Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
partners are in place. However this has proven to be a weakness in terms of
village-based service delivery, where the municipality see the Makuleke as a rich
community that are not a priority for development.
Geographical location
In terms of geographical location the case studies illustrate clearly that some areas
have better opportunities to develop a good tourism attraction than others. The
Makuleke case has a variety of clear advantages over the Richtersveld. Besides its
location, its private tourist operators have also made an airstrip available for
tourists to fly into the area.
Clear tenure rights
The Makuleke have been lucky in their land claim procedures. The uncertainties
and delays encountered by the Richtersveld Land Claim and the corresponding
tedious legal battle undoubtedly has affected and will continue to affect the
community's development possibilities in many ways.
General lessons learned
In terms of dealing with institutional arrangements and benefit-sharing arrange-
ments, we have experienced a variety of possible scenarios, and the lesson is that
for each case a particular strategy and approach must be created. No blue print
solution exists. In the end the implementing agency is also helpless to a certain
extent.
CBO's without financial capacity will implode
From some perspectives common property arrangements seem to be incompatible
with nature conservation and rural development. TRANSFORM's cases show that
there are at least potential lessons to be extracted out of its experiences. Community
issues seem to intrinsically collide with western ideas of business and financial
management. Hence effective businesses run by communities seem to be contradic-
tions in terms, but best practices from cases implemented should be extracted and
evaluated. The fact is that if the community does not manage its financial resources
well it will fail. In many cases if it were not for a few constant individuals with good
leadership capacities fuelling the CPAs, everything might just fall apart.
Private partners must see the community and their
culture as an asset
Experiences with private sector investors have shown that unless the private
partner sees and integrates rural development and community empowerment into
the product and approach, all the efforts towards benefit sharing and joint
management will simply be felt as an added burden that slows down the business.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search