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June 2007 |
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Tourism Companies Join Forces with Local Communities to Preserve Premier African Wildlife Area The Okavango Delta in Botswana boasts some of the most magnificent game viewing in Africa. These attractions draw a lucrative tourism industry, mostly in exclusive hunting and photo safaris, as Botswana has adopted a ‘high-cost, low-volume’ tourism approach. Tourism from the Ngamiland district, one of the most popular safari destinations, brings important revenue to the country: over $200 million a year.
The Okavango wetlands, the largest Ramsar site in the world, also provide important natural resources and ecological services to an estimated 120,000 people living in local communities, who rely on the wetland’s resources as part of their household economy. About 47 percent of communities living in and around the Delta officially live below the $2-a-day poverty line, although goods and services from the wetlands can contribute as much as $1,200 annually to household economies. Degradation of the wetlands, through unsustainable development of tourist infrastructure or overuse of veldt products, would therefore have severe negative implications for community welfare, as well as for the tourism industry and regional biodiversity. In response to this situation, the GEF and United Nations Development Programme have launched the Building Local Capacity for Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity in the Okavango Delta project (also known as Botswana Wetlands) to secure the long-term biological diversity of Botswana’s wetlands. The project seeks to balance competing uses of land, water, and other wetland resources, while providing for biodiversity conservation objectives. The project is bringing rural communities and tourism operators together to create community and private sector-based management models for the Okavango Delta ecosystems. It is working with established tourism operators in the region, locally-based private sector tourism partners (community lodges, fishing groups and craft producers), community groups, industry associations (including those for fishermen, wildlife management, hotels, and tourism), craft cooperatives, environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the Tribal Land Board and District Councils, who reinvest tourism resource royalties in human development projects. It is establishing communications channels for a two-way flow of biodiversity information between stakeholders. In areas where tourism activities clash with local veldt resource harvesting needs, the project will encourage participatory management and appoint an arbitrator to deal with conflicts. The project will also encourage the tourism industry to re-invest in wetland biodiversity and introduce biodiversity-friendly management into both sport and commercial fishing. In the water sector, a vital concern, the project will develop hydrological models, including biodiversity parameters for the Okavango Delta, and strengthen institutional capacity to regulate water resources harvesting. It will also establish a wetlands monitoring and risk analysis system. Working with conservation NGOs, including the World Conservation Union and the Kalahari Conservation Society, the project will identify gaps in the protected area system and integrate national Important Bird Area (IBA) networks into the national protected area network, thus, contributing to a consolidated, cohesive and sustainable protected area system throughout the Okavango Delta and helping strengthen the protected areas system throughout Africa. All of the elements of the project together will help preserve one of Africa’s finest wildlife areas. Photo credit: Curt Carnemark |
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