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58 GLOBAL-LOCAL LINKAGES … 5 Global-local linkages The meanings of CBRNM in global conservation politics Rosaleen Duffy Introduction This chapter will analyse the global context for natural resource management, and will highlight how even the most ‘local strategies’ are interlinked with global networks and affected by the wider global context. This is apparent in thewaysthatCommunityBasedNaturalResourceManagement(CBNRM)has been adopted, adapted and promoted by global networks. It is clear that conservation does not exist in a bounded locality, but engages with global interest groups and is informed by international approaches to environmental management , especially in the arena of wildlife conservation. Sub-Saharan Africa has been the site of multiple forms of interventionism which reveal the global patterns that inter-link the continent with the rest of the world. In the realm of natural resource management these global patterns of interventionism are manifested in diverse ways. Environmental interventionism can take expected forms such as the impact of global conventions (notably CITES and the Convention on Biodiversity) on national and local level wildlife policy making; similarly it can take the form of the influence of global wildlife NGOs which provide funding for particular forms of wildlife management or run global campaigns against practices they regard as threatening to wildlife and biodiversity . However, the global context of wildlife conservation also plays out in less expected ways, which have an equally important impact on the livelihoods and environmental practices at the ‘local’ level. The increasing patterns of cooperation between environmental NGOs, state agencies, the private sector and International Financial Institutions (IFIs) produces new challenges for thinking about the role of local communities in wildlife management. In particular, this chapter will analyse the meanings of CBNRM, community empowerment, local participation and proprietorship in the context the changing roles and powers of global networks involved in what seem to be ‘local’ natural resource management strategies. 59 Rosaleen Duffy CBNRM: expanding out from Campfire CBNRMconstitutesoneofthemajordevelopmentsinthefieldofconservation, and during the 1990s it was taken up and promoted by a wide range of organisations at the global, regional, national and local scales. At the time it seemed to offer a workable and more socially just alternative to the ‘fortress conservation ’ approach which was based on the idea of separating wildlife and people through the creation of strict people-free protected areas. Furthermore, it had the added advantage that it seemed to ‘pay its way’ through careful development of sustainable use of wildlife (through production of meat, skins, ivory, or the sale of wildlife as sport hunting trophies and for photographic/cultural tourism). As a result it was attractive precisely because, in financial terms, it was not ‘donor dependent’, unlike some other forms of wildlife conservation in sub-Saharan Africa. It resonated with the new-found faith in local communities and individuals as ‘rational’ resource managers, which neatly fitted with the fashion for decentralisation and participatory development. One of the earliest examples of CBNRM was the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (Campfire) in Zimbabwe, which arguably provided a model for conservation and development practice that was used as a template in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond (Hutton, Adams and Murombedzi 2005: 345). Consequently it attracted international attention as a programme that was at the forefront of what seemed to be an innovative and workable approach to negotiating the potential conflicts between people and wildlife and between sustainability and development. For donors, NGOs and national governments alike, CBNRM presented a more socially and politically acceptable rationale for conservation in the context of the creation of new ‘democracies’ in Africa in the 1990s (ibid.: 344). Traditionally, wildlife conservation and rural development have been considered as conflicting goals (Brockington 2002; Wolmer 2007). This is because there was an assumption that conservation required existing areas of land for wildlife to be maintained, if not expanded, whereas development meant industrialisation or the expansion of land available for crops and livestock. This conflict between conservation and rural development was most sharply demonstrated by the national parks systems of sub-Saharan Africa. The establishment of national parks in the colonial and post-independence periods had resulted in communities being moved from their land, excluded from the new parks and denied access to the wildlife and grazing areas that they once enjoyed (Brockington 2002; Adams and MacShane 1992). However, the failings of this exclusionary approach are well documented, not least the injustices associated with eviction of communities to make way for parks, and the continued resistances by communities against their...

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