Local perceptions on poverty and conservation in a community-based natural resource program area: a case study of Beitbridge district, southern Zimbabwe (original) (raw)
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The CAMPFIRE program in Zimbabwe is one of a `new breed' of strategies designed to tackle environmental management at the grassroots level. CAMPFIRE aims to help rural communities to manage their resources, especially wildlife, for their own local development. The program's central objective is to alleviate rural poverty by giving rural communities autonomy over resource management and to demonstrate to them that wildlife is not necessarily a hindrance to arable agriculture, “but a resource that could be managed and `cultivated' to provide income and food”. In this paper, we assess two important elements of CAMPFIRE: poverty alleviation and local empowerment and comment on the program's performance in achieving these highly interconnected objectives. We analyze the program's achievements in poverty alleviation by exploring tenurial patterns, resource ownership and the allocation of proceeds from resource exploitation; and its progress in local empowerment by examining its administrative and decision making structures. We conclude that the program cannot effectively achieve the goal of poverty alleviation without first addressing the administrative and legal structures that underlie the country's political ecology.
An assessment of local people’s participation in natural resources conservation in southern Zimbabwe
We assessed the participation of local people in community-based natural resources management under the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) in southern Zimbabwe. We focused on four randomly selected CAMPFIRE communities surrounding Gonarezhou National Park. Data were collected in October 2013 through semi-structured questionnaires administered through interviews. Our results showed that there were significantly more men than women in the CAMPFIRE committees. Surprisingly, we recorded that no youths, those below the age of 25 years, were part of the CAMPFIRE committees. CAMPFIRE committee members across the study area were within the age range of 25–60 years. We therefore recommend that: (i) youths should be deliberately included in management committees focussing on natural resources conservation, and (ii) conservation awareness and education needs to be streamlined and enhanced to improve attitudes of both the elderly and youths toward community-...
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In the past ten years in Zimbabwe, there has been an increasing commitment at the policy level to decentralised management of natural resources (seen particularly in the CAMPFIRE programme) and to the process of economic empowerment of rural communities. The belief that the optimal route towards environmental sustainability is not through rehabilitative measures aimed at restoring and preserving the natural resource base, but through a commercialisation of those resources in such a way that they become valued commodities, has become widely accepted. This has resulted in the burgeoning of development programmes which have income generation from indigenous natural resources as their base. SAFIRE (Southern Alliance For Indigenous Resources) is a Zimbabwean development agency dedicated to the development of rural self-sufficiency through the improved management of natural resources. In its new MITI (Managing our Indigenous Tree Inheritance) programme, which extends the scope of communit...
Open Journal of Ecology
The study assessed women's participation in the Communal Area Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) activities in southeast Zimbabwe. The study collected data using an interview questionnaire administered to five CAMPFIRE committees in October 2014. There were relatively no differences in the selected attributes on CAMPFIRE committee composition across the five study communities i.e., 1) the number of people and their level of education, and 2) gender and age composition. There were more men (5 ± 0.11) than women (2 ± 0.02) in CAMPFIRE program committees across the five study communities. Men dominate leadership and decision making over CAMPFIRE in southeastern Zimbabwe. Yet, it is the women who use most of the natural resources at household level, such as game meat, wild fruits and wild vegetables as relish, fuel wood as source of energy for cooking, and baskets woven from woodland products. It was concluded that despite all the benefits that a gender sensitive approach could bring to CAMPFIRE, women participation in CAMPFIRE programs in southeast Zimbabwe was still low as evidenced by their numbers in committees that make decisions for the program. There was need for deliberate action to ensure increased women participation in CAMPFIRE programs, especially at the decision-making level. A certain number of committee positions in CAMPFIRE should be reserved for women.
Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE public investments: impact on education, adaptation and preferences
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The thesis investigates household economic and behavioural implications of public investments funded by communal based wildlife management programmes, such as Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) in Zimbabwe. The thesis focuses on household education and adaptive capacity production. It further investigates determinants of programme stated preferences and behaviour thereof in communal areas of Zimbabwe, using the case of Dande communal area in Mbire district. Since its inception in the late 1980s, there has been debate over the adequacy of the implementation of the CAMPFIRE programme in effecting economic and behavioural change in the respective communities. However, most of the assessments focused on household financial gains, poverty reduction and inequality. Results show that little financial gains accrue to the respective households, with poverty and inequality remaining high. This thesis argues that the main development trajectory in communiti...
The threat that uncertainty creates incentives for accelerated rates of use of environmental resources creates the need for institutions that constrain human actions. Ultimately, economic development depends on institutions that can protect and maintain the environment's carrying capacity and resilience. 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. With refor...