the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

ural communities to enter the modern wage economy. This is hoped to
reduce the number of rural people relying on subsistence hunting;
• To implement rational and effective conservation and management
programmes that will ensure that wildlife is utilised on a sustainable basis;
and
• To obtain good economic returns on the land allocated for wildlife utilisation
(Mbaiwa, 2002).
Even though the Wildlife Conservation Policy of 1986 is considered the blue-print for
the sustainable use of wildlife resources in Botswana, it has a number of problems:
• It was rushed through and was done without proper consultation and
participation of stakeholders in wildlife management; hence the majority of
them do not understand it, especially the local people in wildlife areas. As
such, many stakeholders in the wildlife industry, particularly the local
communities, did not participate in its early stages of design and
formulation. The main beneficiaries of this policy (i.e., local people) have
only a rough understanding of those sections of the policy that directly affect
them, such as the establishment of wildlife community projects. The main
reason for this situation is that most wildlife policies in Botswana are the
brainchild of foreign donor agencies and foreign consultants who tended to
ignore the involvement of local people in designing plans that affect their
socio-economic livelihoods. Foreign donors and consultants also lacked
adequate local knowledge, understanding, and awareness of the ecological
and social dynamics that affect Botswana and the local communities in
wildlife areas. This view is also shared by Mordi (1991, p. 89), who when
writing about wildlife laws in Botswana concludes "...the laws were
parachuted, fUlly formed in society and literally imposed by the government
on the people". The exclusion of local people in wildlife policy design means
local knowledge is not effectively fused into conventional methods of
resource management and it is not in line with the principles of sustainable
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