Nature
Conservation and Poverty Reduction in Zambia
Hans Askov - Sioma
Camp
This article provides a
brief background to some of the most important problems in
relation to conservation of nature and wildlife in Africa.
The two main problems
with major – and potentially devastating - impact on the future
of parks and wildlife in Africa are identified as human
encroachment – often into the parks - and commercial poaching
and subsistence hunting.
The text questions the
continued relevance of expensive anti poaching campaigns as a
long term solution. As a potentially more sustainable and viable
alternative the text proposes to involve the people living
around the protected areas – to a much higher degree than
previously - in management and long term planning with the
triple objectives of achieving both wildlife conservation,
tourism development and improvement of livelihood of local
communities.
Based on previous
experiences, including the CAMPFIRE program in Zimbabwe and the
currently ongoing communal conservancies in Namibia, the main
argument in the text is that programs giving back ownership and
management responsibilities of local resources to the local
people and involving direct and tangible benefits to local
communities will have a much higher success rate with regard to
conservation of wildlife/nature (and poverty reduction) than
traditional program based more on the hard line law enforcement
approach.
Finally the Kavango
Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area Initiative facilitated
by the South African based Peace Parks Foundation is used as a
‘hopeful’ case study for a possible way forward.
To
read the document in full please
click here.
