Impacts of Transboundary Protected Areas on Local Communities in Three Southern African Initiatives

Abstract

“One of the most effective ways to obtain broad support for biological linkages is to integrate the planning and management with other programmes that deliver benefits in sustainable land management” (Bennett 2003). The challenge to achieve both development and conservation goals in landscape and transboundary settings in southern Africa frequently requires the support of local communities and that support is usually only secured by addressing their livelihood development goals. Livelihood goals do not just include income improvement but also the recognition of local identity, effective participation and secure rights to land and natural resources. Recent transboundary protected area (TBPA) initiatives in southern Africa have been dynamic but also characterized by confusion and conflict over their objectives and precise definition. Whilst politicians and conservationists may see ‘parks’ as ecological and economic anchors in a connected landscape communities may perceive the threat of fences and alienation from their land and natural heritage. A policy and programmatic struggle has ensued between the conservation and social justice concerns as well as over top-down versus bottom-up approaches, with the former seeming to threaten a return to fortress style conservation and the latter advocating for consolidating recent gains made in community empowerment approaches. The politically driven top-down model is increasingly receiving criticism from a rural development perspective and if this perception grows there is the risk that donor agencies may withdraw their support from TBPAs. However, the idea of transboundary collaboration based on clear objectives and a continuum of end states rather than a fixed end of transboundary parks seems valid and worthy of continued exploration. The paper provides a historical and analytical background to this situation and proceeds to provide three brief case studies. The first case of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park is one where the approach has been initiated at a high political level and been driven from the top primarily by the economic, political and conservation objectives. The next two, from the Zambezi