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

communities regarding all matters relating to land-use and the environment. Lack of
communication and the absence of a common vision, plan and purpose, appear to
be the greatest threats to effective problem solving in the region. It is in this area that
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can have the greatest positive input
(OPWT, 1998).
7.2.2 Local Communities and Wildlife Resources in the Okavango Delta
7.2.2.1 Benefits to Local Communities From Wildlife Resources
Research conducted by Mbanefo and de Boerr (1993) in Zimbabwe and Prosser
(1996) in South Africa, on the use of wildlife by local communities indicates that
there are possible benefits that can accrue to local people living in wildlife areas.
These benefits include employment in the wildlife industry, the development and
provision of infrastructure in the local villages through the creation of a tourism
industry such as improvements to the water supply and roads, craft work sales to
tourists, the development and creation of wildlife-based tourism activities such as
photographic tourism which generates revenues from gate fees, etc., and hunting
(both commercial and subsistence). Other potential benefits that local people can
derive from wildlife areas include access to natural resources such as forest and
veld products, arable land for agriculture and grazing land for livestock.
Information regarding the Ngamiland District, however, indicates that the majority of
local people in the area derive no, or at the most, only limited benefits, from the
Okavango's wildlife resources. According to the 50 local inhabitants interviewed in
the Okavango Delta between 2003 and 2004, the greater majority (36 or 72
percent), including all the interviewees from Maun, stated that they, and the majority
of the inhabitants of the Okavango Delta area as a whole, received no individual or
household benefits from the wildlife resources in the Okavango Delta. The remaining
14 interviewees or 28 percent stated that they felt that wildlife benefits do accrue to
both themselves and other inhabitants of the Okavango. The principle benefits that
local communities get from wildlife include meat (from subsistence hunting with a
permit), income from the sale of community wildlife quotas to safari operators, and
indirectly through revenue derived from individual sales of baskets and wood
carvings to wildlife-viewing tourists. According to Mbaiwa (1999), most of the local
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