12 May 2019

 Communities living in areas where human-elephant conflict is prevalent must meaningfully participate and benefit from natural resources that accrue from their conservation efforts.
A specialist in community based natural resources management, Professor Joseph Mbaiwa echoed the sentiments during the just ended 2019 elephant summit in Kasane attended by four heads of states from the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA-TFCA).
Speaking during a round table discussion on how the issue of human-elephant conflict could be addressed he said elephant numbers had grown exponentially high as evidenced by sightings of the animals in areas where they were not known to be found such as the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
Elephants, he highlighted, were a problem in that they caused destruction to crops, infrastructure such as boreholes. Professor Mbaiwa explained, that the hunting ban which was put in place in 2014, has exacerbated the human-wildlife conflict.
This ban, he also noted, saw the minimisation of benefits to communities. The natural resources management specialist noted that negative attitudes and perceptions towards elephants from communities made conservation difficult.
Professor Mbaiwa said elephant numbers in Botswana increased due to institutional measures put in place such as setting aside land for wildlife protection.
On community based natural resources management (CBNRM), he explained that only Namibia was doing well amongst the KAZA states. He urged states to create enabling environment for communities to participate meaningfully in conservation and tourism related enterprises.
“We need a CBNRM Act and association. We also have to put economic value to our elephants,” he argued.
Professor Mbaiwa explained that communities need to come up with industries for elephant meat and urged governments to help them to form partnerships to ensure that they derive benefits from the wildlife found in their areas.
Consequently, he said that for a long time communities in Botswana had been landlords who rented and leased their tourism land to investors while they watched from the sidelines.
He said for CBRNM to be effective, they was need for a natural resource management structure, governance principles and that a win-win scenario that benefits both communities and investors and called for the tackling of corruption in the touism sector.
On the uproar that followed consultations on the lifting of the hunting ban, Professor Mbaiwa explained that there was need to manage the North-South debate, and mentioned also that strategies were needed to handle the contentious issues of elephants.
He also called on KAZA-TFCA states to develop ways of handling the dialogue of conservation hunting. Wildlife management, he said, was human rights issue and had to be explained to a global audience.
Professor Mbaiwa called on government to promote game farming for communities, noting that the business had always been the exclusive preserve of a select few. He explained that game farming can be practiced in buffer zone to benefit the communities.
Hunting, he acknowledged, would not reduce elephant numbers but said sustainable conservation should provide tangible benefits to communities that suffer from human-elephant conflict.
“We need to create a dialogue around the issue of deterrence and creating a landscape of fear. Some people believe that if you introduce hunting around human settlements and crop fields, elephants tend to move away from the area and this can minimize the conflict,” he noted.
Professor Mbaiwa urged KAZA states to increase the level of research around the issue of creating the landscape of fear, elephants and community benefits in the KAZA area, explaining that pumping money into research would enable them to have relevant information.
The human-elephant conflict, he said, was a local problem which required global solutions, hence he urged the summit participants to escalate the issue so that it becomes a global agenda.
Sociologist, Ms Elsie Alexander encouraged summit participants to also consider indigenous knowledge which has historically been used by communities to manage human-elephant conflict.
“In order to understand this issue, we need to look at the context before the hunting ban was introduced. The global community when dealing with the elephant issue, should understand that we are diverse and that  there are people in this region who depend on their habitat for their livelihoods,” she explained.
On community based natural resources management, Ms Alexander said that states needed to find out why Namibia and the Camp Fire program had been successful.
A specialist in illicit wildlife trade who monitors and campaigns against the illegal trade in ivory, Mr Tom Milliken noted that elephant poaching was increasing in the Southern African region, a worrying trend for a region that hosts a large number of elephants.
He explained that illicit trade was fuelled by ivory demand in China and South East Asia. However, he noted that over the last three years ivory trade declined due to disruption and international oversight.
He said following the 2008 once-off sale of ivory stockpiles they had not been able to detect any change in demand.
The Co-Chair of the Africa Elephant Specialist Group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Dr Benson Okita-Ouma said African elephant states have a common vision to have thriving human and elephant populations.
He said the specialist group touched on sustainable livelihoods and noted that they aimed to give their stakeholders the status of species globally. In 2004, he explained that elephants were listed as vulnerable.
“This means that unless we reverse the vulnerability it might move to endangered. We are currently conducting another review,” he added. Dr Okita-Ouma highlighted that in 2006 the African elephant population estimate stood at 508 325 and number declined to 415 428 in 2015, an estimated 110 000 decline in the population.
However, he maintained the SADC region still maintained the largest population of elephants with roughly 293 000. Dr Okita-Ouma explained that a survey was needed in the KAZA-TFCA region and should be supported. ENDS