Implications of Responsible Tourism for Conservation and Development in Southern Africa - Responsible Tourism: Critical Issues for Conservation and Development - page 343

the capacity to strategically develop sustainable tourism that may support the
costs of conservation management, while also providing employment and entre-
preneurial opportunities for poor people in developing countries (BSP, 1999). In
southern Africa, agencies including the Peace Parks Foundation, Conservation
International, the African Wildlife Foundation and the World Bank have programs
to support the sustainable development of TFCAs (Spenceley, 2008a). Using
frameworks like Suich's, transparent evaluation of the impacts of these areas will
be invaluable in establishing their effectiveness, a replication of her model has
already begun in the Great Limpopo TFCA (Spenceley et al, 2008). It will be
important to replicate Suich's evaluation once the KAZA TFCA has become
more established to determine what impact the area has had, and also to under-
take similar studies in other TFCAs in the region.
In his review of the impacts of wildlife tourism on conservation and develop-
ment in Botswana, Joseph Mbaiwa provides an evaluation of a country that has
been at the forefront of low-volume, high-value wildlife tourism in areas of
extreme poverty.The reasons he cites for the success experienced in Botswana are
the participation of local communities in ecotourism through community-based
organizations (CBOs); employment; income generation; investment in commu-
nity development and the empowerment of people in conservation and tourism.
Through the CBOs, communities in Botswana have seemingly become truly
capacitated to manage natural resources and tourism businesses. However, he
states the revenue which is distributed annually to individual households from
tourism based on communal land in the Okavango Delta is so small that it can
only be considered as supplementary income to most people. Some of the
communities have re-invested ecotourism revenues into new tourism enterprises
and community development projects like water provision; scholarships; sport
activities; office equipment, and assistance for orphans, the elderly and disabled
people. However, there are also problems of unfair or inequitable distribution of
benefits in some areas. Despite this, positive attitudes resulting from ecotourism
benefits are related to lower levels of poaching, when compared with non-
ecotourism areas. These conservation benefits are led by the community
members, who employ community escort guides to enforce agreed environmental
management regulations. However, Mbaiwa recognizes that local community
members rarely have access to the same resources and understanding of the
tourism industry as foreign private-sector businesses, and therefore local investors
find it difficult to compete with them. This is particularly relevant to an under-
standing of entrepreneurship, access to finance, and skills in marketing and
promotion. Although joint-venture partnerships do occur, the system is weak and
partnerships rarely include a significant transfer of business skills to the commu-
nity. Mbaiwa's chapter shows that although in some villages ecotourism provides
substantial benefits to poor people, and considerable conservation benefits, there
are still areas for improvement. Business skills and administrative controls are
required, and new policies to reserve certain tourism activities (e.g. guest houses,
mobile safaris, etc) for communities will promote more local engagement with
ecotourism.