Conservancies are viewed as playing an important role in enabling the landscape-scale
management of biodiversity and ecosystem services by extending conservation areas beyond the
boundaries of formally protected areas (PAs). In the South African context of the Biodiversity
Stewardship Programme (BSP), conservancies are viewed as a viable landscape-scale approach
to stewardship that can contribute to meeting government conservation mandates of conserving
biodiversity and expanding its protected area network outside state PAs, through partnerships
with private landowners. Using the landscape approach theory, I determined that the landscapescale
context of biodiversity and ecosystem services creates common pool resources (CPRs) that
require collective action in the form of integrated management planning across private property
boundaries. In this context, conservancies create multi-tenure conservation areas with landscape
meanings and associated benefits that require landscape-scale collective action. However, using
property and collective action theories, I deduced that when landowners in a conservancy seek to
engage collective action for landscape-scale conservation objectives under the BSP, they are
challenged by the tension between individual meanings defined at the scale of their own property
and landscape-scale meanings that straddle property boundaries. This tension is reinforced by
property rights in which each actor holds resources under a private property rights regime while
the landscape-scale meanings of CPRs need to be addressed in a common property rights regime
context. Based on this complexity, my research set out to determine peoples’ meanings attached
to the concept of conservancy and to illustrate how these meanings influence the ability to attain
collective action necessitated by the CPR management regimes superimposed on private
property rights regimes. This was with the view to refine the concept of conservancy to enable
those who establish and engage with conservancies to better appreciate the implications and the
nature of the governance regime that is required for success.
My results show that the success of a conservancy as a landscape approach is dependent on
landowner commitment to collective action. Landowner commitment is also influenced by a
shared understanding of the conservancy as a multi-tenure conservation area managed collectively for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services across private properties.
Thus Conservancy members need to develop an understanding of the conservancy as an area of
contiguous multiple private properties that require collective management through integrated
management planning, guided by a Dargle Conservancy management plan. Conservancy
members also need to develop an understanding of the contiguous properties as encompassing
biodiversity and ecosystem services that require common property rights regimes for their
sustainable use and management. This explicit landscape approach will encourage landowner
commitment to the conservation objectives set out in the multi-tenure conservation areas.
I use my research findings to identify three issues for further research in community-based
conservation areas as a landscape approach to conservation: firstly, research that focuses on
developing integrated management plans for landscape-scale bio- and eco-regions by designating
contiguous private properties into different categories of PAs according to collectively agreed
conservation objectives; secondly, research that focuses on developing appropriate management
regimes based on a model of multi-tenure conservation areas managed collectively for the
conservation of biodiversity across private properties; and thirdly, research that focuses on
establishing social structures for the development of adequate capacity and decision-making at
the conservancy level to implement a landscape approach that supports ecological functions
beyond individual boundaries. Building on this research will provide an important continuous
learning process between conservancies and conservation agencies. Such learning is necessitated
by the complexity of continually changing social and ecological systems that influence
perceptions and behaviours. / Thesis (Ph.D)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/10838 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Mwango, Nelly Chunda. |
| Contributors | Fincham, Robert J., Breen, Charles M. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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