Market triumphalism and the CBNRM ‘crises’ at the South African section of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

Published Date
January 2008, Vol.39(1):452–465, doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.09.005
Environmental Economic

Author 

• Wolfram Dressler ^a,1,,
• Bram Büscher ^b,c,2,

• aTPARI and Department of Geography, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
• bDepartment of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• cDepartment of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Received 7 March 2007. Revised 7 August 2007. Available online 5 November 2007. 

Abstract

Transfrontier conservation has taken Southern Africa by storm, where the modus operandi remains simple and intuitive: by dissolving boundaries, local benefits grow as conservation and development spread regionally. However, in the case of South Africa’s section of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, political and economic change redirects benefits to support ‘modern’ economies at the expense of rural livelihoods through community-based natural resources management (CBNRM). Neo-liberal agendas promoted by government and the transfrontier park derail efforts at decentralizing CBNRM initiatives beyond markets and state control. This paper argues that ‘hybrid neoliberal’ CBNRM has arisen in private and public sector delivery of devolved conservation and poverty relief projects as ‘tertiary production’ for regional development. As a result, ‘CBNRM’ projects related to and independent of transfrontier conservation support private sector interests rather than the resource base of rural livelihoods. Concluding sections assert that CBNRM can counter this neoliberal trend by supporting the land-based economy of local users living near the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.

Keywords

Transfrontier conservation

Neoliberalism

Community-based natural resources management

Livelihoods

South Africa

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Map 1.

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Table 1.

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  Corresponding author. Present address: School of Social Sciences, University of Queensland, Australia.

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