This book presents an overview of different institutional arrangements for tourism, biodiversity conservation and rural poverty reduction in eastern and southern Africa. These approaches range from conservancies in Namibia, community-based organizations in Botswana, conservation enterprises in Kenya, private game reserves in South Africa, to sport hunting in Uganda and transfrontier conservation areas. The book presents a comparative analysis of these arrangements and highlights that most arrangements emerged in the 1990s through either a decentralized or centralized change trajectory that was sponsored by donors. They aim to address some of the challenges of the ‘fortress’ types of conservation by combining principles of community-based natural resource management with a neoliberal approach to conservation, evident in the use of tourism as the main mechanism for accruing benefits from wildlife. The book illustrates the empirical relevance of these novel arrangements by presenting their growth in numbers and discuss how these arrangements differ in their form. With respect to the conservation and development impacts of these arrangements, we show that they have secured large amounts of land for conservation, but also generated governance challenges and disputes on tourism benefit sharing, affecting the stability of these arrangements to generate socioeconomic and conservation benefits.

Since its first mention in the academic literature, ecotourism has been endorsed by NGOs and governments as the most environmentally sound and locally beneficial method of tourist development. Over the last thirty years sub-Saharan Africa has adopted ecotourism as the primary focus for tourism development; research into this has demonstrated mixed results. In this publication, we seek to explore the actual outcomes for African countries that have developed their tourism policy around the principals and values of ecotourism. The sheer scope and magnitude of the task means that a complete evaluation of ecotourism in Africa is impossible. Instead, included here are spot assessments of various aspects of ecotourism related to conservation, policy development, environment, governance, community and indigenous peoples in southern Africa. The studies cover a wide array of countries, including Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Though this is only the beginning of a needed long term evaluation of the positives and negatives of ecotourism, it provides a starting point from which to move forward. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ecotourism.

This book examines the connections between natural resources, tourism and community livelihood practices in Southern Africa, highlighting the successes and constraints experienced over the last 50 years. Questioning how natural resources, tourism and community livelihoods relations can positively contribute towards development efforts, this book adopts an interdisciplinary approach to understand socio-ecological systems that characterize the dynamics for sustainable development. It explores the history of conservation and natural resource management in Southern Africa and traces the development and growth of nature-based tourism. Boasting a wide range of tourism landscapes, including national parks, wetlands, forests and oceans, the book draws on case studies from a variety of Southern African countries, including Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, and considers the political challenges for implementing policies and practices. Furthermore, it analyses broader issues such as the impact of climate change, human–wildlife co-existence and resulting conflicts, poor access to funding and poverty in local communities. The book argues that the links between conservation and livelihoods can be best understood by considering the different approaches to reconciling the demands of conservation and livelihoods that have evolved over the past decades. Containing contributions from natural and social sciences the book provides guidance for practitioners and policymakers to continue to shape policies and practices that are in line with the key tenets of sustainable development. It will also be of great interest to students and scholars researching Southern Africa, sustainable tourism and conservation.

This volume discusses the complex relationship between Protected Areas and tourism and their impact on community livelihoods in a range of countries in Southern Africa. Protected areas and tourism have an enduring and symbiotic relationship. While protected areas offer a desirable setting for tourism products, tourism provides revenue that can contribute to conservation efforts. This can bring benefits to local communities, but it can also have a negative impact, with the establishment of protected areas leading to the eviction of local communities from their original places of residence, while also preventing them from accessing the natural resources they once enjoyed. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, this book addresses the opportunities and challenges faced by communities and other stakeholders as they endeavour to achieve their conservation goals and work towards improving community livelihoods. Case studies from Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe address key issues such as human–wildlife conflicts, ecotourism, wildlife-based tourism, landscape governance, wildlife crop-raiding and trophy hunting, including the high-profile case of Cecil the lion. Chapters highlight both the achievements and positive outcomes of protected areas, but also the challenges faced and their impact on how protected areas are viewed and also conservation priorities more generally. The volume gives these issues affecting protected areas, local communities, managers and international conservation efforts centre stage in order inform policy and improve practice going forward. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of conservation, natural resource management, tourism, sustainable development and African studies, as well as professionals and policymakers involved in conservation policy.

This book examines the nexus between conservation, land conflicts, and sustainable tourism approaches in Southern Africa, with a focus on equity, access, restitution, and redistribution. While Southern Africa is home to important biodiversity, pristine woodlands, and grasslands, and is a habitat for important wildlife species, it is also a land of contestations over its natural resources with a complex historical legacy and a wide variety of competing and conflicting issues surrounding race, cultural and traditional practices, and neoliberalism. Drawing on insights from conservation, environmental, and tourism experts, this volume presents the nexus between land conflicts and conservation in the region. The chapters reveal the hegemony of humans on land and associated resources including wildlife and minerals. By using social science approaches, the book unites environmental, scientific, social, and political issues, as it is imperative we understand the holistic nature of land conflicts in nature-based tourism. Discussing the management theories and approaches to community-based tourism in communities where there are or were land conflicts is critical to understanding the current state and future of tourism in African rural spaces. This volume determines the extent to which land reform impacts community-based tourism in Africa to develop resilient destination strategies and shares solutions to existing land conflicts to promote conservation and nature-based tourism. The book will be of great interest to students, academics, development experts, and policymakers in the field of conservation, tourism geography, sociology, development studies, land use, and environmental management and African studies.

In recent decades, the fast rise of emerging economies, like the BRICS nations, has propelled the growth of tourism worldwide. Meanwhile, a plethora of nature destinations has been developed to meet the diverse needs of the new wave of demand from emerging economies and to entice existing tourists from advanced and rich economies. Nature Tourism augments the current literature on the benefits and pitfalls in recent developments of nature tourism, tracing the history in development, highlighting the ecological impacts and showcasing the current practices in nature tourism, along with discussions on specific tourist markets from holistic viewpoints embracing lessons learned from various destination nations and continents across the globe. A host of topics with global significance will be explored such as the effect of climate change on nature tourism, technological innovation in managing nature tourism, visitor management in nature tourism and market positioning in a highly competitive environment. These are reviewed in a wide range of countries from USA/Canada, South America, Scandinavian countries, the Swiss Alps, Middle-East countries, Africa, China and Australia/New Zealand. This book will offer significant insight into nature-based tourism and its future development. It will be of interest to upper-level students, researchers and academics in tourism, environmental studies, development and sustainability.

Amazing photographs of elephants accompany narratives from researchers, scientists, and conservationists celebrating elephants and calling for their preservation African savanna elephants--among the most magnificent and beloved of our fellow mammals--are an extraordinary, social, and intelligent species. The Last Elephants, an homage to these animals and a clarion call for their preservation, is based upon a shocking finding: savanna elephant populations across Africa are being decimated, with two to three murdered every hour for their ivory. Without action, these elephants soon will vanish from our world. They are a species in imminent danger of extinction, and it is up to us to save them. Featuring more than 250 full-color photos of the breathtaking animals by some of the world's top wildlife photographers, The Last Elephants was inspired by the devastating results of the continent-wide Great Elephant Census of 2016, undertaken by Elephants without Borders in tandem with the world's most prominent conservation groups. The book joins together the voices and vision of scientists, lawmakers, rangers, conservationists, and on-the-ground researchers to speak out against elephant killings, to close loopholes in international law that allow the ivory trade to continue, and to pay tribute to the thousands who work to protect the animals, including African communities who have elected to preserve and protect their elephant neighbors. Offering both profiles of preservation plans that work and hope for elephants' future, this is a must-read for everyone concerned for the future of one of Earth's most captivating species.

Today, more than ever, communities need to develop resilience strategies to adapt to the varied and often unpredictable forces of global change. The focus of this collection of articles from Tourism Geographies is on global change in tourism places. Global change incorporates social and economic globalization, which is arguably the most important process to have shaped the development of modern tourism since the nineteenth century, and climate change, which is likely to be the most significant factor influencing human behavior and livelihood in the coming decades. The organization of these articles reflects a traditional geography approach, which starts with an emphasis the physical geography foundations of the human condition, especially through the issue of climate change. This is then broadened by a series of insightful comparative studies of how tourism communities react, adapt and relate to their changing natural and social conditions. This collection of papers addresses major issues and adaptive paths for tourism destinations as they face the challenges of our contemporary world. This bookw as published as a special issue of Tourism Geographies.

Uganda has extensive protected areas and iconic wildlife (including mountain gorillas), which exist within a complex social and political environment. In recent years Uganda has been seen as a test bed and model case study for numerous and varied approaches to address complex and connected conservation and development challenges. This volume reviews and assesses these initiatives, collecting new research and analyses both from emerging scholars and well-established academics in Uganda and around the globe. Approaches covered range from community-based conservation to the more recent proliferation of neoliberalised interventions based on markets and payments for ecosystem services. Drawing on insights from political ecology, human geography, institutional economics, and environmental science, the authors explore the challenges of operationalising truly sustainable forms of development in a country whose recent history is characterised by a highly volatile governance and development context. They highlight the stakes for vulnerable human populations in relation to of large and growing socioeconomic inequalities, as well as for Uganda’s rich, unique, and globally significant biodiversity. They illustrate the conflicts that occur between competing claims of conservation, agriculture, tourism, and the energy and mining industries. Crucially, the book draws out lessons that can be learned from the Ugandan experience for conservation and development practitioners and scholars around the world.

This book explores how participatory governance processes help to find integrated solutions to resource-based development while protecting ecosystems in UNESCO designated areas. Participatory Governance of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves in Canada and Israel explores how stakeholders’ participation in decision-making processes related to natural resource management facilitates or hinders the obtainment of an acceptable balance between nature protection and sustainable development policies in the eyes of the participating stakeholders. A comparative analysis of nature versus development conflicts in the Megiddo and Mount Carmel biosphere reserves in Israel and the Mount Arrowsmith and Clayoquot Sound biosphere reserves in Canada, showcases the different approaches in implementing the biosphere reserve concept. The participatory processes of stakeholders, including governments, resource-based industries, local and indigenous communities and environmental NGOs established to address the local natural resource use problems are considered to be an opportunity of reconciliation among stakeholders with diverse interests, lifestyles and cultures but also improving the relationship between man and nature. Yet, achievement of these goals has proven to be a challenge. In some cases the participatory decision-making process yields benefits and in some cases it fails to deliver expected results. This book explores why is that the case. This title will be of great interest to students and scholars of natural resource management, integrated approaches to conservation and sustainable development, and participatory governance of social-ecological systems. It will also be of interest to environmental conflict mediators, participatory process facilitators, policymakers and professionals involved in managing social-ecological systems or establishing biosphere reserves.