Transfrontier parks and development in southern Africa: The case of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

Abstract

The interface between local communities and transfrontier parks has received considerable attention, yet the utility of the transfrontier concept in developing livelihoods and environmental sustainability in southern Africa remains questionable. This paper argues that the benefits of transfrontier parks at regional, national and community levels cannot be overstated; neither should the problems be underestimated. Transfrontier parks may be viable alternatives in achieving development that is sustainable by protecting southern Africa's fragile environments, generating more funds and bringing significant and major improvements to the lives of the rural poor. At the same time, transfrontier parks raise issues of sovereignty of national governments, create complexity in governance processes and can lead to the needs of rural communities being sacrificed. Therefore, there is a need to find ways to reconcile conflictual and sometimes controversial circumstances in the establishment of transfrontier parks and, inquire further into the programmatic blueprints for transfrontier initiatives.

Keywords:

• transfrontier
• transfrontier parks
• development
• sustainability
• conflicts

1. Introduction and background

This paper subjects the transfrontier concept in wildlife management and conservation discourses to rigorous analysis in order to understand its utility in developing livelihoods and environmental sustainability in southern Africa. As Jones (2005) articulates, transfrontier conservation areas are one of the emerging conservation and development initiatives in southern Africa. There is a growing realisation that when dealing with (fugitive) natural resources such as wildlife at an international level, ecological boundaries should take precedence over governance boundaries so that (management) decisions have a direct and unbridled effect on the ecological system (Muchapondwa & Ngwaru, 2010). This has been one of the main reasons behind the formation of such transfrontier national parks in Africa as the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP), the Maloti–Drakensburg Transfrontier Park and the Ritchtersveld Transfrontier Park in recent years. As Suich et al. write, transfrontier parks are therefore:

relatively large areas of land, straddling international borders between two or more countries that incorporate natural systems around one or more protected areas [whose] three primary aims are the conservation of biodiversity, socio-economic development and the promotion of peace and co-operation. (2003:1)

As already noted, the transfrontier concept is based on the protection of ecosystems without necessarily recognising international borders; making provision for the mutual management of these areas by the countries involved. The major focus for transfrontier parks lies on expanding protected areas within one country by linking them to a protected area or areas in one or more neighbouring countries (Jones & Chonguica, 2001). It is imperative to note from the start that the primary beneficiary as far as the transfrontier concept is concerned is the environment, with biodiversity conservation as the driving force (Swatuk, n.d.); which ultimately exposes and puts into focus the position of the local people and communities affected by the establishment of these transfrontier parks.

The first transfrontier park to be created in southern Africa was the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in 2000 across the borders of Botswana and South Africa. However, the first proposal for a transfrontier park linking Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe was in 1938, when ecologist Gomes de Sousa suggested the idea to the Mozambique colonial administration. The idea, however, was only adopted when the governments of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique signed an international treaty in December 2002 to establish the GLTP.⁴ The GLTP is a roughly 35 000 km² wildlife conservation area that is being created by linking the Kruger National Park in South Africa, the Limpopo National Park in Mozambique, the Gonarezhou National Park, Manjinji Pan Sanctuary and Malipati Safari Area in Zimbabwe, as well as two areas between Kruger and Gonarezhou, namely the Sengwe communal land in Zimbabwe and the Makuleke region in South Africa.⁵ The GLTP comprises a vast area of the lowland savannah ecosystem, bisected by the Lebombo Mountains running along the border between South Africa and Mozambique. Five major river systems also cross this region in a generally west–east flow (Wolmer & Ashley, 2003). As Spenceley (2006) writes, the GLTP has sparked interest amongst conservationists and other groups because of its potential to become one of the largest conservation areas in the world.

It is against this background that this paper is developed. The paper starts by explaining the complex nature of wildlife management in southern Africa. It proceeds to discuss the various existing institutional arrangements for wildlife management. Various reasons are detailed on the establishment of transfrontier parks in Africa and the diverging views on the origins of the concept. Lastly, the benefits and problems of transfrontier arrangements to different stakeholders and actors are elucidated, and the paper ends by highlighting areas that need further investigation.

2. The context of wildlife management in southern Africa

In pre-colonial Africa, communities were mostly made up of a hierarchy of ‘land communities’ nesting one within the other and with membership depending on acceptance by traditional authority at each level of authority (Metcalfe, n.d.). Common pool resources such as wildlife, grazing lands, firewood, and water were regulated within this structure with the land tenure system acting as a control mechanism (Metcalfe, n.d.).

The advent of European colonial powers in the twentieth century in Africa radically impacted upon the traditional land-tenure systems and subsequently natural resource management systems (Metcalfe, n.d.). There was establishment of nations with boundaries cutting across cultural and natural systems. Statutory laws were promulgated that established protected areas and alienated local people from land, grazing, forest, and wildlife resources (Metcalfe, n.d.). This, as Murphree & Cumming (1990) articulate, virtually led to the emergence of an ‘open access’ system whereby people identified most natural resources as particularly no one's responsibility but everyone's property.

At independence, most southern Africa states attempted to maintain control over wildlife, an arrangement that, however, increasingly became irrelevant in the then emerging global development efforts advocating devolution and community participation in natural resource management. As Metcalfe (n.d.) posits it would be fair to conclude that rural African areas protected by conventional law-enforcement methods have failed, ‘as species become increasingly threatened and habitat isolated’.

With this realisation in mind, there has been increased efforts towards the decentralisation of natural resource management (including wildlife) in southern Africa; a move that has coincided with the mainstreaming of participatory approaches in development theory and practice – advocating for a policy shift towards ensuring that local resource users play a more active role in the management of natural resources (Campbell & Shackleton, 2004). According to Wolmer et al. (2004), in Zimbabwe there has been the Community Areas Management of Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) program, for example, which established a set of principles in the interface between local communities and wildlife management.

In South Africa, land restitution has been the major driving force for more equitable and participatory forms of natural resource management (Campbell & Shackleton, 2004.). It is within this context that the transfrontier parks initiative has been established in southern Africa. The transfrontier park initiative thus joins a growing list of new participatory, rural development-oriented approaches to natural resource conservation (Swatuk, n.d.:4). The main thrust of this new approach is that viable ecological, socio-economic and political benefits from protected area management will only be realised if these activities contribute to ‘well-being appropriate to southern African society, which in the region's socio-economic context is likely to include economic growth, employment and park self-sustainability, with an important proviso that biodiversity is both monitored and maintained’ (Swatuk, n.d.:4).

3. Institutional arrangements for wildlife management

Institutional arrangements for wildlife management in southern Africa have tended to comprise and involve a number of actors and stakeholders such as government departments/ministries, the private sector, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local communities. Local communities were involved in wildlife management to achieve the goal of ownership and, ultimately, responsibility towards conservation and sustainability. The assumption was that unless some synergy was created between protected and communal lands, the ‘tragedy of the commons’⁶ would prevail (cf. Campbell & Shackleton, 2004). This led to the establishment of institutional structures promoting the devolving of wildlife management to local communities. Decentralisation of wildlife management in Africa has taken many forms that may generally be classified into four types, depending on the key organisations involved; namely, district-level organisations, village organisations supported by sectoral departments such as Village Wildlife Committees, organisations or authorities outside the state hierarchy (e.g. traditional authorities or residents' associations), and corporate organisations at the village level (e.g. trusts, conservancies, property associations) (Peluso, 2001).

Governments in most southern African states have relatively succeeded in moving away from command and control policies towards efforts for the decentralisation and devolution of control of natural resources, in this case wildlife. In general, this has been supported by legislation; for example, Campbell & Shackleton (2004) note that in Namibia and Botswana there are strong policy frameworks that decentralise authority and give rights directly over to wildlife community organisations. Changes in wildlife policy in Namibia after independence in 1990 gave communal area residents conditional ownership over wildlife provided they registered as conservancies (Campbell & Shackleton, 2004).

Other institutional structures have tended to gravitate towards co-management among main stakeholders in wildlife management. In Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE programme, for example, the main stakeholders include the local community (who are the main stakeholders), local authorities, and the Ministry of Environment. This has, to a large extent, produced a positive and balanced co-management structure in wildlife management in the country.

Private operators have also been very active and visible in wildlife management structures in various local communities in southern Africa; many a time as the main providers of capital and expertise. In some countries such as Mozambique, Campbell & Shackleton (2004) note that safari companies deal directly with the Wildlife Conservation Revolving Fund after being selected by the National Tender Board, with the chief being the only local-level member on the selection panel. They argue that the chief maintains the power to allocate communal land for tourism enterprises, which many a time is done without consulting with the community, although the District Council must provide final approval of the site. Full title deeds, however, are transferred to the private operator by the Commissioner of Land once the plans are approved by all relevant authorities (i.e. District Council, Department of National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Mozambican National Tourist Board) (Campbell & Shackleton, 2004).

NGOs have also been instrumental mainly as facilitators in many wildlife management structures between the state, the private sector and local communities in southern Africa. In other instances, NGOs have acted as power brokers between communities and governments; for example, when the Makuleke community was threatened by eviction from its ancestral lands by the South African National Parks Board for the expansion of a game reserve, they suggested a workable solution of land restitution and benefit sharing. In Botswana, national and international NGOs have been key players in helping communities develop their constitutions, prepare their management plans as well as lobbying to get local wildlife trusts registered (Campbell & Shackleton, 2004).

4. Why transfrontier parks in Africa?

Political boundaries do not usually take ecological system boundaries into consideration and the establishment of transfrontier parks aims at re-establishing historical animal migration routes and other ecosystem functions disrupted by these political boundaries.⁷ The joint management of this more natural ecosystem (across nations and according to mutually agreed management policies) will in turn promote more resilient and more sustainable ecosystems. Around the world there are more than 130 transfrontier complexes, including some 400 protected areas in 98 countries; together these areas represent nearly 10% of the world's total protected area network (Zbicz & Green, 1997). They represent significant opportunities for international collaboration and fostering understanding and peaceful cooperation (Hamilton et al., 1996).

According to (Swatuk, n.d.:2), the main supporters of transnational parks in southern African are international actors; particularly bilateral donors who include the Germany Development Agency (GTZ), The Swedish Agency for International Development Co-operation, the United States Agency for International Development as well as multilateral agencies such as the European Union and the World Bank, and NGOs such as Conservation International and the Worldwide Fund for Nature. The transfrontier concept also gels into current macro-management and ecosystem-based approaches that seek to sustainably conserve biodiversity (cf. Swatuk, n.d.:2).

Influential donor states such as Britain, Germany, and the United States have also come to view the establishment of transfrontier parks in southern Africa as an important aspect towards regional peace-making, integration and development (Swatuk & Vale, 1999). With the end of apartheid rule in Namibia (in 1990) and South Africa (in 1994), and the general shift of the sub-region from conflict to peace and from colonial to democratic rule, the creation of transfrontier parks was seen as a chance and opportunity to help the region move towards achieving economic growth and sustainable development on a large scale (Swatuk, 2004). Koch (1998) notes that, given the role of mountains, forests and national parks as shelters and headquarters of rebel movements and liberation fighters, redeployment and reconstruction became the key elements in the discourse of transfrontier parks, now also referred to as Peace parks. Nature was thus seen to have the power ‘to heal wounds’ and, given South Africa's comparative advantage in technical expertise, functional cooperation on environmental issues was deemed to be a key element in converting ‘swords into ploughshares’ (Koch, 1998, cited in Swatuk, n.d.:3).

Transfrontier parks also help to improve relations between the participating countries by encouraging joint management of the shared land (Khan, 2003). Local people near and around these transfrontier parks are also afforded livelihood opportunities around such conservation-related activities as game-farming, and tourism – which may be more profitable than traditional subsistence farming (cf. Khan, 2003). Kisiangani (2011) writes that a study jointly carried out by the Peace Parks Foundation and the Development Bank of Southern Africa calculated that transfrontier parks already in existence and those being proposed for establishment in southern Africa could attract up to approximately eight million visitors to the region every year, thereby creating jobs. The GLTP is already attracting a large number of tourists, although a large chunk of these tourists are concentrated on the South African portion.

Other views, however, have tended to be sceptical about these transfrontier parks. Simon (2003), for example, postulates that these initiations may be viewed as new supra-governance entities hidden behind ecological concerns and superimposed on previously existing administrative authorities. As Wolmer (2003:8) argues, these transfrontier parks ‘tend to be driven by international conservation organizations and principally serve the economic and political interests of entrenched and emerging national, regional and international elites’.

Other sceptics have also associated the transfrontier concept with disempowering and marginalising local communities. Spierenburg et al. (2008), for instance, question what the move towards transfrontier conservation would translate into as far as decentralised natural resource management is concerned. They argue that these mega parks may actually end up alienating local people from managing the natural resources close to and around them. However, as noted earlier, those arguing for the establishment of transfrontier parks maintain that local people near and/or around these transfrontier conservation areas will benefit from livelihood and employment opportunities that these areas of­fer.

5. Benefits of transfrontier parks

5.1 Regional level

The benefits of transfrontier parks at regional level are supposedly many. Hanks (2000) lists some of the major benefits of transfrontier parks at regional level, among them the promotion of the commitment of nations to ecosystem management, arresting civil unrest through promoting cooperation and collaboration among nations as well as controlling habitat loss. Wolmer (2003:4) also notes that transfrontier parks have helped Africa project an internationally ‘politically correct “green image”’ as well as enable the exploitation of economies of scale and promote regional marketing.

Africa is a continent with an unfortunate history of regular turmoil and persistent conflict, but when countries become involved in joint ventures that have clear benefits to all partners, these partners think twice before jeopardising these processes. When, for example, presidents constantly and consistently meet to demonstrate goodwill and joint collaboration, government officials and businessmen take their cue from these signals and this certainly encourages a more positive approach and openness to a neighbouring country. Politicians meet to discuss transfrontier arrangements and they bring fellow politicians to explore other opportunities. These processes strengthen ties between neighbours so that officials and businessmen start cementing relationships, which reduces the tendency to view each other as foreigners or cultural strangers. All of this contributes in a significant way to reducing tensions and promoting a spirit of regional unity.

Other governments such as the government of South Africa have viewed transfrontier parks as an ideal way of sharing tourism and marketing benefits with other southern African countries; for example, through the introduction of a univisa where tourists can travel easily between countries in the context of such big events as the 2010 World Soccer showcase that it hosted (cf. Marshall, 2008). Andrews (2011), writing on the short-term and long-term impacts of the FIFA 2010 World Cup, said that the tournament could lead to an increase in economic growth and job creation, social and infrastructural transformation as well as the alleviation of poverty. However, there is a paucity of post-2010 World Cup studies that provide detail on whether and how transfrontier parks impacted on tourism during the tournament.

Transfrontier parks are not homogeneous habitats throughout their extent, but are usually made up of a patchwork mosaic of different habitat types, each with its own mix of vegetation, birds and mammals based on the underlying soils, topography and other factors. Very often, there are types of special habitat that enter a conservation area from outside its proclaimed boundaries, and these patches sometimes hold rare or endangered species that are confined to these habitats. By jointly managing adjoining conservation areas in an integrated manner, such species with very specific habitat requirements also have a better chance of surviving. For example, by linking Kruger National Park in South Africa and Limpopo National Park in Mozambique, species such as lungfish, killifish, tsessebe, roan antelope, and so forth, will have a far better chance of long-term viability, thus buttressing sustainable wildlife management regimes in the region.

5.2 National level

The very notion of joint management of adjoining conservation areas implies regular meetings, exchange of ideas, joint decision-making, and collaboration for mutual benefit. Transfrontier parks will not succeed if there is no underlying commitment for collaboration, mutual support and assistance. Since all countries engaging in such transfrontier initiatives do so without any coercion, it stands that they see benefits from such a transboundary linkage and want it to work, so they agree to the premise of full collaboration. The planning and implementation of transfrontier parks has tensions and suspicions, sometimes with accusations that one country dominates a process or extracts an inequitable amount of benefit from the joint venture. However, the overall process is characterised by a mutual understanding that cooperation and at least shared benefit must result if the initiative is to succeed, giving rise to the development of a deeper understanding of the capacities of the various partners, and an alliance whereby the strengths of each country are applied to the benefit of the others and the shortfalls are addressed for common good.

The dynamics are such that constructive engagement becomes the norm, leading to partnerships at a cascading hierarchy of levels, from presidents and politicians meeting to discuss higher level principles, to senior government officials collaborating, and then a plethora of stakeholders needing to interact with each other to discuss issues of common interest, including security issues, business interests, financing, legal matters, tourism and many others. This creates the basis for wider consultation and collaboration, establishing the framework for improved regional planning, integration and joint management. The GLTP has helped create and strengthen such a relationship among the three countries involved, especially considering that one of the countries (South Africa) had recently moved from the apartheid era to democracy, and the other country (Mozambique) was also moving to political stability from a civil war. Transfrontier parks can also be seen as revenue generators, providing a conducive environment for investment as well as employment creation, especially in the hospitality industry and ecotourism, as well as leveraging private-sector investment to ‘maintain and grow ecological capital’ in the nations involved (Wolmer, 2003:4).

5.3 Local/community level

Transfrontier parks aim to provide jobs and revenue-generating as well as livelihood opportunities for local people covered by these parks. The improvement of lives of people in these local communities potentially further cascades to the instigation of a positive perception around willingly taking part in sustainable wildlife management as people witness and enjoy the social and economic advantages that can be achieved sustainable. Transfrontier parks may also be a means for empowering and uplifting previously marginalised communities as they participate in the management of these parks as key sub-state entities. Wolmer (2003) notes the example of the Makuleke community in South Africa, who, having been removed from part of the Kruger National Park and in turn given some land elsewhere, have found considerable voice and bargaining power as they negotiate terms of removal and other issue in transfrontier park processes.

Conservation and wildlife management within transfrontier arrangement can thus bring about significant and major improvement in the lives of rural poor, bringing in more funds and resources than traditional subsistence lifestyles provided. The transfrontier concept in the context of southern African also aims at converting communal lands unsuitable for conventional agriculture to effective biodiversity conservation and tourism development (Munthali, 2007). Within the GLTP there is evidence that nature-based tourism, including photographic and hunting safaris as well as game ranching, can provide substantially more jobs and income at both national and local levels than subsistence cropping or traditional cattle rearing, especially on marginal land.

6. Problems in transfrontier arrangements

A number of problems have been identified with respect to transfrontier parks in southern Africa. It is imperative to note that even though transfrontier parks can be vehicles for viable wildlife conservation, particularly large-range species, they may, however, also lead to loss of biodiversity mostly and especially because of large numbers of wildlife moving across the transfrontier park. Another problem with these mega parks is that, as entities established at the highest level of the state, they almost always tend to follow and mimic what Swatuk (n.d.:5) has termed the ‘highly centralized and exclusive management approach’. He notes that the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, for example, projects a formal ‘government style’ management system that then essentially departs from the flexible participation and involvement of various actors.

Wolmer (2003) also postulates that transfrontier parks, by their very nature, are political entities whose establishment implies a ceding of considerable decision-making authority and power by individual states over resources within their territories to international NGOs, bilateral and multilateral donors and multinational companies who are the main actors in the management of these transfrontier parks. This subsequently has implications for national sovereignty (Wolmer, 2003). Negotiations around the management of these transnational parks (including agreements around the distribution of benefits accruing from the parks) may also be made complex by the degree of differences in participating nations' infrastructural development, wildlife and immigration policies as well as economic and political stability.⁸

Transfrontier parks may also have a huge negative impact on people's livelihoods, especially when whole communities have to be evicted to create space for the expansion of wildlife areas. Munthali (2007), for example, notes one of the most controversial evictions of people recommended for the GTLP – where more than 2500 Shangaan people were encouraged to move from the Limpopo National Park to create extra space for wildlife.

Wolmer (2003) also articulates that because communities in transboundary areas are usually physically remote from centres of power and less developed in nature, the main livelihood strategies there tend to be ‘illicit’, and they include illegal labour migration, trafficking and smuggling. Khan (2003) also writes that transfrontier parks dynamically push local communities into changing their traditional land-use practices without much time to adapt; which, according to the IUCN (South Africa), may result in serious livelihood risks for those affected as the rural poor do not usually possess the requisite skills to negotiate benefits – particularly in cases where evictions would have taken place.

There are problems associated with home-grown opposition to these transfrontier park establishments due to threatened entrenched local power establishments, and economic and social arrangements. Spenceley (2006:663) summarises in three main points the major areas around which home-grown opposition has thrived in all the three countries involved in the GLTP. These (points) include the demand for productive agricultural land by communities; demands for better socio-economic returns, particularly as they relate to employment, investment and infrastructure; and a push from conservation organisations for the expansion of land under conservation.

In the initial stages of the establishment of the GLTP, the Inter-country Working Groups established to oversee key issues such as security and border control, customs and immigration, wildlife diseases and management plans as well as tourism and community issues faced major problems around the establishment of trust among representatives of the three countries, commitment of government bureaucrats, finance and language barriers. These problems and experiences show that the establishment and management of transfrontier parks is a delicate and complex exercise, which, if not properly managed, may create animosity within and between nations. However, as Khan (2003) argues, in spite of reservations, transfrontier arrangements are definitely southern Africa's best avenue towards the viable protection of its fragile environment and the stimulation of its tourism industry.

At the same time, whereas transfrontier arrangements are complex and problematic, success stories have been evident in other contexts. Warbutton-Lee (1999:62) writes that there are more or less similar arrangements in close to a hundred regions worldwide, ‘ranging from the Manas Parks of India and Bhutan to cooperation between France and Italy to accommodate migrations of ibex, reintroduce the bearded vulture and protect vulnerable species such as lynx and wolves’.

7. Conclusion

This paper concludes that the transfrontier concept can be a viable alternative in developing livelihoods and environmental sustainability in fragile communities of southern Africa. However, there is need to inquire further on the programmatic blueprints for transfrontier initiatives. An analysis of how each needs to be planned, set up, managed and adapted to suit specific circumstances needs to be undertaken for them to succeed. Trade-offs centred on local community well-being concerns, livelihoods and wildlife conservation need to be extensively assessed and put in focus. There should also be open dialogue in the negotiation of decision-making arrangements and power-sharing among stakeholders in transfrontier arrangements.

There is a need to explore ways in which to proceed slowly and cautiously in selling the idea to all involved stakeholders in countries involved, given the sensitive nature of the transfrontier idea, at local, national, regional and international levels (Wolmer, 2003). More inquiry is therefore needed on the reconciliation of these conflictual and sometimes controversial circumstances in which these transfrontier initiatives find themselves. There is also need to explore further how national policies and legislation vis-à-vis wildlife management within the transfrontier initiatives may be aligned so as to avoid conflictual systems, confusion and duplication of roles in the management of natural resources within the transfrontier parks.

Lastly, an area of further inquiry will be to analyse how a number of interwoven factors in southern Africa such as lack of representation, population increase, poverty, lack of representation, viable local market economies, corruption and good planning contribute to the vulnerability and fragmentation of ecosystems and biodiversity around protected areas and how they may be countered, as these are major areas of concern that have threatened to derail the smooth functioning of these transfrontier parks.

Notes

⁴See www.boundlessa.com

⁵See www.sanparks.co.za/conservation/transfrontier/great_limpopo/default.php

⁶‘Tragedy of the commons’ is a concept propounded by Garret Hardin (1969). Hardin explained that one of the major causes of environmental degradation is the overuse of common property or free-access resources. Tragedy of the commons is a type of social trap, often economic, that involves a conflict over finite resources between individual interests and the common good. According to Hardin the tragedy of the commons will result because of the mentality that ‘If I do not use this resource, someone else will. The little bit I use or pollute is not enough to matter, and such resources are renewable’ (1969).

⁷See www.sanparks.co.za

⁸For instance, Khan (2003) notes that in the GLTP, South Africa's Kruger National Park attracts a million visitors each year because of better infrastructure and marketing whilst only a few thousand tourists visit the parkland in and around Mozambique. With the park revenue being split according to the number of tourists attracted, this then essentially shows the dilemma facing the poorer countries within these transfrontier arrangements – that they need money generated from these tourist visits to develop their facilities and infrastructure, yet without the developed infrastructure and facilities they are not able to attract the visitors in the first place (Khan, 2003).