Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and tables
- Abbreviations and glossary
- Foreword
- Preface and acknowledgements
- 1 The place, methodology, and chapter overviews
- 2 Brief history of the central Luangwa Valley
- 3 Munyamadzi Game Management Area and its residents
- 4 The changing nature of rural community lives
- 5 Human welfare and resource status at Nabwalya Central, 1966–2006
- 6 Community Resources Board and community participation
- 7 Perspectives from the Munyamadzi Game Management Area communities
- 8 A conclusion to the 2006 exercise
- 9 A perspective covering eight decades
- 10 Conjuring the Munyamadzi Game Management Area as a frontier
- Appendix A Revised questionnaire, 2006
- Appendix B Major characteristics of village area groups within the Munyamadzi Game Management Area communities, 2006 and 2011
- Appendix C Respondents’ comments on ‘fairness’ of Zambia's wildlife exchange
- Notes
- References
- Index
1 - The place, methodology, and chapter overviews
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and tables
- Abbreviations and glossary
- Foreword
- Preface and acknowledgements
- 1 The place, methodology, and chapter overviews
- 2 Brief history of the central Luangwa Valley
- 3 Munyamadzi Game Management Area and its residents
- 4 The changing nature of rural community lives
- 5 Human welfare and resource status at Nabwalya Central, 1966–2006
- 6 Community Resources Board and community participation
- 7 Perspectives from the Munyamadzi Game Management Area communities
- 8 A conclusion to the 2006 exercise
- 9 A perspective covering eight decades
- 10 Conjuring the Munyamadzi Game Management Area as a frontier
- Appendix A Revised questionnaire, 2006
- Appendix B Major characteristics of village area groups within the Munyamadzi Game Management Area communities, 2006 and 2011
- Appendix C Respondents’ comments on ‘fairness’ of Zambia's wildlife exchange
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Nature unfettered and unrestrained is there on all sides. The tropical beauties of the Luangwa, the majestic masses of the Muchingas, the monotony of the great plains … all sink deeply into one's being after a few months of wandering in that land of wild beasts and uncivilised men, where the vegetation has run riot, and the great mammals which the Creator put on earth roam free and wild. (Owen Letcher 1911:255)
Introduction
In many ways, the designation of some Zambian landscapes as game management areas (GMAs) distorts and masks the profound nature of the cultural and economic changes taking place within them. Within the Luangwa Valley, outside attention and assistance are directed primarily at protecting wildlife, which foreigners assume is this region's most visible and valuable asset. These strangers and their national allies tend to stymie local agricultural production and improvements as well as other economic developments aspired to by the longer term human residents who continue to live here. Building upon colonial ideas and exotic ideals of ‘wilderness’, capitalism, individualism, and history, most state and donor projects promote external tourism as the prime revenue generator, banking their goals (gold) on foreign objectives rather than on local initiatives or needs. As project proponents defensively claim technical and ‘apolitical’ ideals, their promotions silence other prevalent visions, particularly those of residents struggling to live within these strangely truncated landscapes.
Restricted by their views of conservation as an exclusively economic or self-supporting enterprise, wildlife and resource officials are further blinkered in their roles by primarily pandering to distant audiences rather than brokering resource regimes appropriate to the changing cultural and ecological environments within this valley. Whereas donor assistance and revenues generated from wildlife exploitation have constructed some schools, clinics, roads, wells and even provided casual employment, these outlays are basically incentives to purchase compliance to alien goals and to build local dependency upon outside expertise. Moreover, local employment and assistance have never been sufficient to affect sustainable alternatives to pre-existing and customary livelihoods. Managers misinterpret local resistance in benign monetary terms (‘transaction costs’ and ‘externalities’) and talk in terms of gross revenues generated, some of which are supposedly handed back in unknown quantities to ‘local communities’ through state and safari functions. These administrative groups also lecture on the need to strengthen their compliance mechanisms through ‘anti-poaching’ manoeuvres, equipment, and forceful displays.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Discordant Village VoicesA Zambian 'Community Based' Wildlife Programme, pp. 1 - 17Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2014