By In a rare move, a controversial World Bank-funded conservation project in Tanzania worth $150-million has been cancelled amid widespread allegations of forced evictions, rapes and extrajudicial killings linked to the project.
The World Bank approved the “resilient natural resource management for tourism and growth” project, also known as REGROW, in 2017. Its purpose was to develop “priority protected areas” to increase tourism to the East African country, according to a World Bank fact sheet.
Critics of the project, including the Oakland Institute, a California-based thinktank, claimed that it came “at an enormous cost to local indigenous communities” and that the bank was enabling violence and dispossession.
A 2023 report by the institute found that the Tanzanian state was targeting communities around a project area – the Ruaha National Park – with “threats of evictions, extrajudicial killings, and cattle seizures” in an effort to drive them off their land.
According to the report, more than 21,000 people faced eviction.
The report alleged there were several cases of disappearances and Ruaha park rangers reportedly killed a fisherman on April 23, 2021. The same day rangers allegedly also killed two young herders close to the park, one of whom was 14 years old, the report said. Police claimed the three were killed by wild animals. The Oakland Institute cited a separate report by a Tanzanian community organization that documented six additional killings allegedly committed by park rangers since 2017.
Park rangers have also been implicated in sexual violence. The Oakland Institute reported that its researchers interviewed “several women who reported rapes by [park] rangers”.
Attacks on local communities by the rangers provoked an outcry in Tanzania’s parliament, with some lawmakers calling for investigations and a parliamentary enquiry.
In its report, the Oakland Institute accused the World Bank of having “turned a blind eye to the horrific abuses unleashed on the communities – by choosing not to enforce its own safeguards”.
The World Bank investigated the allegations and is preparing a response to the findings. The international lender launched the probe in 2023 amid pressure from activists and affected community members who submitted a formal complaint to the bank.
In April 2024, the bank froze funding for the project. A spokesperson told conservation news website Mongabay at the time that the bank was “deeply concerned about the allegations of abuse and injustice related to the [REGROW project]”.
A group of six United Nations special rapporteurs and three working groups added their voice to growing criticism of the Regrow project in October, urging “all necessary interim measures be taken to prevent any irreparable harm to the life and personal integrity” of the affected individuals and communities.
In November, months after it froze funding, the World Bank published a “Restructuring Paper” effectively announcing the termination of the project, which was due to be completed in February 2025.
Most of the money – nearly $124 million of the total funds allocated at the start of the project – had already been disbursed, according to the World Bank paper.
However, Oakland Institute executive director Anuradha Mittal told ICIJ that the cancellation ensures that there won’t be further funding after the project’s end date, “contrary to what often happens with World Bank projects that may be followed by financing for [additional] phases”.
The cancellation does not address the alleged harm already caused to affected communities. In a statement earlier this month, the Oakland Institute outlined the demands of those communities, which included “comprehensive compensation for damages incurred by livelihood restrictions and violence inflicted”.
The bank noted in November that it was “considering possible support to the communities in and around [Ruaha] by addressing potential livelihood challenges that may arise from restrictions of access to the park”.
Allegations of forced evictions are commonplace in Tanzania, where there is longstanding friction between indigenous pastoralists and the state. The government openly disapproves of their traditional itinerant ways of life in favor of permanent settlement and “modern” livestock keeping.
It is also not the first time that a World Bank project in Tanzania has come under criticism for neglecting the rights of indigenous communities. In 2016, ICIJ reported on the bank’s decision to grant a massive agribusiness project an exemption from its policies aimed at safeguarding the rights of indigenous communities who faced eviction.
The waiver prompted a rebuke from the U.S., which said that the bank’s failure to conduct proper public consultations on the project “undermines a key principle of sustainable project design and planning”.
