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Last week we asked the central question: Can the parks without people management approach that some African countries are still clinging to help them environmental sustainability by 2015?

As long as southern African countries and other countries worldwide continue to manage national parks or game reserves without involving neighbouring rural communities, their conservation efforts will remain limited. In countries where communities are not involved in conservation and benefit sharing of natural resources from protected areas, communities surrounding parks view the parks as the property of the government and private sector. Why? One cannot claim ownership over resources that they are not allowed to manage or benefit from. Their lives are worsened by ongoing and uncompensated wildlife-related crop destruction, killing of livestock and the ultimate price of loss of one’s life or that of a loved one.

 Managing parks without involving communities living next to them is a conservation disaster because without benefits, residents from these areas are  more inclined to collaborate with poachers of both wildlife and medicinal plants found in the parks. In the end it is the governments and wildlife that lose.  It is against this background of failure to win cooperation from communities that governments and conservationists from all over the world endorsed the  community Benefits Beyond Boundaries conservation concept at the 5th World Parks Congress, held in Durban South Africa in September 2003.  This concept supports the need for communities to co-manage parks with park officials and also to benefit from park resources through sustainable use.

 The results from countries such as Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe and to some extent Mozambique and South Africa, which implemented and continue to implement  the incentive-based conservation and development approach, are impressive. This incentive-based conservation and development approach is popularly known as Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM). It acknowledges that rural communities should benefit from natural resources found in their area, including wildlife and that these resources should be utilised sustainably.

Through CBNRM projects such as community tourism projects are being run through  partnerships between communities and the private sector. They run projects such as sport hunting and cultural tourism.  Communities that never used to see  money left by tourists who visited their area are beginning to receive and use this money. They are also using it to lift themselves out of poverty associated with African communities. These communities are also very conscious of the need to conserve resources they are benefiting from. They are using revenue generated from their tourism projects to create   employment opportunities. In Swaziland, Shewula Community Nature Reserve is one such initiative. An effort should be made to assist communities establish their own locally based reserves.

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