These days conservation is a politically sensitive issue. It often involves the management of restricted land from which people have been displaced. This creates the need for conservationists to address sustainable livelihoods and poverty alleviation in their agendas.
One of the most exciting fields in conservation at the moment is the establishment of transfrontier parks and transfrontier conservation areas in Southern Africa, such as the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, a 35 000km2 area including parts of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
A transfrontier park is an international cross-border region with a primary focus on wildlife conservation. A transfrontier conservation area, on the other hand, refers to a cross-border region where different component areas have different forms of conservation status, but are jointly managed for long-term sustainable use of natural resources.
‘We aim to develop a new mindset in our graduates so that people see conservation not as something that operates within boundaries, but rather an issue that exists across boundaries, and cultures,” says Professor Robert Fincham of the Centre for Environment and Development (Cead) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
One of the keys to the success of transfrontier conservation areas is community involvement as it is anticipated that through job creation for local people living within and around these areas the lives of the local communities will improve, illustrating to them the economic and social benefits that can be achieved through wildlife conservation.
‘The training we have developed is steeped in the understanding that an African future is dependent on human development. The management of eco-systems is a human issue involving managing resources, identifying constraints and good governance,” says Fincham.
One of Cead’s key research projects involves addressing natural resource management issues in the transfrontier conservation areas.
‘Our students get an opportunity to work across boundaries and within inter-cultural contexts which become part and parcel of our understanding and planning for conservation. There is a very rich focus on resource management,” says Fincham.
‘We take our students out to environments that we feel will challenge their ability to take their theoretical grounding and use it to interpret situations they’re working on. This year our students worked on the border between the Maloti and Drakensberg mountain ranges. The field visit gave students an overview of the Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg World Heritage Site and its links with the Maloti Drakensberg Transfrontier Project.”
The students were asked to critically analyse the opportunities of the Maloti-Drakensberg Project to develop partnerships with communities and commercial farmers to set up ‘buffers” to protect the natural and cultural resources within the World Heritage Site on both sides of the international border. Students were also asked to comment on how the project could assist in developing sustainable livelihoods in the communal areas in South Africa and Lesotho.
The merger that resulted in the formation of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in January this year has lead to Cead and the Centre for Rural Development Systems (Cerdes) combining.
‘The new structure of the university will be fully in place by 2005. What this means is that more relevant resources are being brought together, which will enrich our focus on ensuring eco-systems’ integrity. It means we have a range of new expertise to add to that which we already have, and we can provide an intellectually more stimulating look at the environment and the development pressures it faces,” said Fincham.
Cead and Cerdes offer three streams in their Master of Environment and Development (MEnvDev) programme, a Master of Science Agriculture in Rural Resource Management (MScAgric) and a Master of Agriculture in Rural Resource Management (MAgric). In the MEnvDev students can choose between environmental management, land information management and protected area management.
‘These are flagship, one-year degrees, in which half of the degree is devoted to coursework and the other to research. The way our courses are designed we are getting students to complete our degrees in a year, where students in similar courses elsewhere are taking 18 months to two years to complete,” says Fincham.
Cead attracts a number of international students, ranging from those that come from America and Europe to those coming from most parts of the African continent.
‘This enriches the experience for all the students as they interact and learn from each other,” Fincham says.
The employment rate for graduates of these programmes is almost 100%, and previous graduates have gone on to gain employment in areas such as resource management, consultancy groups, environmental journalism, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and the Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs.