Community-based Natural Resource Management Projects Research Articles

Mainstreaming climate change in policy frameworks for community-based natural resource management in a semi-arid savannah environment: case study of Botswana

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is a concept that was introduced in southern Africa back in the 1980s with the dual aim of biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction in communities endowed with natural resources. Community-based tourism (CBT), one of the major forms of CBNRM, depends on natural resources, particularly wildlife, and weather and climatic conditions. However, natural resources are under threat from climatic changes and other anthropogenic and natural disturbances. This calls for the need to interrogate the extent to which CBNRM initiatives mainstream climate change in their agenda. The main aim of this article is to assess the extent to which the climate change agenda has been mainstreamed into the policy framework of Botswana's CBNRM program. The specific objectives are to (1) document the impacts of climate change on CBNRM-related initiatives in Botswana; (2) determine the relationship between climate parameters (temperature and rainfall), extreme events (drought and extreme heat), and visitor trends in Botswana and the Okavango Delta; (3) establish a historical correlation between evolution of climate change policy and CBNRM policy and vice versa, policy initiatives, programs, strategies, and projects in Botswana; (4) explore the extent to which international, regional, national, and local climate policies mainstream CBNRM and tourism issues and vice versa; and (5) explore the challenges and opportunities related to climate change and CBNRM, with a particular focus on adaptation and mitigation initiatives. This study mostly used qualitative approaches (desktop review of policy documents and scholarly articles) as well as secondary quantitative data (time-series data) to explore the evolution of CBNRM in Botswana, providing an overview of its structure, policy initiatives, programs, and projects and how these correspond with climate change issues. A scoping review was conducted to identify relevant studies on the impacts of climate change on CBNRM initiatives published between 1992 and 2023. A total of 50 articles were identified to answer the following research question: What evidence is available regarding the impacts of climate change on CBNRM initiatives? The article further looks at how climate change–related extreme events, particularly drought, has affected tourism performance over the years. The article then zeros down on the effects of climate change on CBNRM initiatives and the challenges, threats, and opportunities, as well as the mitigation and adaptation strategies adopted by the CBNRM projects in Botswana. The findings indicate that climate change–induced events, particularly drought, have affected nature-based tourism products in Botswana. However, it was revealed that although there is no statistically significant correlation between drought and tourism performance, evidence from the literature reveals that drought has impacted tourism in Botswana. The findings from policy analysis indicate that the climate change agenda is woven into more recent key legal and policy documents on CBNRM, on one hand, while the climate change policy documents also include components that speak to CBNRM, on the other. This implies that the tourism sector can leverage these provisions to strengthen climate resilience through transformative adaptation and mitigation action.

A review and SWOC analysis of natural heritage tourism in sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT The paper analyses the state of natural heritage tourism in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and assesses its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges (SWOC), accordingly. Data were obtained from secondary information sources and analysed using the inductive qualitative approach. The paper illustrates the existence of a mutual relationship between natural heritage and tourism in the SSA region. Identified strengths include a diverse and extensive protected area (PA) network, foreign direct investment inflow, and community-based natural resource management projects. The main opportunity lies in the great untapped potential for natural heritage tourism in the region. Findings reveal that most of the weaknesses of SSA countries are related to budget constraints. The main challenges to the sustainability of natural heritage include political instability, climate change, wildlife crime, and land use changes. The paper concludes that while the region has several strengths and opportunities, there also exist several weaknesses and challenges, which negatively impact the sustainability of both the natural heritage legacy and tourism. To enhance the sustainability of both, there is need for a sustained management of tourism impacts at the natural heritage sites, and persistent engagement of necessary stakeholders to devise innovative ways of enhancing sustainable revenue streams for nature and wildlife conservation.

From Rationalities to Practices: Understanding Unintended Consequences of CBNRM

Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) aims to resolve issues of legitimacy and social justice but in practice this aim is not always met. In this article, we contribute to the understanding of the outcomes of CBNRM by drawing on the concepts of governmentality, practice, and rationalities. We apply this conceptual approach to a CBNRM project in northern Tanzania: Enduimet Wildlife Management Area (WMA). Here a conflict emerged about proposed new livestock herding regulations which were intended to address a grass shortage affecting both wildlife and the Maasai community living in the WMA. Although these regulations were designed as part of the CBNRM process, they were resisted by community members. Our analysis highlights the role of conflicting rationalities between the WMA board and community members about the causes of and solutions to the grass shortage in the ensuing conflict. Specifically, we demonstrate how these conflicting rationalities can be understood as unintended outcomes of dynamic interactions between assumptions and intentions of involved actors, formal processes related to CBNRM, and the communication and participatory strategies employed around the introduction of the new livestock herding regulations. As such, our article illustrates the value of explicitly considering the role of practice in analysing unintended consequences of conservation interventions.

Ephemeral ‘communities’: spatiality and politics in rangeland interventions in Mongolia

In recent years, the number of community-based natural resource management projects for rangeland conservation and development has grown rapidly in Mongolia. Such projects seek to develop social capital through the formation of herder groups and pasture user groups, in order to enable the coordination of complex, collective tasks needed for sustainability. Through analysis of social networks, interviews and ethnographic data from two places where such projects have been implemented, Bayanjargalan, Dundgovi, and Tariat, Arkhangai, the paper demonstrates that the spatiality of pastoral social relations is much more extensive than assumed by these projects. Furthermore, rather than being neutral technical interventions, such projects are embedded in and proliferate politics. They often bolster the informal power of wealthy herders who gain more access to pasture, while at the same time leading to tensions between different levels of government and becoming objects of struggle between Mongolia’s two dominant political parties. For all of these reasons, these efforts have tended not to build trust, and the ‘communities’ they create, in the form of herder groups and pasture user groups, have tended to be ephemeral.

The Politics of Tachila Nature Reserve in the North East District, Botswana: A Historical Perspective

I examine the politics surrounding the creation of Tachila Nature Reserve (TNR) in the North East District (NED) in Botswana from a historical perspective. I situate the discussion within the politics of land and nature conservation in a postcolonial setting. TNR was conceived in 2005, but launched in 2007. It sits on 8000 hectares of freehold land donated to a Trust by the Tati Company. This company had expropriated all the land in this district during the colonial era. The creation of TNR was conceived by some few elites in the area, and exported to the rest of the local communities as a finished product. In principle, its objectives are in line with Botswana National Ecotourism Strategy. The local communities view the project as insensitive and a mockery to their longstanding landlessness. Ironically, the word ‘Tachila’ in Ikalanga, the dominant language spoken in the NED, means ‘we shall survive’. TNR is hailed by the few who conceived it and the government as a ‘community-owned’ initiative. The phrase ‘community-owned’ was coined as an afterthought to placate the land-starved and agitated local communities. I conclude that TNR is not truly ‘community-owned’ when assessed in the context of Community-Based Natural Resource Management projects.

Delivering community benefits through REDD +: Lessons from Joint Forest Management in Zambia

In implementing reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), significant attention is being paid to ensuring that communities stand to benefit. Safeguards to protect local people's rights and interests have been formulated in response concerns over the potential negative impact on communities of forest preservation. To fulfil safeguards, many sub-Saharan African countries are looking to community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). Current critiques of CBNRM projects outline the importance of project design and policy context in shaping whether or not communities actually stand to benefit. This paper explores these aspects in a case study of Joint Forest Management (JFM) in Zambia, and examines the role of Zambia's REDD preparedness programme in shaping them. The case study was evaluated using stakeholder and policy document analyses, informed by interviews, and tied into the broader forest governance network. The findings highlight the way in which the politics and policies of forest governance in Zambia shape the on-the-ground JFM project and influence community benefits. In the case studied, even with careful local-level project design, JFM would be hindered in its delivery of REDD safeguards. Therefore, for REDD to deliver community safeguards, it must be considered as a broader process of political and governance change.

Assessing participatory practices in community-based natural resource management: Experiences in community engagement from southern Africa

The emphasis on participatory environmental management within international development has started to overcome critiques of traditional exclusionary environmental policy, aligning with shifts towards decentralisation and community empowerment. However, questions are raised regarding the extent to which participation in project design and implementation is meaningful and really engages communities in the process. Calls have been made for further local-level (project and community-scale) research to identify practices that can increase the likelihood of meaningful community engagement within externally initiated projects. This paper presents data from three community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) project case studies from southern Africa, which promote Joint Forest Management (JFM), tree planting for carbon and conservation agriculture. Data collection was carried out through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, community-level meetings, focus groups and interviews. We find that an important first step for a meaningful community engagement process is to define ‘community’ in an open and participatory manner. Two-way communication at all stages of the community engagement process is shown to be critical, and charismatic leadership based on mutual respect and clarity of roles and responsibilities is vital to improve the likelihood of participants developing understanding of project aims and philosophy. This can lead to successful project outcomes through community ownership of the project goals and empowerment in project implementation. Specific engagement methods are found to be less important than the contextual and environmental factors associated with each project, but consideration should be given to identifying appropriate methods to ensure community representation. Our findings extend current thinking on the evaluation of participation by making explicit links between the community engagement process and project outcomes, and by identifying further criteria that can be considered in process and outcome-based evaluations. We highlight good practices for future CBNRM projects which can be used by project designers and initiators to further the likelihood of successful project outcomes.

Rethinking community in community-based natural resource management

This paper examines the issues associated with the conceptualization and formation of community in community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). The paper is guided by qualitative research methods and is based on the context of southern African countries, with specific reference to Botswana. The results indicate that the clustering of communities to become CBNRM beneficiary groups, regardless of their geographical locations, interests, tribal relationships, historical formations, and the adoption of a single CBNRM implementation model approach fail to incorporate local variations in natural resources, culture, and socioeconomic conditions. Thus, the argument made in this paper is that most problems experienced cannot be attributed to CBNRM as a concept, but to the implementation processes, hence the call for a rethinking in the implementation of CBNRM projects. The paper provides alternative community models to overcome the issues associated with the hasty community clustering process in CBNRM.

Success Factors for Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM): Lessons from Kenya and Australia

Recent concerns over a crisis of identity and legitimacy in community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) have emerged following several decades of documented failure. A substantial literature has developed on the reasons for failure in CBNRM. In this paper, we complement this literature by considering these factors in relation to two successful CBNRM case studies. These cases have distinct differences, one focusing on the conservation of hirola in Kenya on community-held trust land and the other focusing on remnant vegetation conservation from grazing pressure on privately held farm land in Australia. What these cases have in common is that both CBNRM projects were initiated by local communities with strong attachments to their local environments. The projects both represent genuine community initiatives, closely aligned to the original aims of CBNRM. The intrinsically high level of "ownership" held by local residents has proven effective in surviving many challenges which have affected other CBNRM projects: from impacts on local livelihoods to complex governance arrangements involving non-government organizations and research organizations. The cases provide some signs of hope among broader signs of crisis in CBNRM practice.

The Rise and Fall of a Second-Generation CBNRM Project in Zambia: Insights from a Project Perspective

Since the advent of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in the mid-1980s, scholars and practitioners have sought to explain the uneven performance of CBNRM programs. Most CBNRM assessments examine the underlying principles of community-based conservation, the local social and ecological contexts, and connections with larger political and historical patterns. In this article, I argue that analysis of the potential and pitfalls of CBNRM also requires an understanding of the institutional history and internal dynamics of projects that implement CBNRM reforms. Drawing upon theory and methods from development ethnography and public policy, I examine the rise and fall of CONASA, a second-generation CBNRM project in Zambia that operated from 2001 to 2004. CONASA was constituted from a merger of organizations and discourses to provide continuity with previous projects. Its ambitious suite of activities included support for household livelihoods, community-based resource management, policy analysis, advocacy, and conservation enterprises at local, national, and transboundary levels. While individual activities were largely successful, CONASA's hybrid origins and logframe-centric management created fissures between its holistic design and operational logics, and hindered its ability to develop a broader narrative and maintain key alliances. This case study illustrates the importance of understanding the interplay between project design and operational context to fully appreciate the possibilities and limitations of project-mode conservation.

Explaining disparity in outcome from community-based natural resource management (CBNRM): a case study in Chilimo Forest, Ethiopia

This paper examines the constraints on achieving positive social and environmental outcomes from community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in Ethiopia, a rarely researched country. A comparative case study on successful and failed CBNRM in a pioneering and influential CBNRM project revealed the important determinant for disparity in outcome to be whether the existing collective decision-making arrangements on use rights and benefit-sharing support the members to whom those benefits are salient. Institutionalising CBNRM in government forest policy and improving the capacity to implement it are recommended to improve current conditions.

Reflexivity in Participatory Development: Framing Community-Based Natural Resource Management on the Amazon Frontier

While international development experts increasingly consider participation to be a genuinely transformative approach to development, the process by which this transformation may take place as an outcome of the participatory development is not sufficiently understood. Drawing mainly on the works of Margaret Archer, this article proposes to elaborate a reflexivity-based framework as a tool to follow the potential transformative process taking place outside the original project framework. It is argued that the reflexivity-based framework facilitates the expert to grasp how a development project comes to let its participants reflect on individual experience of routine action such as participation, share the reflection with others, and open new spaces for change. The article applies the reflexivity-based framework to reassess a failed community-based natural resource management project on the Brazilian Amazon frontier to illustrate the discussion.

Changes on traditional livelihood activities and lifestyles caused by tourism development in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

The Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program in Botswana aims at achieving conservation and rural development. In the Okavango Delta, some communities are involved in tourism through CBNRM to improve their livelihoods. However, research has not adequately analyzed changes caused by CBNRM on traditional livelihood activities and lifestyles. This study, therefore, uses modernization theory to analyze changes on traditional livelihood activities and lifestyles caused by CBNRM at Sankoyo, Mababe and Khwai villages in the Okavango Delta. Using primary and secondary data sources, results indicate that CBNRM is causing a decline in traditional livelihood activities like subsistence hunting, gathering, crop and livestock farming. As a result, a modern cash economy has emerged. New livelihood activities done by communities include: employment in CBNRM projects, the sale of crafts to tourists and thatching grass to tourism lodges. Income derived from CBNRM affords households to build modern houses, buy foreign foods and household equipment like: four-burner gas stoves, kitchen utensils, and satellite televisions. Conversely, this causes a decline in the consumption of traditional foods and the use of huts and household utensils. CBNRM is thus a modernization tool since it is causing a transformation of traditional livelihood activities and lifestyles. However, even though changes in livelihood activities and lifestyles may be an indication of the dynamism of culture in study villages, sudden change and modernization may increase livelihood insecurity. As such, tourism planning should ensure that modernization is sensitive to traditional economic systems and the need for rural livelihood sustainability.

Of biodiversity and boundaries: a case study of community-based natural resource management practice in the Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia

SUMMARYIn the Cardamom Ranges (Cambodia) community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is proposed by the international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) community as a natural resource management strategy to achieve the targeted outcomes associated with the protected area (PA) management plan. Local people are expected to participate in CBNRM projects such as community forestry (CF) in order that the protected area management plan can be realized. The experiences of the local people are juxtaposed against the aims of these local biodiversity projects. Overall, it is accepted by the NGOs and government agencies that communities need to be involved in the design and management of the PA and that the protection of biodiversity resources can only occur with the provision of alternatives for local livelihood options to decrease land clearing for agriculture and harvesting of wild foods and animals. This case points to a basic misalignment between biodiversity conservation and CBNRM. Participants in this study contested the meaning and usefulness of the PA and the CF projects. Their concerns were cultural, social, economic and political, exposing uneven relations of power and uncertainty associated with the long term outcomes. Participation itself required scrutiny in this situation, as did the promotion of a global biodiversity ‘good’ over local understandings of place and landscape. Lessons from more than 20 years of participatory CBNRM may be used to reconfigure the CBNRM ideal, to assist planners and implementers towards an integrated approach with biodiversity values reflected in both conservation and local production systems, acknowledging that these systems are culturally constituted.

The changing social relations of a community-based mangrove forest project in Zanzibar

Coastal areas in East Africa are experiencing rapid economic, resource management, demographic and technological shifts. In response diverse Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) applications have been embraced to provide mutual conservation and use benefits. These initiatives have met with mixed success in practice. Reflecting on the limitations of past research using common pool resources theory theory to study CBNRM we use insights from actor oriented theory combined with satellite image analysis to describe and discuss the forces dynamically influencing institutional and mangrove forest cover change at Kisakasaka, Zanzibar focussing on the formal CBNRM project period between 1996 and 2001, but also considering the period before and after this. We examine the shifting social relations that affected the performance and viability of the formal CBNRM arrangements. An integrated approach was taken to the presentation and discussion of results where it was possible to enrich and expand explanations of socio-environmental change, which was driven by a lack of government support, the undermining effects of party political divisions, and the lack of institutional adaptive capacity. We conclude that this was a useful approach to explain CBNRM intervention events at Kisakasaka.

Social Networks and Community-Based Natural Resource Management

We conducted case studies of three successful examples of collaborative, community-based natural resource conservation and development. Our purpose was to: (1) identify the functions served by interactions within the social networks of involved stakeholders; (2) describe key structural properties of these social networks; and (3) determine how these structural properties varied when the networks were serving different functions. The case studies relied on semi-structured, in-depth interviews of 8 to 11 key stakeholders at each site who had played a significant role in the collaborative projects. Interview questions focused on the roles played by key stakeholders and the functions of interactions between them. Interactions allowed the exchange of ideas, provided access to funding, and enabled some stakeholders to influence others. The exchange of ideas involved the largest number of stakeholders, the highest percentage of local stakeholders, and the highest density of interactions. Our findings demonstrated the value of tailoring strategies for involving stakeholders to meet different needs during a collaborative, community-based natural resource management project. Widespread involvement of local stakeholders may be most appropriate when ideas for a project are being developed. During efforts to exert influence to secure project approvals or funding, however, involving specific individuals with political connections or influence on possible sources of funds may be critical. Our findings are consistent with past work that has postulated that social networks may require specific characteristics to meet different needs in community-based environmental management.

Naming the land: San countermapping in Namibia’s West Caprivi

Both ‘indigenous rights’ and environmental discourses brought a NGO-led natural resource mapping project to the West Caprivi Game Park in northern Namibia in the late 1990s. San countermapping elsewhere in southern Africa demonstrates how mapping has been used as a tool for ‘indigenous’ identity-building and asserting authority over land. At the same time, mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have increasingly been used by conservationists in Namibian Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), demonstrating the potential therein for state and NGO surveillance and intervention regarding both natural resources and their users in conservancies and national parks. Mapping in West Caprivi thus embodied a tension between ‘visibility’ and ‘legibility’. This paper explores how mapping activities reflected, and became part of, institutional and ethnic struggles over identity, authority and natural resources. It argues that members of a San group called Khwe used mapping to construct particular histories, promote a unified, exclusive ethnic identity, and bolster their authority in the area. This in turn presented particular challenges for NGO relationships with the state. The mapping project also showed that, in their bid to counteract their own exclusion, Khwe not only opened up the landscape to new forms of NGO and state legibility, but sought to exclude ethnic others. Like other CBNRM projects, mapping often served socio-political, rather than environmental, functions.

From “Project” to “Context”: Community Based Natural Resource Management in Botswana

Community based natural resource management (CBNRM) programs presently proliferate across the Global South. In Southern Africa, CBNRM overwhelmingly focuses on wildlife conservation in areas adjacent to national parks and game reserves. The objects of these development activities are remote communities that exhibit the highest levels of poverty in the region, the consequences of which are sometimes resource degradation. CBNRM seeks to empower and enrich the lives of these communities through the active co-management of their natural resource base. Almost without exception, however, CBNRM projects have had disappointing results. Common explanations lay blame at the feet of local people who are seen to lack capacity and will, among other things. This paper contests this explanation by subjecting the particular case of Botswana to a deeper, critical political ecology analysis. Drawing on insights from Homer-Dixon regarding resource capture and ecological marginalization, and from Acharya regarding the localization of global norms, the paper argues that CBNRM is better understood as a discursive site wherein diverse actors bring unequal power/knowledge to bear in the pursuit of particular interests. In Botswana this manifests at a local level as an on-going struggle over access to land and related resources. However, given that CBNRM is supported by a wide array of international actors, forming perhaps the thin edge of a wider wedge in support of democratization, good governance and biodiversity preservation, locally empowered actors are forced to adapt their interests to the strictures of emergent structures of global governance. The outcome is a complex interplay of activities whereby CBNRM is realized but not in a form anticipated by its primary supporters.

Revisiting ‘community’ in community-based natural resource management

This article is concerned with the diverse nature and interest in the concept of ‘community’ and especially as it applies to community-based natural resource management projects that have grown in emphasis during the past twenty years. Despite all the rhetoric about community and its reference in a ritualistic manner in projects and policy documents, often contrary experiences and mixed results in the field have started stirring negative reactions from various quarters. This article delves into the challenges and dilemmas, which the focus on ‘community’, with its lack of specificity, has conjured up for practitioners, policy-makers and academicians alike.

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.