Giving power to the communities
Ryder Gabathuse | Monday June 10, 2024 06:00
LIVINGSTONE, ZAMBIA: Marco Pani had attended the just-ended inaugural KAZA Heads of State Summit in the tourism town of Livingstone where various issues of conservation took centre stage.
He opened up the conversation with the line, “ I belong to an organisation called Conservation Force, which is a conservation organisation that promotes hunting, fishing as a conservation tool.”
He has many years in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) domain or in the wildlife domain so to speak and he describes himself as a wildlife manager. He explains that he has assisted Botswana in the drafting of wildlife (elephant) plan and a series of technical and scientific documents in that space to sustainable use in the country with other scientists and mangers and so on.
He sighs and explains that the government of Botswana as it’s in the public domain; re-opened hunting in 2019 and COVID-19 came. And, so hunting was reopened in 2021 and this hunting now is very important for a variety of reasons.
Botswana, especially on elephants has the largest population in the world in excess of 130, 000 in areas within the KAZA. The elephant range is expanding to the southern and central parts of the country and now the elephant population is estimated in excess of 150, 000 across the country.
His issue is that, now the elephants have conflicts with the people even though Botswana is sparsely populated.
“People live in the countryside and they have rights to live there and these people should have full benefits especially poor rural dwellers. They should have full benefits from sustainable use of the resources,” the diminutive Pani told Mmegi.
He was elated that Botswana is improving towards CBNRM (Community Based National Resource Management) network system as a new legislation, is going to Parliament very soon. To him, this is intended to improve what the communities should be reaping from the wildlife.
He describes the KAZA as a space in which five countries have come together to have a common management of shared populations, as elephant populations are trans-boundary. He concedes that there are areas that are problematic with the movement of elephants as revealed over the years that movement into the KAZA area especially the central and southern parts of Botswana.
“Elephants are coming even into the outskirts of Gaborone and the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) which is a new elephant range. So, the elephants, instead of expanding into the new KAZA area, they are expanding more to the south,” he explains, indicating that this is a new challenge for Botswana.
He feels most of the people are not used to the elephants in the central and southern parts. In this development, there are opportunities and challenges and therefore, the stakeholders are watching the space.
One of the issues they are contending with is that contrary to the five member states; the KAZA itself does not have a framework for the community, “so there are many elephants in the room here.”
He stressed that it would have been ideal for the communities to be speaking about elephants themselves around a table. The ideal situation, he says, should be where community conservation is a top priority also emphasising rural development, wildlife and bio-diversity conservation.
“This is something that is being discussed also in this trans-bio diversity space. We are seeing some NGOs eroding the space of the communities. If the communities are able they should be given an opportunity. Now, others able to take the praise thinking they can represent the communities better than them,” he observes.
He considers a discussion on community issues a big thing, as it will give a good space to the communities themselves. The other equally important discussion he said was how to implement a new framework within the trans boundary area, to allow better movements of people and not only elephants.
On another equally contentious subject, Pani says if KAZA area could vigorously promote tourism, the UniVisa issue, which dominated discussions, is the way to go. Since the UniVisa has been piloted in Zambia and Zimbabwe it is proving to be working, the expert’s view is that it should be replicated to the rest of the member states to enable better transparency for tourism.
He also highlighted that there were discussions on consumptive and non consumptive forms of tourism citing hotel tourism for instance as consumptive even photo tourism because they consume the soil to bring electricity, water and others. On the other side, hunting he said is not consumptive as it’s less environmental consuming because with hunting there is no need for a five star hotel and so forth.
“Benefits that hunting brings are immense to the communities. Sustainability is one of the unavoidable benefits and a key issue,” he said emphasising that sustainability includes proper use of resources.
The expert further observed that the super protection system has seen a lot of problems in Botswana with rural communities, which he said should be a thing of the past. He encouraged Botswana to take a sustainable and scientific way of protecting her resources. He however, hailed government of Botswana for leading in that respect in the KAZA region.
He cited a development in the past in which there was a paper that was presented on conservation methods and out of 150 countries that were assessed, Botswana came out on top. The paper was based on a number of indicators.
“In this thick review paper Botswana’s standard was number one. And interestingly, the top 10 countries were SADC countries. And it came out that five countries used hunting as a conservation method,” he stated. To him, this therefore, speaks loudly how really sustainable use is benefitting the people.The conservationist underscored the fact that every system requires maintenance indicating that the Botswana government is doing well in raising its voice in favour of top-notch conservation methods.
“The trans frontier idea is a controversial one. The general public believes that it is a good idea whilst some scientists believe it is not in many aspects. They think it is in some way just a perception and not a reality,” the conservationist shared. He added that the trans frontier is in some quarters perceived as another donor mechanism to impose some form of conservation methods over KAZA countries.
His suggestion was that the countries and the KAZA itself should prove this is not the case. But, to prove otherwise, he thinks they should take stock from their traditions in the region especially traditional knowledge and traditional ways of managing wildlife, which over the years before the donors came to this region. The methods, he suggests that are deeply rooted in the rural areas.
“If we can make a brave move that includes more and more of the communities involvement into conservation, this will be the best consideration. We need to transform those communities from being stakeholders to shareholders. They need discussions in areas like fishing and others,” he adviced.
He feels there should be discussions like co-management, albeit he concedes this is a complex system whereby communities and government sit around a table at the same level discussing issues of conservation and taking the best benefits from the land. And he adds that for example, a very interesting exercise that came out of KAZA recently is the common aerial (elephant) survey of five countries which is rarely seen not only in Africa but across the world. He describes this as a successful exercise done by very good scientists.
The results are being analysed by each country involved. The survey found about 230, 000 elephants in KAZA area with over 50 % of them found in Botswana. He feels the survey is not enough, “What we need now is that the survey is analysed and transformed into a management tool. There is an issue of encroachment, not really in Botswana but it is quite an issue in the neighbouring countries.”
He highlighted an issue of increasing livestock within the wildlife space and this he says is raising issues of ownership indicating that livestock has owners but elephants don’t have.
Now, the big elephant in the room is the ownership of wildlife and “ we can proceed with the idea that the people that invented CBNRM 50 years ago by evaluating ownership system or propriety system, whereby addressing conservation from propriety system or ownership.
He insists that one can conserve better what one owns rather than something that one doesn’t own. This became a topical issue at the Summit.