African countries are facing an unprecedented spike in
poaching and illegal wildlife trade which is threatening to decimate the
continent’s rich wildlife resource base. These include, increase in human
wildlife conflicts, bush meat trade, snaring of wildlife, disappearance of
wildlife dispersal areas and corridors, inadequate community benefits and the
need to represent a positive image for the organization.
Wildlife crimes – like rhino
poaching, overfishing or the harvesting of cycads – were once considered a
“green” matter. But this has changed. Such crimes have moved higher up on
global security and policy agendas. Rhino poaching has particularly captured
public attention. A plethora of protective and regulatory national and
international measures aimed at disrupting the consumer markets and criminal
networks that allow the trade to flourish have failed.
Little benefit to communities
This is not a policy problem. The
important role of local people in protecting and managing natural resources has
started to become a policy prerogative in many southern African
countries. Implementation and accountability are the issues.
The reality is that wildlife
conservation continues to benefit economic and political elites. Local and
indigenous communities remain mostly excluded from real benefits, and
conservation often comes at a huge cost to them. They lose their land, access
to natural resources and cultural sites. They have limited agency and ownership
of areas and management. Often the only benefits accruing to communities from
wildlife and conservation derive from the poaching profits that trickle down
to grassroots level.
Instead of recognizing local
people as important change agents in wildlife conservation, conservators are
calling for more boots on the ground, helicopter gunships and new
technologies. Securocrats are leading the war on rhino poaching. Money is spent
on security officials and private investigators. Expensive technologies are
brought in to deter poachers.
The securitisation of
anti-poaching measures has led to increasing anger among communities and
negative sentiments against protected areas and conservation management
authorities. This is because some poachers return from such areas in body bags,
if at all, or end up in correctional centres. In this environment, locals
living around parks and reserves see wild animals as being considered more
valuable than their own lives.
Structural inequality
South Africa – where I’ve
conducted some of my research – is home to some of the world’s
largest and most diverse populations of endangered plants, animals and mineral
resources. It is also one of the world’s most economically and structurally
unequal societies.
This structural inequality is
clear in who benefits from conservation in general, protected areas and profits
associated with the sustainable use of natural resources. Communities have lost
land, hunting rights, access to grazing and cultural sites to make space for
wild animals, Disney-style safari parks and private reserves.
The state, hunters, farmers,
tourist operators and other economic elites have benefited from conservation.
Local communities have enjoyed few benefits apart from menial jobs as trackers,
rangers and cooks and occasional donations of game or elephant meat. The
restitution of property, cultural and hunting rights has either not been
tackled at all or only partially attempted in a top-down fashion with no input
from the affected communities.
So it is perhaps not surprising
that some people who struggle to make a living might be tempted into poaching.
Rhino horn’s street value is greater than that of gold and platinum. Rural
residents can make more from poaching and selling a single rhino horn than they
usually would in an entire year. This makes communities vulnerable to organized
crime networks which recruit poachers from areas around large reserves.
These networks are the real
criminals, along with corrupt government officials and members of the wildlife
and conservation industries who facilitate the flow of illicit wildlife and
plant contraband.
Community empowerment is KEY
Wildlife is mostly viewed as a source of suffering for many
Africans. There is need to look at wildlife conservation and management from a
different perspective in order to understand the value of this important
tourism product. The role of wildlife in the economic development of the
country needs to be communicated to the people that bear the brunt of hosting
wildlife on their land.
This is why I suggest that community-based
conservation has to be comprehensive, this approach stems from the recognition
that protected areas in Africa as a developing country will survive poaching so
far as they address community human concerns.
Some scholars have also started
to look at the root causes of environmental and wildlife crimes by considering
broader economic, political and systemic factors. Their assessment is that
broad based community empowerment is key. This will not only address structural
inequality and poverty, but can alleviate wildlife crime and other types of
crime. This is borne out by Namibia’s experience: there, former poachers
have become wildlife guardians.
Although it can be challenging for community-based natural resource
management to achieve both conservation and human development goals, the
concept appears to be the best opportunity for Africans to retain its place as
one of the most famous and profitable wildlife tourism destinations while also
sustainably developing local communities.
This strategy lies at the heart of community-based natural
resource management. The most important part of the approach is that user
rights are transferred from central government to local communities. The model
is being increasingly promoted as a conservation tool and has become the
dominant approach in natural resource conservation worldwide.
Community-based natural resource management programs must aims
at promoting conservation while improving people’s standards of living. Although
most community-based natural resource management programs have only limited
success at achieving both conservation and human development goals, the concept
appears to be the best opportunity for Africans to retain its place as one of
the most famous and profitable wildlife tourism destinations while also
sustainably developing other economic sectors and alleviating rural poverty
But law enforcement officials and
policymakers have been focusing their efforts on reining in poachers rather
than buyers and intermediaries. These intermediaries organize and coordinate
the transfer of wildlife contraband and other natural resources from the bush
to the market. They are usually well connected and have access to transnational
trade networks.
Is the fight against organized
environmental crime more important than the dismantling of organized structural
inequality and poverty? Or are the responses to these societal ills
interlinked? Local communities may, for example, become protectors of wildlife
and conservation areas if they were granted agency, ownership and benefits.
Although not perfect, the example
of communal conservancies in Namibia provides fascinating insights into the
process of incentivizing communities. One thing is clear: we need to create
happy sustainable communities that benefit from and live in harmony with
ecosystems.
Some progress has been made with
certain aspects of a whole-of-society approach to rhino poaching in South Africa.
However, much work remains in order to increase levels of shared understanding
and to create futures for wildlife as well as sustainable livelihoods for
communities. This will take many years to build. Where there are examples of
community interventions, a concept for a local-level, whole-of-society
intervention still requires formulation.
In proposing the whole-of-society model, focused on
implementing capabilities, this article has made five core points:
•
There is a need to include a range of
stakeholders and to engage with their different ways of seeing and
understanding wildlife crime and related aspects. This should include knowledge
of relevant myths and metaphors. Inclusiveness sets interventions up to succeed
rather than fail.
•
Developing alternative futures is important for
better long-term outcomes, given the complexity of wildlife crime. Futures move
interventions away from reactive approaches alone, instead exploring and
planning for different outcomes.
•
Interventions should be developed outside of organizational
mandates. Mandates create lenses through which role players see the world in
specific ways. Siloed approaches lead to undesirable consequences and
insufficient resources to implement interventions. Intervention formulation
should include the identification of tasks and capabilities, and their
allocation to stakeholders.
•
Capability gaps must be identified and closed.
Without the required capabilities, the new strategy will not get off the
ground. Capabilities are determined from the tasks required for an
intervention. Governance should dynamically problem solve and close the
capability gaps. Foresight is important for
capability building, because it takes time.
•
Transformation of organizational narratives is
important if interventions are to succeed.
These five elements should be at the heart of a
whole-of-society approach to wildlife crime. Lessons learned in this regard can
be applied to other complex governance problems.
Community-based natural resource management has become one of the
dominant paradigms of natural resource conservation worldwide, this type of
strategy transfers the resource management and user rights from central
government agencies to local communities.
Furthermore, i support the idea that government programmes and
development projects should not be imposed on local communities, but should be
informed by programme beneficiaries through research in order to capture their
needs and wants.
Finally, People and wildlife
still face challenges Africa, even on community conservancies. While the
poaching rate has declined, elephants are still being poached. People still
have to deal with drought and wildlife conflict. But research like this indicates
that community conservationists offer a hopeful future. It is also true that
poachers and those who are generally good in extracting resources from the
environment will oppose change thus strategies and linkages with key wildlife
stakeholders must be identified to deal with these challenges. #CommunityBasedConservation
#WildlifeProtection #Ecosystems #Wildlife
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