Conservation agencies all over the world suffer from chronic financial problems that prevent them carrying out their conservation mandate adequately. Until the funding noose started tightening, these agencies, worldwide, did not see the need to manage their estates on business principles.
The result has been over-dependence on inflation-eroded state subsidies. The overall consequence is that many conservation agencies have found themselves ill equipped to deal with current challenges and are mostly cash-strapped or survive on shoestring budgets.
In developed countries the cost of managing protected areas is mostly fully borne by the state, whereas in developing countries there is a mix of donor-dependency and heavy reliance on tourism development. This poses the huge challenge to overstretching the biodiversity mandate in the interest of survival. What has become very obvious in recent years is that developing countries, especially, have a whole range of challenges that are jostling for space in a somewhat inadequate budget.
In the South African context, it is understandable that the past apartheid imbalances in our society should be addressed, including the lack of adequate housing, health care systems, water and electricity as well as infrastructure development, but this should happen alongside other constitutional imperatives such as the protection of the environment.
SANParks generates approximately 80% of its operational revenue from tourism and is a world leader in this regard. However, there are limitations to tourism performance, if the biodiversity mandate is not to be compromised.
In South Africa both national and provincial conservation agencies are forced by this reality to look to commercial alternatives for survival. The question is whether it is realistic to expect conservation agencies to be financially self-sufficient or self-supporting without forcing them to go out begging like street children or forcing them to sell the family jewels. Is tourism in protected areas the ‘panacea†or a ‘miracle agent†for the survival of nature conservation and enhancement of local economies? There are no easy answers to these questions.
In the 1980s it seemed as if virtually every country in the world, particularly in Africa, was slashing their conservation budgets, making funding a risk to be considered in future park planning processes.
The United States Congress cut the budget of its National Park Service, the largest government conservation agency in the world, by 30% in 1995. In Queensland, Australia, the national park agency complained that expansion of the number of national parks was not matched by an increase in funds to meet operational needs.
At SANParks the phenomenal national park estate expansion of 140 000 hectares since 1994 has not been followed by an increase in the state operational grant. Such under-funding trends manifest themselves in infrastructure being in a perpetual state of disrepair, staff shortages, below-market salaries, lack of sufficient resource protection, inability to attract or retain competent staff, safety risks, insufficient visitor information and ‘paper parks†(parks that exist on the map only with no active management).
One such park is Tankwa-Karoo National Park in the Karoo. Since its proclamation in 1986 it has not been possible to put in place a management system and the necessary ‘management ingredients†to manage the park efficiently and effectively. The joke around here is that if you are really bad you will be sent to Tankwa.
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines self-sufficiency as being ‘able to satisfy one’s basic needs without outside help†and self-supporting as ‘having the resources to be able to survive without outside assistanceâ€. Many conservationists in our country do not share the view that national parks and nature reserves can be financially self-sufficient or self-supporting. The Kumleben commission of inquiry into the state of conservation in 1988 concluded that ‘nature conservation as such can never be self-supporting — it is therefore short-sighted and fallacious to expect a protected area to become economically self-sufficientâ€.
The fear expressed by these conservationists is that park managers may adopt an exclusive focus on fund-raising at the expense of sound conservation management. The outsourcing of non-core commercial activities to private operators is an accepted practice, although it is not without vociferous critics.
Recently SANParks became a pioneer conservation agent in implementing this strategy towards ‘financial self-sufficiencyâ€, amid anger from the opponents of the programme, informed mostly by fears (whether informed or misguided) that the biodiversity mandate would be under threat.
At present, the commercialisation programme generates 8,4% of the total tourism income of R213-million (in the 2003/2004 financial year). SANParks generates the rest from selling rest camp accommodation, charging conservation fees (by the introduction of the Wild card in June 2003), licensing game-viewing vehicles, night-drive safaris, day walks, facility rentals, conferencing and wilderness trails.
Not all national parks offer these activities and only five out of the total of 20 parks generate a surplus or break even. The 15 loss-making ones are of biodiversity value and most will probably never break even.
With such an equation, ‘financial self-sufficiency†can only be a pipe dream. It is commendable, however, that financial prudence has been the cornerstone of SANParks and the organisation is not in the red, albeit struggling to meet all its strategic objectives adequately .
The cost of conservation (fencing, restocking of species, resource protection, disease-control, monitoring services, construction of management roads, office equipment, etc) has increased tenfold in the last decade or two, yet state operational grants have decreased in relative terms. It is not sufficient to declare an area protected without providing for the accompanying operational and capital costs. The development of a protected-area product cycle takes decades to blossom into a profitable tourism venture.
It took 70 years and intensive investments for Addo to break even. Once matured, as is the case in the Kruger, Table Mountain, Addo, Tsitsikama, Augrabies and Kgalagadi national parks, the tourism product cross-subsidises conservation, creates direct and indirect jobs for millions of previously unemployed people, helps to alleviate poverty, contributes to general economic growth and thus plays a significant role in the macro-economic policies of the government.
Over-dependence on tourism to fund conservation can lead to unsustainable tourism practices. We could see the Kruger taking the Disney World route; the Ratanga Junction option; keeping the Big Five in cages for tourists to stroke or ‘talk to for emotional bondingâ€; professional trophy hunting; entertainment in the form of gambling dens, discos, night clubs, health spas; macho adventure tourism like bungee-jumping, crocodile fighting, lion wrestling and hot air balloons.
The real problem is the risk of introducing tourism products that will compromise the aesthetic and ecological attributes (wilderness qualities) of protected areas to achieve ‘financial self-sufficiencyâ€. The other danger, of course, is over-development of tourism facilities without due consideration for the ecological integrity of the protected area. To counter these possibilities, the state must not abdicate its primary obligation to fund environmental protection.
To evaluate a protected area’s success and value in terms of the financial bottom-line alone is simplistic, spurious and misleading. Society does not create protected areas for financial profit but to conserve the natural, cultural and historical landscapes for the benefit of present and future generations.
Financial prudence in resource utilisation should not be confused with ‘financial self-sufficiencyâ€. The state will always have a constitutional obligation to fund the public good, and this includes the protection of the environment in terms of section 24 of the Constitution.
Lately we have been talking of introducing the ‘balanced score card†approach as an effective tool in evaluating the success of our national parks. However, this system cannot be fully realised until and unless there is a balance in terms of the resources that are invested in the national parks and the work of the national parks in trying to meet the government half-way by making the estate a viable entity. SANParks’s success should be judged in terms of the ‘triple bottom line†— environmentally, socially and economically.
The three criteria are inextricably linked and will help dispel the myth that protected areas should be compared to manufacturing and financial institutions listed on the JSE Securities Exchange.
David Mabunda writes in his personal capacity