (REGROW), was designed to help generate tourism revenues at Ruaha and other parks in Tanzania’s south, which receive fewer visitors than the better-known Serengeti and Ngorongoro parks in the north. In 2008, the Tanzanian government issued an edict that doubled Ruaha’s size, confirming the decision again in 2022. Following through on the plan could require the eviction of tens of thousands of villagers.
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The Oakland Institute and local people allege that rangers from TANAPA, the national parks agency, waged a campaign of intimidation against pastoralists and farmers inside the expansion zone, using tactics such as extrajudicial killings, confiscation of cattle, and disappearances.
In 2023, the Oakland Institute helped two of the area’s residents file a complaint against REGROW with the World Bank’s Inspection Panel, in which they accused the bank of failing to follow its internal safeguard policies.
The bank sent a delegation to investigate the claims raised in the complaint and suspended funding to REGROW in April 2024. In November 2024, the project was officially closed at the request of the Tanzanian government, a spokesperson told Mongabay.
“In response to the investigation by our independent complaints mechanism, we are preparing a management response with an action plan to ensure full compliance with our policies,” they said.
Lioness in Ruaha National Park. Image by Ulf Rydin via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
In a statement on its website, the Oakland Institute called on the Tanzanian government to abandon its plans to expand Ruaha, and to compensate villagers for seized cattle and fines they paid to TANAPA.
“The government and the [World] Bank must be held accountable for the harms caused by their disregard for basic human rights for the sole purpose of increasing tourism revenue,” wrote Anuradha Mittal, the group’s executive director.
John Corse, managing director of Serengeti Balloon Safaris and a member of the Tanzania Association of Tours Operators, called the decision “rather sad.”
“To throw this away because of perceived or actual bad management is a destructive way of approaching the issue, because the requirement to conserve these places remains there,” he told Mongabay by phone.
In the Oakland Institute’s announcement, “impacted villagers” are quoted denouncing the plan to expand Ruaha.
“Our lives are on hold as the threat of eviction looms over us every single day. Our livelihoods have been undermined for years, our children are out of school, our farms sit fallow and our cattle are still being forcibly seized. We cannot continue living like this,” they wrote.
