CHAPTER 7: DATA CONCLUSION
2. DEVELOPMENT, CONSERVATION AND CBNRM
2.1.1 Poverty measurements
Poverty is often measured in quantitative terms by the World Bank in an effort to'draw economic comparisons, rankings and status among nations; however, poverty does include qualitative measurements such as hunger, lack of shelter, poor health, lack of education, social exclusion, powerlessness, lack of voice and vulnerability to disease and natural disasters (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2005). Inthis regard, poverty has many facets but income poverty and human capability (i.e. literacy, health and basic skills) are the most common measurements. Further, poverty is influenced by social and political institutions which can result in inequitable resource distribution and access (Wikan 2004). This paper acknowledges the complexity of the poverty issue, but focuses most heavily on the economic contribution of CBNRM programmes to household poverty alleviation.
The World Bank's most basic quantitative measurements of poverty act as common guidelines from which to evaluate the scope of poverty within a society. First, consider its definition and consider that the minimum level to meet basic needs varies with respect to geographic location, time, value and culture. Therefore, when comparing such data globally, the World Bank uses measurements called US $l/day and US $2/day in order to equalise financial terms and allow a comparison despite variations in currency. The measurement is converted into 'international dollars' which are intended to have the same purchasing power as a dollar spent in the United States' economy. These conversion factors calculate the relative costs of goods and services within a specific economy to provide a better contextual measure of standard of living of residents. Therefore, the US
$1/day line is not literally US $1, but rather the equivalent in localised financial terms. It does not translate to market exchange rates (World Bank 2005).
The US $1/day and US $2/day lines are bolstered by similar measurements of the UNDP (2005). According to the UNDP (2005), 'Overall Income Poverty' refers to the 'lack of sufficient income to satisfy essential needs beyond food, including shelter, clothing and energy' (6), or the US $2/day line. This is in contrast to 'extreme poverty' which 'exists when an individual or household does not have sufficient income to meet basic food needs' (6), or the US $1/day line (World Bank 2005; UNDP 2005).
In Botswana, the 1993/4 CSO (1994 as cited in CSO 2003)census listed 26.4 per cent of the rural population living under the US $1/day margin as compared to 17.1 and 8.2 per cent in urban villages and cities/towns, respectively. This margin did not improve for rural areas and urban villages but rather declined between the 1993/4 CSO and 2002/3 CSO censuses. The 2001 US $1/day poverty line was Botswana Pula (BWP) 104.10 per person per month in Botswana, or BWP 3.47 (US $.69) per person per day (CSO 2003).
The North-west District Council (NWDC) states that the majority of Botswana's rural population, with particular reference to the Okavango region, live in poverty (2003 as cited in Mbaiwa 2005). A study by ACORD (2002), the Okavango region ofNgamiland, including the communities of Gunotsoga, Gudigwa and Eretsha, is impoverished due to the lack or low level of employment, cash-income, food sources, livelihood diversification and access education. Inaddition, this is due in large part to the failure of crop and livestock farming and the influence of foreign-owned tourism enterprises.
Moreover, rural Botswana is susceptible to poverty as large segment of the population receives little or no cash income and most live hand-to-mouth (Good 1999).
2.1.2 Livelihood diversification strategies
Poverty and livelihood are inextricably linked. Livelihood is not a measurement but rather a collection of strategies and activities which allow an individual or household to meet, at minimum, its basic needs.Itis an analytical tool which complements many of the poverty measurements; the quality and diversity of individual or household livelihood often determines the presence, absence or magnitude of poverty. Similar to poverty, livelihood does not refer strictly to income. This is especially true in rural areas where employment is scarce; rather, livelihood is a set of diverse activities and assets utilised to maximise standard of living. Inmany societies, especially rural and subsistence societies, livelihood is a concept, like poverty, which is dynamic and complex by definition and in practice due to influences from many components of society (Wikan 2004).
Livelihood diversification in rural communities incorporates a range of fundamental hypotheses about the strategies underlying diversification. According to Wikan (2004), these strategies can be summarised as survival, security or accumulation. The accumulation strategy implies that a certain percentage, but not all of a household's basic needs (US $1/day), are met by a primary strategy and so additional strategies are employed in order to amass a surplus of goods (US $2/day). This is in contrast to the survival strategy whereby the need to diversify is required in order to simply subsist;
whereas, the security strategy is employed to minimise vulnerability in the event of uncontrollable environmental or social fluctuations such as drought, disease, etc. such that livelihood diversification serves to provide household security (Amtzen 2003). The motivation for utilising any particular strategy varies according to household income,
consumption and production patterns. For example, Wikan's (2004) study of two medium-sized rural communities in Botswana concluded:
...poor households in rural Botswana are small, with little manpower and poor quality of education. They depend on charity, small-scale crop production or badly paid local work. The better-off households are bigger and better educated and have a variety of income sources. The richest households are those that combine crop production, cattle rearing, and local and external work or enterprises. However, 'multi-income' as a livelihood strategy is found to some degree in alllevel-of-living groups. The poor households that use this strategy probably do so out of necessity and for them it is a survival strategy. For rich households it represents a strategy for accumulation ofwealth (9).
The degree to which one strategy is more heavily employed than another is also determined by geography and available resources. Ashley (2000) reiterates that the livelihood strategies in rural areas are a mix of many activities, namely natural resource use, employment and remittances. For example, for rural households living in Namibia's Caprivi, a region very closely tied economically, geographically and culturally to the Ngami1and-Okavango Delta region, water is consistently available and arable agriculture and fishing are year-round options. Incontrast, rural communities in the Kalahari Desert or Namibia's Kunene region, where water is perennial, will not have as much opportunity to practice arable agriculture or fishing and thereby rely more heavily on livestock (Swatuk 2005; Ashley 2000). Therefore, households exhibit the need for diversified livelihood strategies in order to manage the seasonal variations in rainfall and resources.
2.2 The emergence of CBNRMinBotswana
The fundamental assumption of CBNRM is that poverty exacerbates environmental degradation due to unsustainable practices. In cases where the benefits of conservation (e.g. sustainable use or non-use of natural resources) outweigh their costs, then a community is more likely to partake in sustainable livelihood strategies which feed back into principles of sustainable development (Mbaiwa 2003; Swatuk 2005; Jones and Muphree 2001).
The refined goal of CBNRM, then, is to conserve natural resources, yet do so in concert with the advancement of human welfare. Arntzen et al. (2003) introduce CBNRM as:
... a typical African approach towards rural development and resource conservation. The approach aims to increase local socio-economic benefits of natural resources, which would then lead to a higher appreciation of resources by the local population and to greater, resource conservation efforts by the local population. The increased benefits also offer opportunities to compensate the local community for the costs of living with natural resources such as wildlife. No family should be worse off because of the presence of natural resources (46).
Development and conservation practitioners and think-tanks conceived that the possibility existed to strike a balance whereby wildlife would 'pay its way' and policy would advance the economic competitiveness of sustainable wildlife utilisation as a preferred land-use (Boon 2004; Jones and Muphree 2001). Specifically in Africa, there was concern over land-use pressures such that rezoning would favour agriculture or livestock or human development at the expense of the conservation of wildlife (Swatuk 2005).
Child (n.d. as cited in Jones and Muphree 2001) refers to these linkages and summarises this interpretation ofCBNRM as:
... if the resource [wildlife] is valuable (price), if this value is captured by landholders (proprietorship) and if the principle is followed that no management action, decision or benefit is arrogated to a higher level when it is better and more appropriately conducted at a lower level (subsidiarity), there is a high likelihood of successful resource conservation and management (66).
In summary, CBNRM endeavours to accrue the benefits of wildlife utilisation to local communities. CBNRM in Botswana reflected primarily the concerns of biodiversity conservation and then secondly the extraordinary monetary potential of wildlife. The effect of this wildlife-oriented prioritisation often left local communities hostile and resentful, but it is actually this result which expanded CBNRM programmes to incorporate local populations and the sustainable use of natural resources (Rozemeijer 2003b). The Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) advocated for the wildlife, the Department of Tourism ((DoT) (among others) advocated strongly for community involvement in commercial wildlife utilisation. Collectively, this advocacy has formed the basis for CBNRM in Botswana. The CBNRM strategy in Botswana began in 1989 with the implementation of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Natural Resource Management Programme (NRMP).