Is nature-based tourism an effective model for achieving both biodiversity conservation and local economic development in Southern Africa?

We are living in the Anthropocene, an era in which our collective human activities have come to dominate Earth’s natural systems. The biosphere, upon which humanity as a whole depends, is being altered to an unparalleled degree across all spatial scales. Biodiversity – the diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems – is declining faster than at any time in human history (Folke et al., 2021, Rockström et al., 2023). 

According to Almond, Grooten, and Peterson (2020), Biological diversity is vital for species health and livelihoods, but 25% of natural resources are being used beyond the planet's capacity, putting species, habitats, and communities at risk. Reduced biodiversity leads to vulnerable food supplies and short freshwater supplies. Ecosystem services, or "natural capital," are being impacted, causing poor air quality, water scarcity, and reduced resources.

To this end, biodiversity experts predict 30% of species worldwide are threatened or extinct, with tropical habitats having the highest percentage – and if current trends persist, 37% of species could be threatened by 2100 (Almond, Grooten, and Peterson, 2020). However, if conservation investments and efforts are increased today, 25% of species may be in danger by 2100, avoiding the threat of extinction for roughly one in three species (Hooper et al., 2012; Almond, Grooten, and Peterson, 2020).

In the African context, the current population of 1.25 billion people is predicted to double in the next 30 years. One in every two new people added to the planet in this period will be an African (Cobbinah, Erdiaw-Kwasie, and Amoateng, 2015). This human population density, combined with high levels of poverty and heavy reliance on natural resources for survival, is having a devastating impact on Africa’s ecosystems and their biodiversity.

For Southern Africa, the nexus between high levels of poverty and rapid population growth exerts massive pressure on natural resources. According to Biggs et al., (2008), it is anticipated that substantial and continuous reductions in biodiversity would result from the heavy development pressures in southern Africa in the twenty-first century. Apart from the poverty-induced developmental challenges, there is also a massive pressure to shift land use models from protected areas to crop and farmlands as a result of agriculture expansion, and livestock production (Biggs et al., 2008). This contributes significantly to the loss of biodiversity. 

This double-edged crisis of poverty and underdevelopment as well as biodiversity loss means that the success of biodiversity conservation in southern Africa is highly dependent on its ability to also contribute to the local economic development - especially in areas adjacent to the protected wildlife areas.

To this end, nature-based tourism is largely regarded as one of the most effective models in achieving both biodiversity conservation and local economic development goals (Gupta et al., 2023; Samal and Dash, 2022).  Due to its non-consumptive nature and character, and its propensity to go hand-in-hand with biodiversity conservation, nature-based tourism is a relatively more sustainable land-use model compared to other models such as industrial agriculture, mining, logging, etc.

Moreover, because of its employment creation potential, nature-based tourism carries an ability to alleviate rural poverty – among other things. Namibia’s Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBRNM) programme – which is the government initiative that aims to sustainably manage natural resources in shared pools through conservation efforts – is an example of how nature-based tourism model can achieve the dual goals of conservation and development.  The key objective of the CBNRM is to improve the rural livelihoods through incentivising their management of resources, while at the same time contribute to biodiversity conservation and restoration. According to Lendelvo, et al., (2020), the CBRNM programme has been a success in terms ensuring that rural communities in Namibia grow their incomes and capabilities through community-based conservation and tourism.  This growth in income is parallel with successful wildlife conservation efforts in Namibia - evidence with the increased population in many wildlife species that are found within these communally owned and managed conservancies.  To this end, Kaelo et al., (2020) enunciate that in 2019, these community-based conservancies yielded around USD 11 million returns in wildlife benefits and over 5,000 jobs for the surrounding communities. 

At the macro level, biodiversity conservation strategies ought not be pursued in isolation, but rather should be developed in collaboration with country’s and even provincial and local developmental initiatives - involving diverse stakeholders in broader deliberative processes (Biggs et al., 2008). Local community participation in this deliberative process is pivotal because local communities have a better understanding and appreciation of their contexts and needs.  

Furthermore, nature-based tourism is often extolled for its potential to substantially increase the financial returns to the local communities, especially those living adjacent to the protected, wildlife areas (Mbaiwa, 2017). Most importantly, communities living adjacent to the protected areas are custodians of these natural resources and are therefore pivotal to the sustainable management of natural resources, thus biodiversity conservation. In addition, as illustrated by the CBRNM example, nature-based tourism has enormous potential to boost rural economies and provide people with the tools they need to manage resources for long-term social, economic, and ecological benefits. This creates a positive feedback loop that lowers rural poverty and protects biodiversity. Therefore - adversely, if nature-based tourism fails to contribute demonstrably to meeting the economic and developmental needs of these communities through community resilience programs, it is unlikely that these communities will take ownership and responsibility for protecting and sustainably managing natural resources in the protected areas.  According to Mbaiwa (2017:107), “Local people tend to support the wise use of natural resources such as wildlife in their local environment if they derive socio-economic benefits from them”.

Additionally, community support and buy-in occur inevitably when the socioeconomic benefits of nature-based tourism outweigh the opportunity costs, or when the benefits of nature-based tourism outweigh the benefits that would have resulted from an alternative land-use model (Winkler and Zimmermann, 2015). This point is especially pivotal in instances when communities are the core owners, and custodians of these protected areas because these communities might consider alternate land use models - such as mining or agriculture - if they receive little to no benefit from nature-based tourism. What this means is that community benefits from nature-based tourism ought to transcend the often-extolled job creation potential but extend to the accentuation of the importance of building community resilience models that ensure that the entire system does not collapse.   Unfortunately, the reality of the tourism industry in the Southern African context is that most communities living adjacent to the protected areas most of whom are the landowners, are still facing high levels of poverty, inequality and gross underdevelopment.  According to Mnisi and Ramoroka (2020), these communities have remained underdeveloped for many years now and their socioeconomic standing is incompatible with the objectives of sustainable community development, which includes - but are not limited to - eradicating poverty, guaranteeing the development of skills, gender parity, high-quality education, and minimizing hunger. In most instances, this glaring failure to improve community livelihoods is a result of the way that the partnership programmes between the private sector nature-based tourism companies and local communities are structured and devised.  According to Sullivan (2006), most of such agreements and therefore outcomes are less inclined towards meaningful community empowerment and resource distribution and more geared towards the creation of favourable conditions for luxury tourist consumerism and extractivism.

According to Mbaiwa (2017), the tourism industry’s weak backward and forward linkages with the domestic economies in southern Africa are one of the pivotal reasons why nature-based tourism has not succeeded in making significant contributions to the rural development of most countries in southern Africa. Moreover, the propensity of the tourism sector to have a positive influence on local economic development is often weakened by the frequent occurrence of high levels of external leakage which relates to the failure of tourist expenditure to remain in the local economy in the protected areas (Rogerson and Rogerson, 2014). To this end, the external leakages are the financial outflows, in the form of expenditure, away from the destinations where tourism takes place, but elsewhere.  An example of this is the supply chains of the luxury lodges an d camps that are located in the protected areas. Most of these lodges and camps do not procure their goods and services from local communities and local enterprises, but rather from far away cities and towns.

For Lindsey et al., (2013) and Snyman (2012), these external income leakages are accentuated by the fact that the protected areas in which most nature-based tourism companies operate invariably face two key socio-economic challenges, such as limited access to quality education as well as little to no opportunity for economic activities.

Thus, it is evident that the absence of the proliferation of the local capacity to furnish necessary skills, food and other supplies which are demanded by tourism enterprises - is one of the important reasons for the high levels of external leakages as well as the absence of strong linkages between the tourism sector and the local economies in southern Africa (Rogerson and Rogerson, 2014).

Therefore, if we follow the logic of Mbaiwa, Lindsay et al., Snyman as well as Rogerson and Rogerson, the key to nature-based tourism’s success in significantly contributing to local community resilience is the establishment of strong backward and forward linkages between the southern African local economies and the nature-based tourism sector.

This will ensure that the tourism revenues also contribute to the development of other sectors such as agriculture, transport, manufacturing, etc.  Moreover, the prioritisation of skills development and high levels of education in the local communities adjacent to the protected areas is fundamental for the reduction of external income leakages out of the local economy where these protected areas are located. In essence, these two macro-level efforts could result in a huge potential for the local economies and communities around protected areas to derive tangible economic benefits from nature-based tourism.

However, most of what is possible and practical for local community development in these protected areas lies at the micro-level – thus, within and among the private sector players within the nature-tourism sector.  These companies typically have significant influence over communities and local government authorities alike due to their status as employment providers and taxpayers. Therefore, they have a massive ability to drive the needle through their capacity to efficiently allocate resources – among other things. Moreover, since these private commercial companies directly derive economic profits from these protected areas, it should be their immediate priority to ensure that they build trust and goodwill (a social license to operate) with the local communities who are often landowners in which these companies operate. Failure to do so might subsequently lead to the weakening of the entire system's resilience because impoverished rural communities that live in these protected areas may subsequently drive many of the conservation issues that threaten biodiversity and ecosystem function.  Thereby threatening the very legitimacy of nature-based tourism as an important approach to biodiversity conservation.

Lastly, nature-based tourism entities that operate and extract profits from these protected areas in southern Africa need to urgently prioritise efforts that would ensure that livelihoods of the local communities living adjacent to the protected areas radically improve.  Evidently, if these communities continue to be the isolated patches of poverty and destitution within the affluent "tourist enclaves" that are housing luxury tourism enterprises such as lodges and camps, this renders the very industry precarious and vulnerable to rejection.  If the status quo continues, local communities are likely to seriously consider rejecting nature-based tourism as an effective land-use model for community resilience. This also threatens the status of nature-based tourism as a best and all-encompassing strategy for biodiversity conservation and community development.

To this end, and because of the complex nature of biodiversity conservation and local economic development, business as usual leadership approaches and even incremental change by the nature-based tourism private sector companies and government bodies, are not adequate to achieve the desired outcomes. In other words, for the systems-level transformation of the nature-based tourism and its potential to unlock true local economic development, a complete deviation from the currently dominant old-fashioned mainstream and hierarchical leadership approaches within its ranks is essential.

These novel approaches are necessary to catalyse and facilitate the transition from a cosmetic, and “employment-centric” community developmental optics to a systems-wide transformation that is predicated on building social-ecological resilience. Such approaches include, but not limited to – inclusivity and collaborative efforts among a variety of unlikely and divergent industry players, sectors, communities, companies, organisations, regions, and even countries.

REFERENCES

Almond, R.E., Grooten, M. and Peterson, T., 2020. Living Planet Report 2020-Bending the curve of biodiversity loss. World Wildlife Fund.

Biggs, R., Simons, H., Bakkenes, M., Scholes, R.J., Eickhout, B., van Vuuren, D. and Alkemade, R., 2008. Scenarios of biodiversity loss in southern Africa in the 21st century. Global Environmental Change, 18(2), pp.296-309.

Cobbinah, P.B., Erdiaw-Kwasie, M.O. and Amoateng, P., 2015. Africa’s urbanisation: Implications for sustainable development. Cities, 47, pp.62-72.

Folke, C., Polasky, S., Rockström, J., Galaz, V., Westley, F., Lamont, M., Scheffer, M., Österblom, H., Carpenter, S.R., Chapin, F.S. and Seto, K.C., 2021. Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere. Ambio, 50, pp.834-869.

Gupta, A., Zhu, H., Bhammar, H., Earley, E., Filipski, M., Narain, U., Spencer, P., Whitney, E. and Taylor, J.E., 2023. Economic impact of nature-based tourism. Plos one, 18(4), p.e0282912.

Hooper, D.U., Adair, E.C., Cardinale, B.J., Byrnes, J.E., Hungate, B.A., Matulich, K.L., Gonzalez, A., Duffy, J.E., Gamfeldt, L. and O’Connor, M.I., 2012. A global synthesis reveals biodiversity loss as a major driver of ecosystem change. Nature, 486(7401), pp.105-108.

Kaelo, D., Sopia, D., Bell, D., Diggle, R. and Nelson, F., 2020. From crisis to solutions for communities and African conservation (commentary). Online: https://news.mongabay.com/by/dickson-kaelo-daniel-sopia-damian-bell-richard-diggle-andfred-nelson/.[Accessed 04 November 2023].

Lendelvo, S.M., 2020. A perfect storm? The impact of COVID-19 on community-based conservation in Namibia.

Mbaiwa, J.E., 2017. Poverty or riches: Who benefits from the booming tourism industry in Botswana?. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 35(1), pp.93-112.

Mnisi, P. and Ramoroka, T., 2020. Sustainable community development: A review On The socio-economic status Of communities practicing ecotourism In South Africa. International Journal Of Economics And Finance, 12(2), pp.505-519.

Rockström, J., Gupta, J., Qin, D., Lade, S.J., Abrams, J.F., Andersen, L.S., Armstrong McKay, D.I., Bai, X., Bala, G., Bunn, S.E. and Ciobanu, D., 2023. Safe and just Earth system boundaries. Nature, pp.1-10.

Rogerson, J.M. and Rogerson, C.M., 2014. Maximising the local development potential of Nature Tourism accommodation establishments in South Africa. African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure, 3(1), pp.1-20.

Samal, R. and Dash, M., 2022. Ecotourism, biodiversity conservation, and local livelihoods: Understanding the convergence and divergence. International Journal of Geoheritage and Parks.

Winkler, T. and Zimmermann, F., 2015. Ecotourism as community development tool–development of an evaluation framework. Current Issues of Tourism Research, 4(2), pp.45-56.