“The ideology of modernist top-down development prevails in Botswana, and across much of Southern Africa, although it is masked by participatory, empowering and community-oriented language and images. Coercive conservation efforts are undermining the rural populations' individual and collective actions to manage resources” (p. 767).

Using material from her PhD fieldwork conducted from 1995 to 1997 in the Ghanzi District of western Botswana, Twyman questions the integrity of stated motivations and objectives that guide community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) projects. Twyman's research analyzes the power dynamics manifest between local inhabitants and government authorities during the initial phases of a CBNRM project in the recently delineated Wildlife Management Area (WMA) of Okwa. While the concept of CBNRM adheres to a principle of building local people's capacity for decision making, this case study shows that in practice, locals are not presented with true choices or options, that official policies pose fundamental obstacles to the decentralization of power, and that the language of authorities serves to manipulate and subordinate locals to the wishes of the policy implementers. Quotations, images, and a table that summarizes expectations and outcomes from CBNRM consultation meetings illustrate the detriment that these circumstances cause to achieving community empowerment. Discussions of land rights and the basic concept of 'community' further substantiate the criticism levelled at such projects.

In Okwa, a sustainable wildlife management regime was sought through a government-sponsored partnership between WMA inhabitants and a safari company interested in the WMA land. At consultation meetings held between the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) and WMA dwellers, Twyman identified a framework of 'functional participation' that underlay the DWNP's approach, evident insofar as the group meetings did not facilitate locals to come to decisions in an open and informed manner, but instead simply promoted the policy implementers' preferences and agenda for how the conservation effort should proceed.

Denying locals the ability to make truly free and informed choices, the authorities only presented the inhabitants with two options: continue subsistence hunting or lease their hunting quota to a safari company. The implementers ignored research identifying local practices already in place for sustainable resource use, and disregarded numerous studies that suggested alternative wildlife management schemes. It is noted that 'tacit compliance' was imposed upon constituents, as the DWNP let it be known to locals that success was only likely to come if they followed recommended conservation strategies.

Apart from rhetorical forms of manipulation by authorities, Botswana has official policies that fundamentally handicap the achievement of CBNRM objectives. Formal proprietary rights to land are only devolved to stewards that utilize it for an approved commercial activity and the government withholds the rights to lands that are used for subsistence purposes. Although stated as an alternative to a joint venture with the safari company, the option for people to continue traditional livelihoods is neither sustainable nor viable without land rights.

The concept of 'community' itself poses another fundamental problem for CBNRM projects in the Kalahari. The author's research has shown that extensive community structures have historically been absent amongst the people that have settled the Okwa WMA. Thus, official plans to re-introduce ‘community management’ to the settlements are impractical and dismissive of the actual social make-up of its constituents.

Referring to cases from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Canada, and Australia, Twyman suggests that the decentralization of environmental management will continue to be problematic and CBNRM projects will not succeed until the political power dynamics of the process are confronted and counterbalanced. She cites further marginalization of local people and continued detriment to their natural environments as evidence that weakens the viability of CBNRM approaches currently in use. She calls for a new approach to integrated conservation-development projects that will designate appropriate local managerial structures and administer an appropriate distribution of rights in order to build the capacity of and empower local land and wildlife stewards.

Prepared by Megan Glore