Petrostate Seizure of the Serengeti

One of the world’s most iconic wildlife tourism destinations, Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and its adjacent conservation areas, are facing increasingly brutal human rights violations against the indigenous Maasai population––all under the name of ‘conservation.’

Western conservation organisations and donors have extended millions of dollars in funding to Tanzania. The East African nation has one of the biggest land-based carbon credit projects in the region; Sheikh Ahmed al-Maktoum, Dubai royalty, has struck a deal selling carbon credits from forests across 8% of Tanzania. These efforts were done without the consent of local populations who have already been displaced from their ancestral lands (the Maasai were banned from the Serengeti in 1959 when it became a national park) and have taken a huge toll on local communities.

Conservation organisations and donors, including the Nature Conservancy, have funnelled millions of dollars in funding to Tanzania. Under President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s outward-looking foreign policy, Tanzania has become a magnet for foreign-driven carbon credit projects and luxury tourism areas, constituting 8% of the nation’s landmass.

Kang-Chun Cheng

KC 鄭康君 (b. 1995) is a Taiwanese-American photojournalist and has been based in Nairobi, Kenya for the past five years, covering how environmental change impacts one's sense of belonging. Her work began in the Arctic and extends globally, including unfriendly places like eastern Ukraine, northern Mozambique, and South Sudan. She's the editor-at-large at The Xylom, the only AAPI science newsroom in the U.S.

With a background in ecology and art, KC initially picked up a camera to document the behind-the-scenes aspects of field research before turning her attention to finding ways to humanise seemingly far-flung places for audiences curious about the world and their place in it.

In her work, KC examines themes of belonging and nostalgia in a world of unending flux. As overwhelming as manmade and natural catastrophes may seem, it’s the tenderness of human connections that makes survival possible.

KC has herded reindeer in Finnmark, roasted lamb with pastoralists in the mountains of Xinjiang, hitchhiked through Tunisia, photographed from the back of a motorbike in the Karoo Desert, investigated how pesticides are poisoning Sri Lankan water supplies, spoken to former insurgents in Cabo Delgado, walked the Camino de Santiago, and free-dived off the south Sinai peninsula. She loves big landscapes and can be found climbing rocks whenever possible.