Last week, we covered the development of CBNRM in East and Southern Africa and why the CBNRM programme was undertaken. This week, we look at Botswana. The idea is to provide insights into whether the recently passed CBNRM Bill upholds the principles of the CBNRM programme or violates it. My impression is that the Bill violates the CBNRM principles hence does not necessarily support the human rights approach currently being the framework of socio-economic and political development in Botswana.
In Botswana, the Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programme was adopted CBNRM in the late 1980s. This was a period when the management of natural resources, particularly wildlife, by the central government was experiencing frequent and chronic declines.
The centralization of natural resources in Botswana had alienated local communities from resource management. In addition, the 1970s and 1980s had shown that traditional approaches to nature protection had become insufficient and ineffective at protecting biodiversity in Botswana. During this era, local communities became excluded from resource management in favour of centralisation and privatisation of resources.
Centralization of natural resources in Botswana thus resulted in the following: negative attitudes of local communities towards sustainable resources use; poaching of wildlife resources; and, the over utilization of resources. CBNRM in Botswana is thus designed to reverse challenges caused by the centralization of natural resources and resource decline.
The CBNRM programme was officially launched in Botswana in 1989. The program was a joint effort between the Government of Botswana and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
In facilitating CBNRM, the Government of Botswana and USAID embarked on a joint Natural Resource Management (NRMP) project housed in the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP). CBNRM was introduced after the realization and acknowledgement that conservation of wildlife resources was not possible without active involvement of rural communities resident within or adjacent to the conservation designated areas such as Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) and Controlled Hunting Areas (CHAs).
CBNRM rests on the recognition that local communities must actively participate in the management of natural resources (wildlife, forests, fish, veld products) and derive a livelihood from them in order to value such resources and use them sustainably. CBNRM in Botswana is thus both a conservation and rural development strategy, involving community mobilization and organization, institutional development, comprehensive training, enterprise development and monitoring of the natural resource base.
As an incentive-based conservation philosophy, CBNRM assumes that for a community to manage its natural resource base sustainably it must receive direct benefits arising from its use. The benefits from natural resources should exceed costs. In addition, some CBNRM in projects in Botswana have collapsed while others have succeeded.
This means CBNRM in Botswana has performed differently based on different projects. That is, CBNRM projects perform differently in achieving its goals of natural resource conservation and rural development. The challenge for CBNRM, therefore, is to document the successes, failures and lessons learned during CBNRM implementation in Botswana. While the CBNRM programme has faced these challenges in Botswana, the current CBNRM Bill will not necessarily address these through its centralisation approach of resource management and utilisation. Maybe, we should re-think on the development of the CBNRM programme going forward in Botswana.
