found in the Zambia Wildlife Act obscures
how “participation” in fact occurs – first,
people become accomplices to a process in
which decisions have already been made;
second, the role of the agency that made
these decisions (ZAWA and other state and
donor authorities) is obscured, making it
appear that decisions are made by “partici-
pants” (rural communities through the
CRBs); and third, those making the deci-
sions are ultimately concerned with reducing
the cost of the project, not with addressing
social (and in this case conservation) issues
— which are viewed as only raising obsta-
cles.^36
Despite CBNRM proponents’ declarations
that CBNRM officials do “not dictate the
methods used to achieve reconciliation
between wildlife and rural residents’ inter-
ests,”^37 this is exactly what they have done.
The failure to devolve real authority over
wildlife to rural residents is a problem that
has been noted throughout the world. As in
many CBNRM programs, local community
involvement is often at best superficial and
does not actually empower diverse commu-
nities to control either their own resources
or their own futures, and it is in part this
lack of real decision-making ability that has
kept CBNRM programs from working.^38 The
failure to devolve real authority in the
Zambian case is evidenced in, for example,
the rural community’s inability to freely
choose representatives without restric-
tions;^39 to adequately influence the safari
tender process; to influence quota setting
exercises; to opt out of tourism as the main
source of community income; and to secure
the funds that are due (and long overdue)
them.^40 Thus, CBNRM proponents have both
created the structure that “promotes” rural
participation and restricts it by dictating its
rules. In Zambia, CBNRM programs conceive
of wildlife as an economic resource to be
exploited by tourists^41 (and consumptive
tourism is the preferred method). Thus the
boundaries of any negotiations with rural
residents were set long before CBNRM pro-
grams were initiated – benefits were to
come in the form of economic development,
not in rights of access to the wildlife
resource or in any other way that rural
groups might decide as more appropriate or
meaningful.^42 Electoral/ representative
democracy— the donors’ favorite vehicle for
incorporation— is the current governance
mechanism deemed appropriate for CBNRM
in Zambia. Finally, community members are
forced to police and monitor their own activ-
ities in order to achieve some external
notion of “civility.”Conclusion
If rural dwellers have not achieved any real
devolution of authority to make decisions
over their lives, we need to question
whether or not CBNRM as it is practiced in
Zambia today is any radical departure from
claims of participation by colonial authori-
ties. I believe they are in fact linked, not
only by a failure to devolve real authority,
but by shared ideas that have informed how
each was created and devised, and the form
they took once created. Initially both
CBNRM and colonial conservation werebased upon ideals of a romantic sense of
African connections to nature. In the 1980s,Conservation aas ccultural aand ppolitical ppractice
Figure 2.Through the eyes of a tourist (Courtesy
Brian Cohen).