Conservation and the Commodification of Wildlife in the Anthropocene: A Southern African History

Abstract

ABSTRACT The fossil-fuelled Anthropocene, with its attendant destruction of wildlife, originated with global capitalism. Early ‘fortress’ conservation efforts focussed on delineating protected areas, but in the latter part of the twentieth century, wildlife expanded on private and communal lands in Southern Africa through schemes allowing people to benefit directly from wildlife. Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) provided people with economic incentives to coexist with wildlife, showing that in the capitalist Anthropocene, the commodification of wildlife could be a tool for its conservation. This paper reviews the history of CBNRM in Southern Africa, paying particular attention to Namibia where hunting is an important source of revenue. It concludes with a discussion of international efforts to decommodify wildlife through limiting trade and restricting trophy hunting. The shooting of ‘Cecil the Lion’ in Zimbabwe by an American trophy hunter boosted these efforts – but in the process threatened to undermine commodified forms of wildlife conservation, including CBNRM, across Southern Africa. It is an irony of history that capitalist commodification created the environmental crisis yet strategies of decommodification could prompt land-use changes which, in the absence of substantial new support to promote coexistence with wildlife, reduce rather than support wildlife and biodiversity.