Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pjpqr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T04:57:34.861Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Is There Hope for Conservation in Africa?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

John Cartwright
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science, University of Western Ontario, London.

Extract

The listing of the African elephant in Appendix I to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in late 1989 provided a dramatic indicator of the overwhelming pressures threatening the natural heritage of a number of states in Africa. While both their leaders and international organisations express concern about the longterm environmental stability of many areas, the more immediate economic difficulties in producing enough food and obtaining sufficient foreign exchange to finance essential imports and service debts mean that effective conservation measures have been largely neglected.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The international community's official view of the economic crisis, the World Bank's Sub-Saharan Africa: from crisis to sustainable growth (Washington, D.C., 1989),Google Scholar scarcely mentions environmental degradation in its litany of problems. Cf. more ‘ecological’ perspectives, such as Lloyd, Timberlake, Africa in Crisis: the causes, the cures of environmental bankruptcy (London, 1988).Google Scholar

2 Some people might still argue that the western industrialised states have disrupted almost all their natural eco-systems and managed to prosper by doing so. However, it is coming to be recognised today that their extensive ‘mining’ of timber and high-input, soil-depleting agricultural practices are simply not sistainable over more than a few more decades, as even the very cautious, middle-of-the-road Bruntland report makes clear. See the World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford and New York, 1987).Google ScholarPubMed

3 For a summary of the genetic benefits from rainforests, see Myers, Norman, The Primary Source: tropical forests and our future (New York, 1984), pp. 209–25.Google Scholar

4 Mgeni, Aaron S. M., ‘The Future of Traditional Tanzanian Pharmacology’, in Impact of Science on Society (Paris), 143, 1986, pp. 297306.Google Scholar

5 Anadu, P. A., Elamah, P. O., and Oates, J. F., ‘The Bushmeat Trade in Southwestern Nigeria: a case study’, in Human Ecology (New York), 16, 2, 06 1988, pp. 199209.Google Scholar

6 For the economic benefits of wildlife tourism, see Thresher, Philip, ‘The Present Value of an Amboseli Lion’, in World Animal Review (Rome), 40, 1981, pp. 30–3.Google Scholar

7 Parker, Ian S. C., ‘Game Cropping in the Serengeti Region’, in Parks (Washington, D.C.), 12, 2, 1987, pp. 1213.Google Scholar

8 For examples of eco-tourism that have not done damage to existing social institutions, see Breslin, Patrick and Chapin, Mac, ‘Land-Saving, Kuna Style’, in Audubon Magazine (New York), 86, 6, 11 1984, pp. 40–3,Google Scholar and Young, A. M., ‘Eco-Enterprises: eco-tourism and farming of exotics in the tropics’, in Ambio (Elmsford, N.Y.), 15, 1986, pp. 361–3.Google Scholar For more general (and more ambivalent) views of tourism in Africa, see Mkali, H. H., ‘Two Sides of the Tourism Coin’, in Africa (London), 168, 08 1985, pp. 44–5,Google Scholar and Harrell-Bond, Barbara, ‘A “Window” on an Outside World: tourism as development in the Gambia’, in American Universities Field Staff Reports (Hanover, NH), No. 19, Africa series, 1978.Google Scholar

9 Western, David, ‘Amboseli National Park: enlisting landowners to conserve migratory wildlife’, in Ambio, 11, 1982, pp. 302–8.Google Scholar

10 For Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire, see Rich, Bruce, ‘Greenspeak’, in New Internationalist (Oxford), 214, 12 1990, p. 13. The Cameroon situation has been the subject of considerable correspondence between the World Bank and such non-governmental organisations as the Environmental Defence Fund (United States) and Probe International (Canada).Google Scholar

11 See Picard, Louis A., The Politics of Development in Botswana: a model for success? (Boulder, 1987), p. 244.Google Scholar

12 I have serious reservations about the arguments advanced by several contributors to David, Anderson and Richard, Grove (eds.), Conservation in Africa: people, policies and practice (Cambridge, 1987),Google Scholar that local people can be left to co-exist with wildlife as they have always done, taking some animals for ‘bushmeat’ or ceremonial uses, but not wiping out the breeding stock. By way of contrast, Kjekshus, Helge, Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History (London, 1977), pp. 70–8, documents the paucity of observable wildlife in the region during the nineteenth century. Since populations are increasing, as are incentives to acquire cash from the consumptive exploitation of wildlife, humans and wildlife will not co-exist for long in the absence of some formalised system of protection.Google Scholar

13 International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, IUCN Directory of Afrotropical Protected Areas (Gland, Switzerland, 1987), pp. 932–3.Google Scholar

14 Stuart Marks has been particularly forceful in arguing this view in The Imperial Lion: human dimensions of wildlife management in Central Africa (Boulder, 1984), especially pp. 127ff.Google Scholar

15 It remains to be seen whether President Kaunda and other leaders of U.N.I.P. will honour the pledge to institute a multi-party state as a result of the attempted coup at the end of June 1990, and if so, whether this will improve the economic situation. For an overview of Zambia's politics since independence, see Burdette, Marcia. Zambia: between two worlds (Boulder, 1988),Google Scholar and for a critical look at the régime's handling of its economy, see Good, Kenneth, ‘Debt and the One-Party State in Zambia’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 27, 2, 06 1989, pp. 297313.Google Scholar

16 According to Republic of Zambia, , New Economic Recovery Programme: Fourth National Development Plan, 1989–1993, Vols. I and II (Lusaka, 1989), pp. 6 and 4, the average earnings of employees in the formal sector rose from Kwacha 2,770 in 1980 to K 3,080 in 1987, while the composite consumer index rose from 203·7 to 1,110·4, or roughly five times as much. In the much larger informal sector, the discrepancy was at least as severe, since many of the universal services such as public health and bus transportation were breaking down at the same time.Google Scholar

17 Luangwa Integrated Rural Development Project, ‘1989 Progress Report: highlights’, Chipata, 20 April 1989.

18 See ‘The Tropical Forestry Action Plan, Joint Interagency Planning and Review Mission for the Forestry Sector, Cameroon. Mission Report’, Vols. I-III, Rome, 1988, and the critique by the Environmental Defence Fund, ‘The Tropical Forestry Action Plan: a case study of the TFAP for the West African state of the Cameroon’, Washington, D.C., April 1990.

19 Cloutier, Antoine and Dufresne, Alain, ‘Park national de Korup: plan de gestion préliminaire, mai 1986’, produced by Parks Canada, in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.Google Scholar

20 Lewis, Damien, ‘The Conservation Alternative’, in West Africa (London), 4–10 12 1989, pp. 2008–10.Google ScholarPubMed

21 Infeld, Mark, ‘Hunting, Trapping and Fishing in Villages within and on the Periphery of the Korup National Park’, Korup National Park Socio-Economic Survey for World Wide Fund for Nature, Godalming, Surrey, August 1988.Google Scholar

22 John, and Heather (McLeod) Parrott, ‘Kilum Mountain Forest Project. Quarterly Reports, March–April 1988’, International Council for Bird Preservation, Girton, England.Google Scholar

23 Although no system of selective logging has yet proved to be sustainable, the method of very small-scale strip cutting currently being tested at Palcazu in Peru by Gary Hartshorn and associates seems promising, because they come very close to emulating natural forest regeneration processes. See Equinox (Camden East, Ontario), 51, 0506 1990, pp. 154–7, for a brief description of this system.Google Scholar

24 See the Environmental Defence Fund, Trip Report of the Visit to Cameroon, June 23 to July 2, 1990’, Washington, D.C., especially pp. 45.Google Scholar

25 See Page, Diana, ‘Debt-for-Nature Swaps: experience gained, lessons learned’, in International Environmental Affairs (Hanover, NH), 1, 4, 1989, pp. 275–88;Google Scholar also Bramble, Barbara J., ‘The Debt Crisis: the opportunities’, in The Ecologist (Camelford, Cornwall), 17, 4–5, 0711 1987, pp. 192–9.Google Scholar

26 Rubinoff, Ira, ‘A Strategy for Preserving Tropical Rainforests’, in Ambio, 12, 5, 1983, pp. 255–8.Google Scholar

27 The complexities of the interaction between financial incentives and cultural values are discussed with reference to the Maasai and Kenya's Amboseli National Park by David Collet, ‘Pastoralists and Wildlife: image and reality in Kenya Maasailand’, and Linday, W. K., ‘Integrating Parks and Pastoralists: some lessons from Amboseli’, in Anderson, and Grove, (eds.), op. cit. pp. 129–48 and 149–67, respectively.Google Scholar

28 Hedlund, Stefan and Lundahl, Mats, Ideology as a Determinant of Economic Systems: Nyerere and Ujamaa in Tanzania (Uppsala, 1989), pp. 3441.Google Scholar