Why I want to bring lions back to my village | Seif Hamisi

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Imagine every night when you go to sleep, you hear the distant sounds of lions roaring, slowly rocking you to sleep. And then one day those sounds all but vanish. That was the experience of conservationist Saif Hamisi, who grew up in rural Kenya. In his talk, he says that conservation efforts have failed, not because we don't care about the nature around us, but because we've ignored the economics of the people living closest to it. He makes the case that protecting nature pays off with examples of community-led and market-based conservation models across the African continent.

1:00Picture this. You are a five or six-year-old getting ready to go to bed and then suddenly you hear these lion roars. This is how it was in the early 70s in my village in Taveta in Kenya on the southeastern slope of Mount Kilimanjaro. It was scary then as it might be now, but looking back, I see it as something powerful, a beautiful reminder of how close we lived with nature. Sadly, the nighttime roars and the many animals that once roamed our village are gone. What happened in my village has happened across Africa. Our forests, savannas, grasslands and wetlands are disappearing very fast. And the hardest hit places are community lands where people and wildlife lived side by side.

1:58In five decades, five decades, much of the land outside protected areas has been converted into either farms or settlement. It's not surprising that the population of wildlife in Africa has declined by three quarters in the same period. This is not just a sad statistic, but it's a crisis. All of us know that we've spent billions on conservation in Africa, yet wildlife keeps on declining and people are going deeper into poverty and becoming even more vulnerable to climate change. Why? Because we've been applying ecological solutions to fix what are inherently economic problems. The truth is that conservation works only if it creates income to people living closest to nature.

2:54That means we have to make nature not just something to protect, but something to invest in. That's why we have to grow capitalist solutions in conservation. Not the exploitative type, but models where nature drives business, where healthy ecosystems bring real income to families, where nature conservation and economic growth go hand in hand. This is beginning to happen across Africa, from the shrublands of Namakwa land in South Africa, to the winding tributaries of Okavango River in Botswana, the grasslands, savannah woodlands in Kenya, Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar, and Zimbabwe, to the forests of Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Congo.

3:47we are building better natural resource management systems and incentivizing efforts to bring back wildlife populations. I want to give you a couple of examples. In many parts of South Africa, herding livestock isn't just a job, it's a way of life, but many rural farmers there are struggling to get their cattle to the market. Even though they own half of the livestock in the country, only 5%, 5 % of meat come from them. And the grass continue to suffer as cattle graze on the same land all year round. And when their cattle get to the market, if they do, they are often malnourished and can't fetch a fair price.

4:34There's a better way. Let me introduce to you, Ms. Polokhen Ngubo, a great livestock farmer and herder from Eastern Cape, South Africa. With support from Conservation International, she and other farmers have turned back to traditional grazing where livestock moves between pasture and allowing land to rest and recover. Healthy grasslands means healthy livestock to them. And the change here is that those farmers have agreed to protect the land as they access a cattle market that comes directly to them. No middlemen, no long trips. And it works. Ms. Polokeng's cow in recent auction, the cattle fetched the highest bid in the market.

5:23And this is how it works. Because the model is not top down, it's built on what communities already know and practice. Now the grazing pressure has reduced. And with that, the fields are now humming with insects and chattering birds. Wildlife is getting restored one grazing cycle at a time and with cash streaming to farmers' pockets. Now, in Kenya, business solutions are taking off too. In Chulu Hills, farmers have transitioned from slash and burn to one of the earliest forest carbon projects. Here, they are conserving and protecting one million acres of wilderness. And around Masaimara, all of you perhaps have heard about Masaimara, communities living around there have come up together, pulled their land voluntarily and formed these big wildlife conservancies that they own.

6:21They lease these lands to safari operators and ecologists and get incomes while maintaining their land rights and way of life. During COVID pandemic, tourism crashed. Tourism revenues crashed. And what happened? The conservancies took up loans and paid the leases. When the pandemic eased and tourism came back, they repaid those loans quickly, showing that capitalist solutions are actually maturing. This intervention has brought 180 ,000 hectares under community protection, doubling the space for wildlife in that area. And the impact to the families who are in this arrangement is transformational.

7:15On average, household tech, around$230 per month, a little bit less than starting salary of a university graduate in Kenya. But in a place where jobs are scarce and the future is uncertain, nature is not only surviving, but it's paying bills. It's putting kids through schools. It is bringing dignity, security, and choice. These are the kind of 21st century conservation approaches that we must accelerate. We must bring tomorrow's conservation business solutions today, because this is the right vision for Africa. It's the vision that our changing climate demands. It is a vision, ultimately, that ultimately people benefit, not because they gave up their culture, but because they protected it.

8:13Now, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to say this provoking, perhaps an annoying statement. People talk about money as if it's the root of all evil. But in conservation of nature, it's clearly the lack of it. That's a true root of evil that's driving the forces of degradation and destruction that we see today in those landscapes. Time is not on our side. We have to work with dedication, speed, and skill, but the tide is on our side because today communities are stronger, their voice is louder in decision-making, and there's stronger rights and safeguards. Finance and market connectivity today, supported by an expanding technological space, has made it easier today, more than before, to invest, to innovate, and build businesses with and for communities that are living closest to nature.

9:22And policies and incentives by governments are taking a different level. For example, the wildlife profit enhancing policies of South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia to the Kenya carbon and conservancy policies. More revenue is now streaming to families and communities that are closest to nature. It doesn't matter which ecosystem you are talking about because it's only through economic prosperity of people living alongside nature that nature, wildlife, and wilderness will return. Maybe then the wildlife will be restored around my village, and maybe then, maybe my grandchildren will get to hear the lions roar back again.

10:28Thank you.

10:34That was Saif Hamisi speaking at the TED Countdown Summit in Nairobi, Kenya in 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Fazey Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balareso. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

11:11Thanks for listening.