e people. By using a system of community-based management, Richard Conniff
writes, this nation has avoided the fate of most others on the continent and registered a sharp increase in its key wildlife populations.
Chase is still optimistic about KAZA, pointing out that “ten years ago, you couldn’t get the governments to sit around a table together.” David Cumming, a transfrontier expert in Harare, Zimbabwe, is less sure. His 2011 review of “constraints” faced by peace parks is sobering, noting that KAZA’s planning documents focus heavily on development and fail to set clear objectives regarding conservation. Financing is inadequate, with even established national parks “grossly underfunded.”
He asks a critical question: Can the creation of larger landscapes devoted simultaneously to development and conservation — not strictly protected as parks — reverse wildlife declines while benefiting communities? Unless people get “real benefits,” Cumming told me, “connectivity is probably not going to be maintained.”
It remains to be seen whether conservation corridors roughed out on maps will materialize. Elephants cannot wait forever, fenced in by wire, crops, and settlements. Nor can local people, who are, as Cumming dryly calls them, “the de facto
Correction. May 16, 2012: The original version of this story incorrectly stated that Namibia’s 71 conservancies earned $700,000 last year. The article should have stated that Namibian conservancies earned roughly $6 million in 2010.
POSTED ON 14 May 2012 IN
Biodiversity Climate Oceans Policy & Politics Africa