- Private conservancies are playing an increasingly important role in protecting biodiversity in Africa.
- Conservation areas not only boost GDP through tourism, but also create millions of jobs.
- However, one export warns that conservation and sustainable tourism cannot be left solely in the hands of the private sector.
- For news and analysis on climate change, go to News24 Climate Future.
This week, more than 190 countries attended a UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Canada, pledging to protect 30% of Earth’s land, oceans, coastal areas and inland waters in a bid to conserve global biodiversity. Africa is seen as a key pillar in these efforts. And yet, a conservation revolution may already be underway on the continent.
The Great Green Wall for Restoration and Peace is a major initiative facilitated by the African Union to restore savannahs, grasslands and farmlands in Africa, worth about 100 million hectares, and create 10 million jobs. This poster child for African conservation has been touted as transformational, but dig deeper, and a more localized transformation is already underway, driven by local, private, and community-funded conservation.
In 2023, 3,000 delegates from nearly 100 countries will descend on Kigali for the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) Global Summit, one of the world’s most influential travel and tourism events. This is the first time that the summit will be held in Africa.
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Many of those who will attend are leaders of the African tourism and wildlife industry, as well as key government representatives. The event is a recognition of the enormous effort that Rwanda has made to build its tourism sector, which was almost non-existent just 20 years ago.
“Rwanda is building its reputation as a must-see destination,” said Julia Simpson, president of WTTC.
Famous for its strong tourism and wildlife approach, Rwanda is the only African country with a comprehensive program to protect gorillas, the International Gorilla Conservation Program, and has made this unique species the centerpiece of its tourism offerings, in the same way that China has done it. made with his pandas.
While the country’s major successes in the tourism sector are government-led, the underlying privately run game parks and animal sanctuaries are a booming sub-sector. They have significantly complemented government efforts to improve the industry.
This is not unique to Rwanda, as Africa’s great diversity of wildlife remains largely untapped.
Private conservancies have emerged in Africa in recent years, run and managed by private entities, be they individuals or community initiatives.
The World Wild Fund estimates that Africa, a continent that is home to close to 30% of the world’s wildlife population, has lost almost 70% of its wildlife population in about 50 years. According to the Kenya Wildlife Conservation Association (KWCA), 65% of Kenya’s wildlife now lives on community and private land.
“In the Maasai Mara, for example, 15 protected areas protect more than 450,000 acres of critical habitat for the great Serengeti-Mara wildebeest migration. This has seen the lion population double in the last decade, and 3,000 households earn more than $4 million a year from tourism,” notes KWCA.
The African Nature Based Tourism Platform, a platform that connects funders with communities and SMEs in wildlife and tourism, in a series of country reports published in January 2022, demonstrates the value of the sub-sector in economic development.
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In Kenya, private and community-owned conservancies contributed 8.1% of the country’s GDP and created more than 1.5 million jobs. The survey report lists 93 privately owned wildlife reserves, 68 of which are community owned.
Comparative figures are listed for South Africa, where 71 conservation areas are privately owned by individuals, with 21 community owned. They contributed 6.7% of South Africa’s economy, channeling more than USD 22 billion in addition to supporting 1.5 million jobs.
Similar trends could be observed in the case of Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Uganda, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Tanzania in 2019, before the pandemic.
According to Carel Verhoef, a Tanzanian-based conservation enthusiast and wildlife film technical director, private wildlife conservancies adopt different models in Africa.
Kenya’s model is one of shared land, Tanzania has converted former hunting grounds into safari areas, and Botswana employs community-based conservation areas.
“The Kenyan conservation model is such that an agreement is reached between the landowners, the Maasai and the private sector on the management and use of the land, sharing,” Verhoef explained.
However, these models are not perfect.
“The model is good for expanding a small protected area… But it depends on the success of the tourism sector. That means it is vulnerable to business mismanagement and global pandemics,” Verhoef added.
Exploitative capitalist attributes could also threaten the approach as land under conservation is offered to the highest bidder.
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Verhoef believes that for conservation and sustainable tourism to take place in Africa, the conservation obligation should not be left entirely in the hands of the private sector, where financial success is prioritized over the actual need for conservation.
Still, human development and grazing in conserved areas, among other human activities, continue to limit wildlife conservation, especially on private land.
Richard Obanda, senior manager of Buteyo Miti Park, a (Kenyan) privately owned conservancy in western Kenya, says community involvement is crucial.
“Currently, the park has no funder to support its operations, we rely on entrance fees that can barely cover 50% of our operational needs. The alternative is to ensure there is as much value added as possible so that the space can serve as much to the community as well as to others”. us,” she explained.
For him, the debate on the place of private conservation in sustaining the sector cannot be underestimated.
“Communities are offered the opportunity to have direct control of natural resources in addition to minimizing human-wildlife conflicts, as these issues are resolved more amicably,” he said.
This week’s historic agreement sees the provision of $200 billion to support biodiversity by 2030, with another $500 billion possible. Low-income countries are going to receive much more than what currently goes to efforts to protect nature. Such funding is likely to go some way to boosting Africa’s fast-growing, localized and locally owned conservation economy.
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