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Butler Tambo
On my last edition I looked at the human-wildlife conflict that exists in areas with abundant wildlife and I tied this to the debate I began a few weeks ago on illicit financial flows (IFFs) and how these have impoverished an otherwise wealthy nation called Zimbabwe.
This week I look at the concept of Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (Campfire) and how it has benefited rural communities near game reserves in Zimbabwe and how this concept can still be reinvigorated for wildlife conservation and bringing economic benefit to communities, Rural District Councils (RDCs) and positively contributing to the fiscus.
Zimbabwe faces an increasing incidence of poverty with the poorest areas being wildlife-abundant rural districts where the sustainable use of the wildlife and other natural resources could greatly reduce rural poverty. Campfire is a framework to conserve wildlife and fight poverty by giving rural communities, through their rural districts councils, the authority to manage and use local resources, particularly wildlife, to derive economic benefits.
Despite the significant gains that Campfire has recorded, literature indicates that the current low levels of monetary benefit and local participation, among other problems, have not been significant in alleviating poverty. This has led to increased cases of poaching as the rural communities who live in areas of wildlife abundance slaughter game either for food or to sell the trunks in the case of elephants and rhinos.
In addition some of the poaching rings are now more sophisticated and well-co-ordinated with top of the range firearms and they have even begun to use such dangerous chemicals as cyanide to poison animals and this has had serious negative effects not only to wildlife but also to human beings who have gone on to consume the meat and even to domestic animals that have fallen prey to drinking in these poisoned chalice.
Historical context of Campfire
Zimbabwe instituted Campfire in the late 1980s to promote community-based natural resource management in its rural districts. Over the first decade of its existence, the programme garnered positive reviews and served as a model for similar efforts in Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, and elsewhere (Jones and Murphree 2001).
The Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management (DNPWM) conceived the Campfire programme as a policy response to potential threats to wildlife within and outside national parks (Moyo, 1999). Other leading players in the emergence of Campfire included academics from the University of Zimbabwe’s Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS) and representatives of NGOs, including rural development advocates from ZimTrust and environmentalists from the WWF’s Southern Africa Regional Programme Office (WWF-SARPO) (Muir-Leresche et al, 2003).
Purpose of Campfire
At inception the purpose of Campfire was to promote conservation and development in marginal rural areas where wildlife management represented an opportunity for revenue production but where game populations were threatened. Advocates argued that the future of wildlife could only be guaranteed in a policy context where wildlife constituted an economically competitive form of land use (Murphree, 2001).
Following the principles of Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM), the program’s key underlying assumption is that providing local communities with economic benefits, and involving them in management, will promote the long-term sustainability of wildlife and habitat because the communities will have a vested interest in the conservation of these resources (Hasler, 1999). Campfire also has the beneficial social effect of restoring some aspects of historical and customary rights to wildlife that were expropriated during colonial rule (Murombedzi, 2001). An additional objective of the program was to provide new sources of revenue for the underfunded Rural District Councils (RDCs).
Operational areas for Campfire
In 1988, the Government officially endorsed Campfire projects in two rural districts endowed with significant wildlife populations, Nyaminyami and Guruve (Newsham, 2002). Both districts are located in the wildlife rich Zambezi valley. The Mahenye Campfire program in Chipinge district received authority for wildlife management soon after the first two programme areas.
By the end of 1998, 36 of Zimbabwe’s 56 districts had been granted Appropriate Authority (AA) status. By 2000, however, the number of districts earning revenue from Campfire projects had dropped back to 14 (Muir-Leresche et al, 2003). This decline resulted in part from over-expansion of the Campfire concept into areas that lacked sufficient wildlife populations to sustain trophy hunting or other tourism-related projects.
The districts with fewer valuable trophy animals attempted different programmes based on cultural heritage, natural scenery, game viewing, and bird watching. These types of projects typically take longer to establish and are less likely to be economically viable (Child et al. 1997; Metcalfe 1994; Murombedzi 1999). Game viewing tourism, for example, requires construction of facilities, such as hotels, that entail extensive initial capital investment. Safari hunting, on the other hand, requires minimal fixed infrastructure.
Funding for Campfire
From 1989 to 2000, aid agencies from the European Union, from individual European nations such as the Netherlands, and from the United States provided substantial funding for Campfire. USAID, the largest donor, awarded grants totaling approximately $28million (Muir-Leresche et al, 2003).
Much of the external funding, channelled through the Campfire Association and various other NGOs, was used for outreach, project development, capacity building, monitoring, and evaluation. Over the same period, revenues derived from Campfire in the field nationwide generated a cumulative total of approximately $20 million, of which about half directly benefited participating communities. The remainder of the income was withheld to fund activities of governmental agencies, including the RDCs, the implementing NGOs, and the Campfire Association.
Approximately 90 percent of Campfire revenue was derived from sport hunting, with most of the rest coming from the sale of meat, hides, and other wildlife products (Murphree, 2001). Only about two percent flows from non-consumptive activities such as game viewing. Consequently the earning potential of communities correlates closely with the presence of trophy animals.
Key achievements of Campfire
The economic dimension
The first phase (NRMP1) was for $7,6 million, which funded four districts in Matabeleland. The second phase of support (NRMP-11) beginning in September 1994 was for $20,5 million plus $16 million in bilateral aid. The attraction of this aid by a programme that really had very humble beginnings in villages and wards is a considerable achievement.
Income rose from $349,811 in 1989 to $1,757,978 in 1996, with 92 percent deriving from the lease of sport hunting quotas (of which 60 percent was earned directly from sport-hunted elephant) (Bond and Taylor, 1997). In 1999 an additional form of funding became available as a result of the 1997 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) agreement allowing limited trade in ivory. Five RDCs received funds for the sale of stockpiled ivory that had been stored by the Department of National Parks.
Allocation trends indicate that the revenue is roughly split between communities and the Rural District Councils responsible for natural resources on communal lands. This situation could be changed if legislation empowered local communities to administer their own Campfire projects.
The rural district council portion of the revenue accrues mainly from a levy (15 percent) and a management fee (not to exceed 35 percent). During the period 1989-1996 a total of $16 498 221 was disbursed under the Campfire project. The total dividend to wards during this period was $4 842 318 with an average ward dividend of $34 588. In 1996 a total of 89 475 households received benefits under the programme.
At local level the people who were most satisfied with Campfire were those who had benefited from it meaningfully through household dividends, community projects such as the building of schools, clinics and grinding mills or those who in some official capacity can draw a subsistence allowance or stipend as a game monitor, councillor or ward wildlife committee member. The programme gave most returns to sparsely populated wards and districts adjacent to protected areas. Densely populated wards removed from the core bio-diversity areas gained the least.
Those who oppose and are dissatisfied with the project are those who bear the costs of wildlife presence in terms of crop raiding and or loss of access to former grazing or foraging and hunting areas which have been designated as Campfire resource areas. Frequently these households are the most impoverished and the most dependent on local natural resource harvesting. The ratio between the amount of revenue accruing through donor funding and the amount of revenue generated by the programme itself since its inception is approximately four to one (approximately $45 million in total aid versus $9,4 million in total revenue accrual).
In this regard it can be seen that Campfire was benefiting a lot of households in wildlife rich areas and so in the next article I will then look at other benefits for communities from this programme and how it has been replicated regionally because of its success quantum and how Zimbabwe can reignite this programme for the good of its people.
Butler Tambo is a Policy Analyst who works for the Centre for Public Engagement and can be contacted on [email protected]
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