Communal Areas Management Programme For Indigenous Resources Research Articles

Community-based natural resource management and social exclusion in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), which is aimed at ensuring meaningful participation of rural communities in decision-making and promoting sustainable utilisation of natural resources, has been criticised for excluding local communities from decision-making. Using the concept of social exclusion and a qualitative approach, the study's main objective was to analyse the exclusion faced by the minority Doma ethnic group in the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) programme in northern Zimbabwe. Findings showed that the Doma were excluded from decision-making related to wildlife management by powerful stakeholders, who included political elites, local authority officials, government conservation authorities, and the safari operator. The crux of this exclusion revolved around the large differences between their livelihood practices and those of the other stakeholders, their low-status position and peripheral location. The Doma also participated in their exclusion as they decided to take an indifferent approach to CAMPFIRE.

Local perceptions on poverty and conservation in a community-based natural resource program area: a case study of Beitbridge district, southern Zimbabwe

This study was conducted in a local community, namely, Ward 1 of Beitbridge district, southern Zimbabwe, with the following objectives: (i) to assess local perceptions on poverty in a Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) environment, (ii) to assess whether CAMPFIRE initiatives have enhanced livelihoods, and (iii) to analyze the involvement of local people in CAMPFIRE programs. A mixed-methods approach was used to collect data between September and October 2022, with 80 randomly selected participants being interviewed (structured interviews), 110 randomly selected discussants participating in focus group discussions held in all the five villages of Ward 1, and 10 purposively sampled key informants responded to semi-structured interviews. Data were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. The results showed that some villages had more benefits than others from the conservation programs and the contributions to poverty alleviation varied within the surveyed local communities. Most respondents in Ward 1 stated that they rely on subsistence farming as the major source of livelihood. Furthermore, most respondents highlighted that they were not participating in the natural resource management and allocation decision-making processes. However, based on this study, we conclude that respondents still view CAMPFIRE as one of the key solutions to poverty alleviation and that active local community participation in decision-making processes is lacking. The study recommend for active and full participation of local people in the decision-making processes, including previously marginalized groups, in the CAMPFIRE initiatives.

Evaluating the Relevance of the CAMPFIRE Principles to Wildlife Utilization in Northern Zimbabwe

Problems of having poor, rural communities value, manage, and benefit from local natural resources has been an ongoing concern in the development literature. The Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) is one attempt to deal with such problems. Our study evaluates the extent to which CAMPFIRE conforms to principles contained in the original CAMPFIRE Guidelines of 1991. These early principles were meant to guide the devolution of proprietorship over wildlife to Rural District Councils (RDCs) to manage wildlife with and on behalf of local communities. In so doing, these early principles are linked to the contemporary governance theory. Our evaluation is based on data collected in Chapoto Ward, Mbire District, in northern Zimbabwe, from January to March 2017 using in-depth interviews with heads of households, key informant interviews and a focus group discussion. These were complemented by document analysis. Our evaluation shows that the principles have not been fully followed because CAMPFIRE was implemented as a strategic compromise between communities and RDCs since devolved community rights were not legally supported at the time. We suggest that policy and legislation changes be made to redesign community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) into a more robust model that enhances the full devolution of rights over wildlife and benefits to promote democratic governance and ensure bottom-up accountability.

Innovative community ecotourism coping and recovery strategies to COVID-19 pandemic shocks: The case of Mahenye

ABSTRACT The sustainability of community ecotourism under the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) in Zimbabwe is under stress due to shocks including the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The pandemic has potential to impede the efforts the community ecotourism sector has been making towards the attainment of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The specific objectives of the research were to: (i) document the shocks emanating from the COVID-19 pandemic on the Mahenye community ecotourism project and (ii) suggest possible coping and recovery strategies to the COVID-19 pandemic shocks at the Mahenye community ecotourism project. Qualitative methods were adopted encompassing data mining, expert opinion and key informant interviews. The overall impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Mahenye ecotourism elements have been negative. The present research results could enable ecotourism to be sustainable in the face of shocks emanating from infectious pandemics like COVID-19 and future others.

Voices from the village on trophy hunting in Hwange district, Zimbabwe

There is a general scarcity of information on local community perspectives regarding trophy hunting in Zimbabwe. This information chasm is undesirable to the country, scientists and trophy hunting market participants given that major Western customer markets require evidence of benefits by local communities in order to support trophy hunting. This study contributes to closing the knowledge gap by discussing the community perspectives of the dominant trophy hunting market for ecosystem services (the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) programme) in Zimbabwe. In bringing this viewpoint to light, the study uses perspectives of communities in Hwange district, Matabeleland north with a particular focus on attributes and attitudes towards CAMPFIRE. A qualitative research design obtained in depth information on current CAMPFIRE issues. Data was collected through focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Results show that the contribution of CAMPFIRE to local economic development has been hampered by market challenges and the exclusion of the local communities who are the producer constituency.

Insights on fostering the emergence of robust conservation actions from Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE program

One strategy to address threats to biodiversity in the face of ongoing budget constraints is to create an enabling environment that facilitates individuals, communities and other groups to self-organise to achieve conservation outcomes. Emergence (new activities and initiatives), and robustness (durability of these activities and initiatives over time), two related concepts from the common pool resources literature, provide guidance on how to support and enable such self-organised action for conservation. To date emergence has received little attention in the literature. Our exploratory synthesis of the conditions for emergence from the literature highlighted four themes: for conservation to emerge, actors need to 1) recognise the need for change, 2) expect positive outcomes, 3) be able to experiment to achieve collective learning, and 4) have legitimate local scale governance authority. Insights from the literature on emergence and robustness suggest that an appropriate balance should be maintained between external guidance of conservation and enabling local actors to find solutions appropriate to their contexts. We illustrate the conditions for emergence, and its interaction with robustness, through discussing the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) in Zimbabwe and reflect on efforts at strengthening local autonomy and management around the world. We suggest that the delicate balance between external guidance of actions, and supporting local actors to develop their own solutions, should be managed adaptively over time to support the emergence of robust conservation actions.

Local People’s Knowledge and Perceptions of Wildlife Conservation in Southeastern Zimbabwe

This study aimed at examining local people’s knowledge and perceptions of wildlife conservation in southeastern Zimbabwe. Data were collected between October and November in 2012 using a purposive sampling approach of households (n = 114) in communities adjacent to Gonarezhou National Park. Our results show that local people were aware of the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) and Gonarezhou, and their associated purposes. However, our results suggest that local people had inadequate knowledge about the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA) and its purpose. Moreover, mixed perceptions about the impact of the GLTFCA on local livelihoods and conservation in the study area were recorded. Finally, the results indicated that improving park-community relationships, education and awareness programmes on natural resources conservation could assist in raising the status of conservation in Gonarezhou and GLTFCA.

‘Are You Serious to Ask Me about Who Owns Wildlife?’ Politics of Autonomy over Wildlife Resources in the Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe

This article describes how a participatory action research project, the Zambezi Valley Advocacy Project, assisted the process of improving the autonomy of communities over wildlife management issues in the Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe. The project was based on the assumption that negligible conservation and development benefits realised from wildlife resources were both a policy and a management problem of the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE). Using a participatory analysis, we found that CAMPFIRE is a resilient programme despite the increase in poaching, unscrupulous hunting safari operators, continued destruction of crops by wildlife, reduced flow of financial benefits to producer communities, and economic decline which Zimbabwe has experienced since around the year 2000. This study demonstrates the value of participatory research, so much so that by the end of the project, stakeholders had already started implementing the findings to the hunting contract system, anti-poaching activities, and direct payment system. This represented a significant start to improving community autonomy over wildlife management. It also provided significant opportunities for both researchers and participants to collaborate and use their collective power to create political will for opening up greater decision-making, ownership wildlife resources, and benefit-sharing options for local communities. The lessons from this study are likely to be applicable to other community-based natural resource management contexts.

CAMPFIRE and Human-Wildlife Conflicts in Local Communities Bordering Northern Gonarezhou National Park, Zimbabwe

Gandiwa, E., I. M. A. Heitkönig, A. M. Lokhorst, H. H. T. Prins, and C. Leeuwis. 2013. CAMPFIRE and human-wildlife conflicts in local communities bordering northern Gonarezhou National Park, Zimbabwe. Ecology and Society 18(4): 7. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-05817-180407

A Bio-Economic Model of Community Incentives for Wildlife Management Under CAMPFIRE

This paper formulates a bio-economic model to analyze community incentives for wildlife management under benefit-sharing programs like the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) in Zimbabwe. Three agents influence the wildlife stock: a parks agency determines hunting quotas, outside poachers hunt illegally, and a local community may choose to protect wildlife by discouraging poaching. Wildlife generates revenues from hunting licenses and tourism; it also intrudes on local agriculture. We consider two benefit-sharing regimes: shares of wildlife tourism rents and shares of hunting licenses. Resource sharing does not necessarily improve community welfare or incentives for wildlife conservation. Results depend on the exact design of the benefit shares, the size of the benefits compared with agricultural losses, and the way in which the parks agency manages hunting quotas.

Community based natural resource management in Zimbabwe: the experience of CAMPFIRE

Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) is a long-term programmatic approach to rural development that uses wildlife and other natural resources as a mechanism for promoting devolved rural institutions and improved governance and livelihoods. The cornerstone of CAMPFIRE is the right to manage, use, dispose of, and benefit from these resources. Between 1989 and 2006, CAMPFIRE income, mostly from high valued safari hunting, totalled nearly USD$ 30 million, of which 52% was allocated to sub-district wards and villages for community projects and household benefits. Whilst a number of assumptions underlying the success of CAMPFIRE as an innovative model for CBNRM have yet to be met, CAMPFIRE confirms the concept that devolving responsibility and accountability for natural resource management can be highly effective for the collective and participatory management of such resources. Elephant numbers in CAMPFIRE areas have increased and buffalo numbers are either stable or decreased slightly during the life of the programme. However, offtake quotas for these two species have increased with a concomitant decline in trophy quality. Although the amount of wildlife habitat diminished after 1980, following the commencement of CAMPFIRE the rate of habitat loss slowed down and in some specific instances was even reversed. More recently there has been increased pressure on habitats and other natural resources as a consequence of deteriorating socio-economic conditions in the country. Where devolution has been successful, promising results have been achieved and the recent acceptance and implementation of direct payments to communities is probably the most significant development since 2000. That this has happened can be attributed to CAMPFIRE enabling communities to maximize their roles within the existing set of rules, and by so doing, allowing these rules to be challenged. Donor (73%) and government (27%) investments into the programme amounted to $35 million during the period 1989 to 2003. Since 2003 however, donor funding has been reduced to <$600,000 over the past 5 years.

The CAMPFIRE programme in Zimbabwe: Payments for wildlife services

Payments for environmental services (PES) have been distinguished from the more common integrated conservation and development projects on the grounds that PES are direct, more cost-effective, less complex institutionally, and therefore more likely to produce the desired results. Both kinds of schemes aim to achieve similar conservation outcomes, however, and generally function in analogous social, political and economic environments. Given the relative novelty of PES, what lessons can be learnt and applied from earlier initiatives? In this paper, we describe the evolution over the first 12 years (1989–2001) of Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE), a community-based natural resource management programme in which Rural District Councils, on behalf of communities on communal land, are granted the authority to market access to wildlife in their district to safari operators. These in turn sell hunting and photographic safaris to mostly foreign sport hunters and eco-tourists. The District Councils pay the communities a dividend according to an agreed formula. In practice, there have been some underpayments and frequent delays. During 1989–2001, CAMPFIRE generated over US$20 million of transfers to the participating communities, 89% of which came from sport hunting. The scale of benefits varied greatly across districts, wards and households. Twelve of the 37 districts with authority to market wildlife produced 97% of all CAMPFIRE revenues, reflecting the variability in wildlife resources and local institutional arrangements. The programme has been widely emulated in southern and eastern Africa. We suggest five main lessons for emerging PES schemes: community-level commercial transactions can seldom be pursued in isolation; non-differentiated payments weaken incentives; start-up costs can be high and may need to be underwritten; competitive bidding can allow service providers to hold on to rents; and schemes must be flexible and adaptive.

Political Deadlock and Devolved Wildlife Management in Zimbabwe

Since February 2000, Zimbabwe has been experiencing an unparalleled period of political, economic, and social uncertainty. The most prominent features are the political deadlock generated by (a) confrontation between the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party; (b) the illegal invasion of private land; (c) hyperinflation; and (d) the withdrawal of bilateral donor funds. Generally, a culture of impunity exists that compromises the rule of law. Within this crisis, very little attention has been given to the impact that this political deadlock and uncertainty have on natural resource management in the communal lands of Zimbabwe. Between 1990 and 2000, Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) was considered one of the leading community conservation initiatives attracting considerable international interest and analysis. This article analyzes the changes that are taking place within Nenyunga Ward, Gokwe North Rural District Council (RDC), since 2000. By comparing selected natural resource management activities before and after 2000, the article demonstrates how the larger macroeconomic and political processes are undermining natural resource management at the ward level.

IMPERSONAL MARKETS AND PERSONAL COMMUNITIES? WILDLIFE, CONSERVATION, AND DEVELOPMENT IN BOTSWANA

I MPERSONAL M ARKETS AND P ERSONAL C OMMUNITIES ? W ILDLIFE , C ONSERVATION , AND D EVELOPMENT IN B OTSWANA Parakh N. Hoon 1 1. INTRODUCTION During the 1980s and 1990s conservation policies and agencies in Africa came under severe criticism. In several countries, the evidence of increased poaching in the 1970s and 1980s pointed to the inability of wildlife departments to manage their habitats and wildlife populations. The government departments, critics argued, relied on top-down bureaucratic approaches that excluded local communities. 2 It seemed that a conservation practice based on exclusionary national parks, game reserves, and other sorts of protected areas was not functioning properly. This critique of state managed ‘top-down’ conservation provided an impetus for the emergence of Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) in southern Africa. To its proponents, CBNRM embodied the core sustainable development ethic—balancing material development and environmental conservation, and doing so by taking into consideration the needs of local communities. 3 In Botswana, CBNRM broke new ground in the early 1990s by integrating wildlife management, rural development, and tourism. 4 Often singled out as an African success story because of its stable economy and democratic institutions, Botswana has many of the characteristics that bode well for sustainable development. The dominant aspects of Botswana’s economy are diamond extraction and its livestock industries, but with national parks and game reserves occupying seventeen per cent of its total land area and with a further twenty-two per School of International Service, American University, Washington DC. I am grateful to Goran Hyden, David Leonard, Dennis Galvan, Arielle Levine, and the two reviewers for their comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 Breslauer Symposium on Natural Resource Issues in Africa at the University of California, Berkeley. D AVID H ULME & M ARSHALL M URPHREE , A FRICAN W ILDLIFE & L IVELIHOODS : T HE P ROMISE &P ERFORMANCE O F C OMMUNITY C ONSERVATION , at 1 (2001). The current trend towards CBNRM in southern Africa started in the 1980s with Administrative Management Design for Game Management Areas (ADMADE) and the Luangwa Integrated Resource Development Project (LIRDP) in Zambia, and the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) in Zimbabwe. Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, Namibia, South Africa, and Botswana also have implemented CBNRM projects. CBNRM became possible only after a number of policies and ‘guidelines’ were implemented over two decades. The first was the Tribal Grazing Land Policy (TGLP), an attempt at privatizing the grazing commons. For a cogent policy and academic critique of TGLP, see P AULINE P ETERS , D IVIDING T HE C OMMONS : P OLITICS , P OLICY , A ND C ULTURE I N B OTSWANA (1994). The areas not economically viable for cattle ranching were set aside for other uses. One of the unintended consequences of TGLP was to distinguish these areas from the wildlife dominated areas. The Wildlife Conservation Policy of 1986, designed to encourage the economic utilization of wildlife, designated these areas (not useful for cattle) on twenty-two per cent of Botswana’s land, setting them aside exclusively for wildlife utilization or land uses compatible with wildlife. To rationalize the consumptive use of wildlife through devices such as hunting quotas in Controlled Hunting Areas (CHAs), all CHAs were rezoned in 1989. The entire country has been divided into 163 CHAs, of which 43 have been zoned for wildlife uses that include commercial and community managed wildlife use (photographic and hunting safari) areas, livestock areas, and un-designated areas.

CAMPFIRE - the political ecology of poverty alleviation, wildlife utilisation and biodiversity conservation in Zimbabwe

The Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) has gained international acclaim as the earliest project (WBGU 2000) to involve the rural population of marginalised areas in decisions on how to use their indigenous resources and the income resulting from this use1). “Conservation through utilisation”, in particular of wildlife, is the ideal guiding the CAMPFIRE programme. It is based on the assumption that the local inhabitants can only be successfully involved in the long-term conservation of natural resources if they themselves can make decisions about how to utilise the resources of their homeland and if they stand to benefit economically from the conservation of nature and wildlife. CAMPFIRE’s top priority goals are accordingly – to improve the economic situation of the inhabitants by developing new sources of income that make sustainable use of natural resources; – to conserve the biodiversity; – to enable the people to participate in political decisions (empowerment). 184 Erdkunde Band 56/2002

The political ecology of poverty alleviation in Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE)

The CAMPFIRE program in Zimbabwe is one of a `new breed' of strategies designed to tackle environmental management at the grassroots level. CAMPFIRE aims to help rural communities to manage their resources, especially wildlife, for their own local development. The program's central objective is to alleviate rural poverty by giving rural communities autonomy over resource management and to demonstrate to them that wildlife is not necessarily a hindrance to arable agriculture, “but a resource that could be managed and `cultivated' to provide income and food”. In this paper, we assess two important elements of CAMPFIRE: poverty alleviation and local empowerment and comment on the program's performance in achieving these highly interconnected objectives. We analyze the program's achievements in poverty alleviation by exploring tenurial patterns, resource ownership and the allocation of proceeds from resource exploitation; and its progress in local empowerment by examining its administrative and decision making structures. We conclude that the program cannot effectively achieve the goal of poverty alleviation without first addressing the administrative and legal structures that underlie the country's political ecology.

Cadastral Politics: The Making of Community‐Based Resource Management in Zimbabwe and Mozambique

Projects promoting community‐based management of natural resources frequently encourage local smallholders to share flora, fauna, or land forms with state agencies and/or private companies. Ideals of common property and moral economy have inspired this agenda and helped spread it globally. In Southern Africa, however, the general model of shared landscapes has collided with a bitter history of white colonization and land grabbing. This article recounts the rise and fall of one CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources) project in eastern Zimbabwe. There, cadastral politics — struggles over the bounding and control of land — overwhelmed negotiations for joint management and eco‐tourism. Across the border, in Mozambique, community‐based resource management has engaged with cadastral politics in a more fruitful fashion. In the midst of latter‐day Afrikaner colonization, this project mapped smallholders’ claims to land. Thus, the Zimbabwean project ignored territorial conflict and ultimately succumbed to it. The Mozambican project jumped into the fray, with some success. On past or current settler frontiers, community‐based management may learn from this lesson: dispense with an ideology of sharing and join the rough‐and‐tumble of cadastral politics.

Sustainable tourism, protected areas and livelihood needs of local communities in developing countries

SUMMARY During the last two decades, extensive networks of protected areas in many developing countries have stimulated growth in protected area-based tourism. As protected area tourism occurs in isolated and remote rural regions, it is often assumed that such regions will experience stimulation of economic activities induced by tourism from which local people will be able to derive tangible benefits. Evidence suggests that this is rarely the case. Indeed, in the majority of protected areas, benefits have hardly reached the local community which bears the heaviest burden of protected area management. When a protected area is established and opened for tourism, it is often outsiders who rush in to siphon-off a major portion of the tourism income generated locally. Nevertheless, there are some pioneering approaches such as CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources) and ACAP (Annapurna Conservation Area Project) which have attempted to fulfil livelihood needs of local communities using benefits derived from wildlife or nature-based tourism. Both projects emphasize a people-centred, participatory democratic approach. Citing various examples from developing countries, this paper discusses the dependent nature of tourism in general, impact of protected area tourism on local livelihoods, and some constraints and opportunities for the long-term viability of protected areas.

Zimbabwe's Wildlife Utilization Programs: Grassroots Democracy or an Extension of State Power?

Are apparently successful “grassroots” conservation programs in Africa paradoxically a boon for the extension of central state authority? Can decentralization actually serve to bring about recentralization, giving governments not only new sources of revenue, but also more legitimacy in marginal rural areas? By exploring the current and historical relationships between Zimbabwean rural people and the wildlife that surrounds them, one can hopefully gain insights into why Zimbabwe's wildlife population is among one of the most diverse and thriving in Africa. The cases explored in this article clearly indicate that, in theory, the more rural people are allowed and encouraged to participate in the management of big game, and the more material benefits they accrue, the higher their stake will become in conserving those living resources. This seems to be the case as far as receiving financial benefits are concerned. Still, the implications of such sustainable utilization for the furtherance of the state's power have been unclear in scholarship to date. Zimbabwe's environmental programs have been hailed by scholars and the media alike as pathbreaking ventures into grassroots control over natural resources. This study proposes the following hypothesis, using Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) as an empirical test case: the establishment of wildlife utilization programs in agriculturally marginal rural areas also serves the interests of the Zimbabwean government to extend its authority in these otherwise neglected areas.