On 22 February 2024, 17 Community Trusts in Botswana along with the Ngamiland Council of NGOs (NCONGO) expressed their deep concern with a campaign advocating for a ban on hunting trophy imports into the United Kingdom (UK) that will negatively affect their livelihoods and wildlife conservation efforts. These Trusts are democratically elected entities speaking on behalf of their respective communities that live alongside elephants and other wildlife species in Botswana.
Communities living around Kasungu National Park in Malawi traditionally grow maize to feed their families and a few other cash crops to generate income. High poverty levels and declining soil fertility have driven some community members into the neighbouring park to clear more land, hunt wildlife or harvest wood illegally to make ends meet. Kasungu Wildlife Conservation and Community Development Association (KAWICCODA) have started a transformative project with support from the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Management (BIOPAMA) Programme to help change this situation using soybeans.
Community conservation efforts in Southern Africa started in the 1980s and have since taken slightly different paths towards including rural communities in the wildlife economy and nature conservation. Over the years there have been some exchange visits and other events to increase communication among the community conservation stakeholders in these countries, but such opportunities remain rare.
Zimbabwe’s Herald newspaper reports on the Mucheni Community Conservancy, a Kavango Zambezi (KAZA) Sustainable Wildlife Management programme that is building on CAMPFIRE –
Listen to this clip of the Community Leaders Network (CLN) statement delivered by CLN Coordinator, Ms. Maxi Pia Louis,
Do community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programmes help rural communities in southern Africa?
In June, 2019 at Africa’s Wildlife Economy Summit hosted by the African Union and United Nations Environment Programme in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, community representatives called on African
“Local people’s rights to make a living by sustainably using their land and wildlife are enshrined in international and national laws, and cannot be undermined by one-sided views. They are not up for debate”
The following comments are respectfully submitted to Dr David Boyd, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment in response to the questionnaire ‘Healthy Ecosystems and Human Rights: Sustaining the Foundations of Life’.