Transfrontier Conservation Governance, Communal People’s Rights and Value Discourses:Whose Resources and Who Governs?

This paper is based on a thesis literature section of a doctoral research undertaken in Sengwe and Makuleke communities in Zimbabwe and South Africa respectively. The study was done from 2010 to 2012. The two communities are integral to a transfrontier/transboundary conservation initiative known as the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. The paper examines complexities of natural resource rights in order to understand various community resource claims as they relate to competing multi-level institutional resource governance and stakeholder interests. It is imperative to underscore that transfrontier conservation in Southern Africa instituted fundamental changes on natural resource accessibility and utilization of the same resources by surrounding communities. An observation was made that the ownership structure created by transfrontier multi-scale conservation processes, are clearly state-centric and favour private ownership as opposed to reposing tenurial rights and power manage the resources in the hands of communities adjacent to these natural resources. This has put resource claims by the local people on a collision path with governmental and other conservation experts. Communal ownership that exist at the local level as mechanisms o mediate human-environment relationships, have were substituted by private and state ownership. Thus, undermining local collaboration in conservation management and natural resource governance at the local level. Communal ownership is viewed pejoratively, and at worst, blamed for overexploitation of resources arising out of Garret Hardin’s “the tragedy of the commons” theory (1968). This paper also assets that the process of governance and exclusionary processes, have also disenfranchises communities in what is claimed as ‘tragedy of the common man’ as opposed to Hardin’s theory. From transfrontier conservation ideological manifestations to practical application, communal ownership in the African setting has been treated as synonymous with “open access,” to resources, which it is not by all its definitions. This paper argues that transfrontier conservation redefinition of property rights, apart from being exclusionary, poses challenges of sidestepping local claims by reposing conservation responsibilities on private ownership and the state as the viable options. This overlooks the role played by communities to contribute meaningfully towards conservation. Through the lens of the positivist, classical liberal theory and utilitarian theory, analysis of psychological mapping of human behaviour regarding natural resource rights and claims using the Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics, the paper evaluates and validates local claims against hypothetical considerations.