This project is centered on a case study of the relations between people around Chobe National Park in northern Botswana, and the Park itself. Here, where forty years ago the creation of the park dispossessed local people of their access to nearby forest products and grazing lands, transgression of park boundaries and policies is low and no visible resistance movement against the park has developed. This situation is unusual given numerous similar paradigms of "fortress conservation" that have resulted in high poaching and severe conflict between local residents and park authorities. What explains this seemingly anomalous Botswana case? For what reasons and through what mechanisms has a certain level of acquiescence for the presence of the park and nearby protected areas emerged amongst Chobe Enclave villagers?
Ph.D. student Clare Gupta, under the supervision of Dr. Louise Fortmann at the University of California - Berkeley will explore this unique relationship between the Chobe National Park and Chobe residents. Study of this atypical case where local people seem to have developed a certain level of consent for the presence of a wildlife park, a potential measure of the park's "success," this project seeks to determine some of the enabling conditions for protected area sustainability. For this study, Africanist anthropological theories of agrarian resource-use and changing modes of rural production will be applied to understand how people living on the edges of Chobe National Park have re-worked their livelihood practices in relation to the park, and its effects within the context of broader political economic conditions. In addition, recent considerations of critical human geographers on rural-urban interconnections in southern Africa will be employed to understand how Chobe National Park has influenced the economic and social relations that connect the rural Enclave to other places, and what these changing connections indicate for processes of livelihood and demographic change in the Chobe region of northern Botswana. The research will seek to broaden political ecology's line of study by suggesting that over time, people may be able to re-make their relationship with the landscape in response to the establishment of parks and protected areas. The research is comprised of two objectives: first, to examine if and how livelihood strategies employed by individuals and households in the Enclave have shifted in response to the presence of the park; and second, to determine the implications of these altered livelihood strategies for village demographic composition, household structure and social relations (e.g. roles and responsibilities) between family members of different ages and gender. To study these changes, a mixed methods approach will be used that will include surveys, interviews and reviews of government statistics (e.g. census and land application data) as well as other relevant secondary literature.
The study site for this research lies in Botswana's Chobe region; however the societal significance of the work extends beyond these borders. The question of how to reconcile the goals of wildlife conservation with the needs of local people living near wilderness areas is a pressing one, particularly in large parts of the global South today. Given the shortage of long term data on people and park relations, this research will provide particularly useful information on how and why human-environment interactions change over time and will suggest practical implications for the implementation and sustainability of conservation projects. In examining the key social, economic and political factors that influence the ways in which people respond to changing environmental conditions, the research will highlight a complex set of processes often unaccounted for in static environmental management plans and sustainability initiatives. In this way, the research will contribute to larger debates on both the nature of changing society-environment relations and the practical ways in which conflicts between wildlife preservation and rural livelihoods might be potentially resolved.
