The transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) concept appears well-timed and appropriate to
Southern Africa but the role of local communities in these enterprises is not defined. A
framework that fully integrates agriculture, biodiversity conservation and livelihoods, known as
ecoagriculture, provides opportunities for achieving TFCA goals through bottom-up means. The
aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of planning and managing ecoagriculture in the
Lubombo TFCA spanning across the borders of South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland. The
study area is a biodiversity hotspot and is inhabited by poor people who need to meet their
livelihood needs through utilising local natural resources. There is thus a need for initiatives that
balance biodiversity protection and utilisation. Methodological triangulation including transect
surveys, participant observation, key informant interviews, household questionnaire surveys and
participatory approaches is employed. The study involves stakeholder identification and
consultation, participatory landscape performance assessment, evaluation of the community’s
future visioning and the analysis of policy and governance mechanisms impacting on
ecoagriculture implementation.
ii
The study revealed a unique combination of stakeholders with varying degrees of
importance and influence in the TFCA communities under focus, a situation which cannot be
expected in an ordinary communal farming area. Potential conflicts of interest were evident
among certain stakeholder groups but the stakeholder roles and interests were largely
complementary. Key informant interviews pointed towards a high feasibility of planned
ecoagriculture implementation in the area. The questionnaire survey showed an overwhelming
willingness to plan the integration of biodiversity and farming. According to the participatory
evaluation of the landscape’s performance the area’s overall performance score was 2.97 out of a
possible score of 5, which implied a performance in the middle of the range. There were
significant differences in the scores for the landscape dimensions (p-value < 0.01) but there were
no significant differences in scores across the landscape (p-value = 0.37). The area is a mosaic of
unplanned ecoagriculture with a good potential for transformation into systematically managed
agriculture-biodiversity integrated approaches. Biodiversity-agriculture integration elements are
evident in the Mathenjwa community vision, reflecting the community’s consciousness of its
future in the TFCA. None of the Lubombo TFCA countries has an explicit ecoagriculture policy
but ecoagriculture aspects are implied in existing legislation. Weak transboundary collaboration
makes the Lubombo TFCA to exist as a treaty on paper rather than on the ground. Conflicts
between customary norms and public legislation create policy enforcement challenges and pose a
barrier to ecoagriculture implementation. Existing conditions could be improved to allow
stakeholder-driven integrated landscape management. Innovative efforts (like policy
harmonisation, capacity building and campaigns to raise awareness of the benefits of agriculturebiodiversity
integration) are recommended for ecoagriculture to become a systematic landscape
management practice in the area. The contributions of this study include: (i) a suggested
framework for local community involvement in TFCAs which improves their resilience to
climate change impacts, (ii) a suggested ecoagriculture feasibility index (EFI) for a specific
landscape, (iii) a proposed landscape evaluation tool that practitioners and researchers can adopt,
(iv) a methodological contribution to landscape studies involving the use of participatory
processes and (v) contribution to the literature on the subject and practice of ecoagriculture. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2013 / Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology / Unrestricted
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:up/oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/33004 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Chitakira, Munyaradzi |
| Contributors | Torquebiau. E. F., Ferguson, J. Willem H. |
| Publisher | University of Pretoria |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | © 2013 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
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