Four Indigenous communities in southwestern Ethiopia now manage a vast stretch of woody savanna that was once largely off-limits to them. The Tama Community Conservation Area (TCCA), spanning 197,000 hectares in the Lower Omo River Valley, became Ethiopia’s largest community conservation area after the regional government signed it into law — handing stewardship of the land directly to the people who have lived there for centuries.
At a glance
- Community conservation area: The TCCA covers 197,000 hectares (486,000 acres) of corridor land between two national parks, making it the largest community-managed conservation area in Ethiopia.
- Indigenous governance: A community council drawn from the Mursi, Bodi, Northern Kwegu, and Ari peoples will manage the land, with authority over land use, revenue allocation, and conservation rules.
- Wildlife habitat: The area shelters Somali giraffes (Giraffa reticulata), African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana), lions (Panthera leo), De Brazza’s monkeys (Cercopithecus neglectus), Lelwel hartebeests (Alcelaphus buselaphus lelwel), and the endemic black-winged lovebird (Agapornis taranta).
Why this land needed a different approach
For decades, the Lower Omo River Valley has faced intense outside pressure. The construction of the Gilgel Gibe III Dam and the spread of commercial sugar cane plantations — including the Kuraz Sugar Development Project — disrupted traditional livelihoods and forced some communities off land they had farmed and grazed for generations.
Tama had previously been designated a wildlife reserve, but the designation offered little in practice. There was no meaningful enforcement, no community benefit, and no real protection for the ecosystem. Barkede Kulumedere, a 26-year-old member of the Mursi community, has watched the issue unfold since childhood. “I was 12 years old when the advocacy for turning Tama into a community conservation area began,” he said. “The granting of land within the conservation area to investors, establishing settlements, and the negative impacts of the Kuraz Sugar Development Project in neighboring areas were issues that inspired the call for action.”
How Indigenous governance changes the equation
The TCCA’s structure sets it apart from conventional protected areas. Rather than a top-down national park model, the area is run by a community council with real authority. That council will oversee land use decisions, set rules on farming and grazing within approved zones, and determine how revenue is distributed.
An administrative board and office support day-to-day operations, alongside a technical committee that includes representatives from government agencies, universities, and NGOs. The model mirrors elements of a corporate governance structure — but with Indigenous communities at the center rather than outside interests.
Will Hurd, executive director of Cool Ground — a nonprofit that has advocated for Omo Valley Indigenous communities — describes the TCCA as a genuine departure from standard conservation. “The TCCA allows the Indigenous communities to manage and drive benefits from the area, which makes it different from a national park,” he told Mongabay.
Hurd also sees the TCCA as a potential force for peace. The Mursi, Bodi, Northern Kwegu, and Ari communities have long histories of conflict with one another. “Once the TCCA starts to generate revenue, conflicts will directly affect the communities’ revenue stream,” he said. “We hope the TCCA will be like the European Union, where, having tied their economies together, the communities no longer fight.”
Building an economy from the land
The TCCA plans to generate income through ecotourism, regulated hunting, private sector partnerships, and grants from government and NGO sources. A USAID-funded project — the $8.5 million Biodiversity and Community Resilience in the Omo Valley initiative — is already supporting the effort. It will train local people in political advocacy, help 400 households find employment in conservation programs and ecotourism lodges, and establish a benefit-sharing system for the roughly 13,500 residents not directly involved in tourism.
Barkede sees the tourism potential as real. “The financial sustainability and success of the TCCA now rest in the hands of the community itself,” he said.
Agricultural and pastoral activities will still be permitted inside the TCCA — the communities are largely farmers and herders, and the model does not ask them to abandon that. But those activities will be governed by community-approved guidelines rather than outside agencies, with detailed rules on farming practices and human-wildlife conflict prevention still being developed.
A model still taking shape
The TCCA’s governance framework is new, and the detailed directives governing land use, revenue sharing, and wildlife management are still being finalized. It remains to be seen how effectively the council can navigate competing needs across four distinct communities — and whether tourism revenue will materialize at the scale needed to make the model self-sustaining. The history of displacement and economic loss in the Omo Valley also means that trust, between communities and between communities and government, will take time to build.
Still, this is a meaningful shift. For the first time, the people of Tama have legal standing to manage, protect, and benefit from the land they have long called home. That is not a small thing. As research on community-based conservation globally has consistently shown, Indigenous stewardship tends to produce better outcomes for both biodiversity and local wellbeing than models that exclude local people. Ethiopia has now made that bet — on 197,000 hectares of irreplaceable savanna habitat — with the communities themselves holding the cards.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Mongabay
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Indigenous land rights recognized for 160 million hectares ahead of COP30
- Ghana protects vital marine habitat at Cape Three Points
- The Good News for Humankind archive on Ethiopia
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