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Why I Want to Bring Lions Back to My Village | Seif Hamisi | TED
Why I Want to Bring Lions Back to My Village | Seif Hamisi | TED
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0:07
Picture this.
0:09
You are a 5- or 6-year-old getting ready to go to bed,
0:13
and then suddenly, you hear these lion roars.
0:17
This is how it was in the early '70s
0:19
in my village in Taveta in Kenya,
0:21
on the southeastern slope of Mount Kilimanjaro.
0:24
It was scary then, as it might be now,
0:27
but looking back,
0:29
I see it as something powerful,
0:31
a beautiful reminder of how close we lived with nature.
0:36
Sadly, the nighttime roars
0:39
and the many animals that once roamed our village
0:44
are gone.
0:46
What happened in my village has happened across Africa.
0:51
Our forests, savannahs,
0:53
grasslands and wetlands are disappearing very fast
0:57
and the hardest-hit places are community lands
1:01
where people and wildlife lived side-by-side.
1:05
In five decades, five decades,
1:08
much of the land outside protected areas
1:11
has been converted into either farms or settlements.
1:15
It's not surprising that the population of wildlife in Africa
1:19
has declined by three quarters in the same period.
1:23
This is not just a sad statistic,
1:25
but a crisis.
1:27
All of us know that we've spent billions on conservation in Africa,
1:33
yet wildlife keeps on declining,
1:36
and people are going deeper into poverty
1:40
and becoming even more vulnerable to climate change.
1:44
Why?
1:46
Because we've been applying ecological solutions
1:50
to fix what are inherently economic problems.
1:54
The truth is that conservation works only if it creates income
1:59
to people living closest to nature.
2:01
That means we have to make nature not just something to protect,
2:07
but something to invest in.
2:09
That's why we have to grow capitalist solutions in conservation.
2:15
Not the exploitative type,
2:17
but models where nature drives business,
2:22
where healthy ecosystems bring real income to families,
2:26
where nature conservation and economic growth
2:29
go hand in hand.
2:32
This is beginning to happen across Africa,
2:35
from the shrublands of Namaqualand in South Africa
2:38
to the winding tributaries of Okavango River in Botswana,
2:42
the grasslands,
2:44
savannah woodlands in Kenya,
2:46
Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar and Zimbabwe
2:50
to the forests of Ivory Coast, Liberia and Congo,
2:55
we are building better natural resource management systems
3:00
and incentivizing efforts to bring back wildlife populations.
3:04
I want to give you a couple of examples.
3:07
In many parts of South Africa,
3:09
herding livestock isn't just a job, it's a way of life.
3:13
But many rural farmers there
3:16
are struggling to get their cattle to the market.
3:19
Even though they own half of the livestock in the country,
3:23
only five percent of meat comes from them,
3:26
and the grass continues to suffer as cattle graze
3:30
on the same land all year round.
3:34
And when their cattle gets to the market, if they do,
3:37
they are often malnourished and can't fetch a fair price.
3:43
There's a better way.
3:44
Let me introduce to you Miss Mpolokeng Ngubo,
3:48
a great livestock farmer and herder from Eastern Cape, South Africa.
3:53
With support from Conservation International,
3:56
she and other farmers have turned back to traditional grazing,
4:01
where livestock moves between pasture
4:04
and allowing land to rest and recover.
4:07
Healthy grasslands means healthy livestock to them,
4:10
and the change here is that those farmers have agreed to protect the land
4:16
as they access a cattle market that comes directly to them.
4:20
No middlemen, no long trips.
4:24
And it works.
4:25
Miss Mpolokeng’s cow, in recent auction,
4:28
the cattle fetched the highest bid in the market.
4:31
Her smile tells it all.
4:33
And this is how it works.
4:35
Because the model is not top-down.
4:39
It's built on what communities already know and practice.
4:42
Now the grazing pressure has reduced,
4:45
and with that, the fields are now humming with insects and chattering buds,
4:50
wildlife is getting restored,
4:52
one grazing cycle at a time.
4:56
And with cash streaming to farmers' pockets.
5:00
Now in Kenya, business solutions are taking off, too.
5:03
In Tulu Hills, farmers have transitioned from slash and burn
5:08
to one of the earliest forest carbon projects.
5:12
Here they are conserving and protecting one million acres of wilderness.
5:17
And around Maasai Mara,
5:19
all of you perhaps have heard about Maasai Mara,
5:22
communities living around there have come up together,
5:25
pulled their land voluntarily
5:27
and formed this big wildlife conservancies that they own.
5:31
They leased these lands to safari operators and ecologists
5:36
and get incomes
5:38
while maintaining their land rights and way of life.
5:42
During the COVID pandemic,
5:44
tourism revenues crashed.
5:47
And what happened?
5:48
The conservancies took up loans
5:51
and paid the leases.
5:54
When the pandemic eased and tourism came back,
5:59
they repaid those loans quickly,
6:01
showing that capitalist solutions are actually maturing.
6:06
This intervention has brought 180,000 hectares under community protection,
6:13
doubling the space for wildlife in that area.
6:17
And the impact to the families
6:21
who are in this arrangement is transformational.
6:26
On average,
6:28
a household takes around 230 dollars per month.
6:33
A little bit less than starting salary of a university graduate in Kenya,
6:37
but in a place where jobs are scarce and the future is uncertain,
6:44
nature is not only surviving, but it's paying bills,
6:47
it's putting kids through schools,
6:49
it is bringing dignity, security and choice.
6:53
These are the kind of 21-century conservation approaches
6:57
that we must accelerate.
7:00
We must bring tomorrow's conservation business solutions today
7:05
because this is the right vision for Africa.
7:09
It's the vision that our changing climate demands.
7:13
It is a vision, ultimately, that ultimately people benefit.
7:17
Not because they gave up their culture, but because they protected it.
7:24
Now ladies and gentlemen, allow me to say this provoking,
7:29
perhaps an annoying statement.
7:33
People talk about money as if it's the root of all evil.
7:38
But in conservation of nature,
7:40
it's clearly the lack of it
7:44
that’s a true root of evil,
7:47
that's driving the forces of degradation
7:50
and destruction that we see today in those landscapes.
7:54
Time is not on our side.
7:56
We have to work with dedication, speed and scale.
7:59
But the tide is on our side,
8:01
because today, communities are stronger,
8:04
their voice is louder in decision making,
8:07
and the stronger rights and safeguards.
8:12
Finance and market connectivity today,
8:15
supported by an expanding technological space,
8:18
has made it easier today,
8:22
more than before, to invest,
8:24
to innovate and build businesses
8:28
with and for communities that are living closest to nature.
8:32
And policies and incentives by governments
8:37
are taking a different level.
8:42
For example, the wildlife profit- enhancing policies of South Africa,
8:49
Zimbabwe and Namibia
8:50
to the Kenya carbon and conservancy policies,
8:53
more revenue is now streaming to families
8:57
and communities that are closest to nature.
9:01
Doesn't matter which ecosystem you are talking about.
9:06
Because it's only through economic prosperity
9:11
of people living alongside nature
9:15
that nature, wildlife and wilderness will return.
9:22
Maybe then the wildlife will be restored around my village,
9:27
and maybe then, maybe,
9:30
my grandchildren will get to hear the lions roar back again.
9:35
(Lion roars)
9:39
(Applause)
