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Abstract:
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"Over ten years of social and ecological monitoring and evaluation, planning effort, policy change, legislative reform, donor support and pilot design have taken place for community based wildlife management (CBWM) projects in Southern Africa. In the key experiences of Botswana and Zimbabwe practical achievements related to revenue generation and local institution and capacity building and policy reform have taken place. These changes have created the political and administrative space in which wildlife utilization has become an important land use strategy for local people living on communal lands. Devolution of management control of wildlife has however been disappointing and the overall institutional direction of the programs in the last ten years has not been 'community based' but towards increasing ad hoc involvement of stakeholders who are not considered to be part of the local community. This involvement is primarily because of their claimed property rights and interests in wildlife and is seen in the region, as necessary pre-conditions for CBWM to evolve.
"Paradoxically, in the attempt to achieve those social conditions under which CBWM can work (legislative and policy reform, capacity building , institutional development, direct local economic benefits and enhanced ecological value of local resources), planners, academics and practitioners have encouraged co-management regimes rather than community based management regimes. Powerful actors in stakeholder based wildlife -management (SBWM) include: International Donors, Politicians, Governments, District Councils, NGOs, Associations, Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Technical Committees, Private Sector Hunting / Tourism Operators, and CBNRM Forums.
"Over the last ten years the assumption that comanagement is a desirable proxy for community based management has become a tacit understanding or working assumption. The findings of this study suggest however, that powerful players may co-opt the process for their own, sometimes perverse purposes and instead of the hoped for 'Political Ecologies of Scale' (Hasler 1995, 2000) occurring, where all levels of society benefit from the promotion of 'win/win' good management practices at local level, 'a political impasse of scale' may emerge. The paper describes a recent impasse period in Botswana, during which a confusion of jurisdictions arose. From a purely technical point of view, there is clearly a need to involve Governments and Donor agencies in CBWM and SBWM, because policy and legislative change and the devolution of benefits and management will not take place without their support. A fine balance of power therefore needs to be achieved to foster both CBWM and SBWM. This fine balance of power between the state and local communities, private sector and NGOs is elusive and paradoxical and does not yet exist for CBWM to flourish. The performance of the Ngamiland (Okavango Area) (CBNRM) district forum is evaluated as a possible institutional model for the region."
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