Citizen Participation in the Lodge Sector of the Okavango Delta - Responsible Tourism: Critical Issues for Conservation and Development - page 212

empowerment across a suite of categories (including ownership, employment,
procurement, etc.). Many of the leases to the Okavango's prime areas are due to
expire shortly; their imminent reallocation represents a strategic opportunity to
advance citizen participation by integrating conditions promoting broad-based
citizen participation into the new agreements.
This recommendation needs to be carefully qualified. While it is a critical
function of government to create an enabling environment for greater citizen
participation, it is nevertheless important that it does not adopt policies and
practices that inhibit the market or create new opportunities for passive rent
collecting by politically connected local elites. The policy test faced by the
Botswana authorities is therefore to find an approach that encourages broad-
based - especially local - citizen participation but avoids being so onerous and
bureaucratic that it stifles the industry or forces it into a set of narrow alliances
with a few powerful local individuals. Tourism - especially the high value lodge
sector - depends on continual innovation and external linkages. The difficult but
vital challenge is to use government's land leasing system to leverage greater
citizen inclusion while continuing to foster the extraordinary success of the
Okavango in international tourism markets. Importantly, this does not involve a
turning away from outward-oriented, private sector-led tourism in the Okavango
Delta. In this sense, it seeks to avoid the 'strategic mistake' referred to by Mitchell
and Ashley (2006). Instead of advocating a withdrawal into 'alternative' forms of
small-scale tourism, it promotes practical measures to use public 'planning gain'
in the interest of greater local integration into the sector. In effect, it challenges
government to use its position as public custodian to promote greater citizen
participation while continuing to foster a sector that already generates significant
economic activity in one of the remotest corners of Botswana.

Note

1 US$1 = 5.5371 Pula on 1 June 2005.

References

Adams, J. S. and McShane, T. O. (1996) The Myth of Wild Africa - Conservation Without
Illusion , University of California Press, Los Angeles
Ashley, C., Boyd, C. and Goodwin, H. (2000) 'Pro-poor tourism: Putting poverty at the
heart of the tourism agenda', Natural Resource Perspectives , no 61, Overseas
Development Institute, London
Mafisa (2002) 'African game lodges and rural benefit: Key findings of six southern
African case studies,' www.mafisa.co.za, accessed 20 July 2005
Massyn, P. J. and Koch, E. (2004) 'African game lodges and rural benefit in two southern
African countries', in C. Rogerson and G. Visser (eds), Tourism and Development Issues
in Contemporary South Africa , Africa Institute of South Africa, Pretoria, pp102-138