the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

esource management away from costly state-centred control towards approaches in
which local people play a much more active role. These reforms aim to increase
resource user participation in natural resource management decisions and benefits
by restructuring the power relations between central state and communities through
the transfer of management authority to local-level organisations (Shackleton et ai,
2002).
For most of the past century, conservation efforts were focused on high profile
species and habitats. Over the decades this view changed to encompass
biodiversity and biological processes beyond the realm of protected areas and into
the rural areas - one of the main locations of conservation problems. The
experiences gained in the management of natural resources the world over have
demonstrated that conventional approaches to the conservation of these resources,
in particular the enforcement of conservation laws and other attempts to protect
individual species, have not had the desired effect in safe-guarding the welfare and
continued existence of species (Cassidy and Jansen, 1999).
In the late 1970s there was a shift in conservation thinking, which led to a grass­
roots approach to conservation. This approach is based on the concept that rural
communities depend for their livelihoods on the sustainable use of natural resources
such as soil, water, rangelands, wildlife, etc. This community-based conservation
strategy stands in contrast to the existing top-down approach to conservation, and
has also focused attention on the people who bear the costs of conservation. This
new approach to conservation advocates for a mix of traditional and modern natural
resource management practices (Cassidy and Jansen, 1999).
In Southern Africa, the common name for this community-based conservation
approach is Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), which has
now evolved into what can be regarded as a full-scale movement. As an attempt to
find new solutions to the failure of top-down approaches, CBNRM rests on the
recognition that local communities must be given full tenurial rights over the
utilisation and benefits of natural resources in order to value them in a sustainable
manner. This approach entails community institution building, comprehensive
training, enterprise development, policy negotiation, and natural resource
management skills, among other forms of assistance (Cassidy and Jansen, 1999).
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