Suchergebnisse

Contemporary biodiversity conservation is 'wickedly complex'. This complexity stems from the need to address the diverse objectives of protecting biodiversity and enhancing social wellbeing. However, centralized and exclusionary conservation approaches are often ill-suited to tackling these coupled objectives. Consequently, increasingly calls have been made for the development of more holistic, participatory, nuanced and context-specific conservation governance approaches. Community-based conservation – which seeks to include local communities and their knowledge and priorities in conservation governance – offers a viable though context-specific alternative. However, thus far communitybased conservation initiatives have produced mixed results, largely due to a lack of understanding of how to effectively initiate, implement and manage such 'wickedly complex' conservation initiatives. South Africa possesses enabling legislation for community-based conservation, but to date there has been no implementation of legally recognized communityconserved areas in the coastal zone. Accordingly, this research is guided by a desire to better understand this 'policy-praxis disjuncture', and explores what factors, conditions and processes are required to enable South Africa to embrace a more community-orientated approach to conservation. It is proposed that greater understanding and potentially success can be gained by viewing communitybased conservation including, the initiation, implementation and governance of community-conserved areas, as a 'change process'. Drawing on Commons Theory, Governance Theory, and the Theory of Change approach, a framework was developed to guide the exploration of the factors, conditions and processes that enable the shift to a community-based mode of conservation governance. Case study investigations were conducted in two established regional community coastal conservation cases, and one South African 'case-in-progress'. Based on the findings of these cases, and the perceptions of South African conservation actors, this dissertation offers insights for tackling South Africa's policy-praxis disjuncture by developing a South African Empirical Community-Based Conservation Theory of Change Pathway. By exploring the initiation, implementation and governance of community-based conservation initiatives as a change process, this dissertation provides a framework for designing a process to facilitate and implement community-based conservation where contextually appropriate. More specifically, it emphasizes the need to develop a context-appropriate, strategic, systematic and iterative set of actions, with clearly articulated assumptions, which strive to address present or potential issues, to support the change to community-based governance. Consequently, this dissertation provides a framework for understanding how a shift to a community-based mode of conservation governance takes place, and offers a South African specific design pathway, with potential application by diverse conservation actors in other countries.

Conventional 'people-free' conservation often fails to deliver both social and ecological outcomes. Communitybased conservation (CBC) – which is underpinned by local community participation, knowledge and priorities – offers a viable alternative in certain contexts. We explore the applicability of established 'commons' design principles, and factors enabling community-based conservation, to community-based coastal and marine conservation initiatives in South Africa. An extensive review of relevant South African literature, complemented by interviews conducted with diverse conservation actors, operating within wildlife, forestry and coastal and marine contexts in the country, identified common social and institutional 'constraints' and 'enablers' that affected these conservation initiatives. Key constraints include slow and complex institutional processes (particularly associated with land restitution in protected areas), a lack of political will and limited local community participation in planning and decision-making, all of which affect required collaboration. Key enablers include greater understanding and alignment of initiatives with social and ecological contexts and priorities, formalized and improved community participation, and increased partner support, as well as the presence of local champions to inform, motivate, and facilitate the implementation and management of CBC initiatives. While the objective is to provide an updated list of 'enablers' informing the South African coastal and marine CBC context, insights gained should be relevant to other national sectors, as well as regional and global conservation actors attempting to translate 'people-centred' conservation policies into practice, particularly those fulfilling obligations to the Convention on Biological Diversity's Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework