South Africa’s community conservationists who own land and commercial rights in national parks are joining forces to demand tangible benefits from the World Parks Congress (WPC) to be held in Durban next week.
Twenty community leaders are gathering in the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Park in northern KwaZulu-Natal this weekend. They plan to draw up a charter that will be presented to the 3 000 protected-area specialists from around the world attending the 10-day WPC.
The weekend get-together, entitled People and Parks: Processes of Change, also provides a unique opportunity for the community conservationists to exchange their indigenous knowledge of nature with about 80 scientists. The two groups plan to produce a joint memorandum on natural resource use and park management.
”Most conservationists in South Africa know about animals, the bush and poaching, but not about rural development linked to parks. This is what we need to get out of the WPC,” says Steve Collins, a facilitator at the conference.
The official theme of the WPC is Benefits beyond Boundaries, emphasising that protected areas can no longer afford to be managed as conservation islands.
But representatives of communities who own land and other rights in national parks — including the St Lucia Wetlands, the Makuleke Region of the Kruger National Park, the Kgalagadi National Park and the Richtersveld National Park — say they are still marginalised.
”We have given our land to conservation. Now we want to manage it on an equal basis and see tangible benefits, not just jobs for a few people,” says Floors Strauss, chairperson of the Richtersveld Communal Property Association.
Livingstone Maluleke, publicity officer for the Makuleke Communal Property Association, says the WPC needs to unpack what is meant by community benefits. ”They must be real and they must be seen by the communities.
”We need to set up strong partnerships with South African National Parks and a joint management system where we are equal partners.”
He adds that communities need to put in place binding legal structures like a trust or communal property association, as well as a constitution that defines what needs to be done and how.
Roads to Restitution, a documentary on South African community conservation that will be shown to WPC delegates, highlights that the communities have a deep-rooted knowledge and appreciation of nature. This traditional knowledge will be included in a book that will be published as a result of the weekend conference.
The conference was opened this Friday by David Sheppard, secretary general of the WPC. It has been organised and funded by a coalition of private sector, NGO, conservation and government structures.
When it closes on the eve of the WPC, cheetahs will be released back into the wild at the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, accompanied by a presentation of an indigenous folktale called The Cheetah’s Tears — representing the fusion of modern technology, restitution and age-old knowledge.