Keywords

13.1 Introduction

Re-inventing conservation in Africa – for that is the task at hand – was never going to be a quick job that could be easily accomplished. (Hulme and Murphree 2001: 296)

Over the past decades, governments, intergovernmental organizations, non-profit organizations, communities and businesses − supported by donors − have developed diverse institutional arrangements to achieve conservation and development objectives through tourism. By institutional arrangements, we refer to social networks of individual and organizational actors that are governed by a set of regulations, practices, tools, norms and discourses to achieve a particular objective. A great variety of institutional arrangements has emerged at the intersection of tourism, conservation and development, including conservancies, community-based organizations, private game reserves (PGRs), transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) and tourism conservation enterprises (TCEs). With this diversity, the need for “synthetic or comparative evidence on the institutional arrangements that best foster synergies between conservation and development efforts” has grown (Barrett et al. 2005: 194).

While the overview of institutional arrangements presented in this book is by no means complete, this chapter heeds the scholarly call for more comparative analysis of institutional arrangements. Four dimensions guided our cross-case analysis, illustrating the dynamic nature of institutional arrangements. The first dimension – the ‘emergence’ of institutional arrangements – compares the early years of the institutional arrangements. The second dimension – ‘change agents’ – foregrounds the actors involved in the launch of the institutional arrangements. By change agents, we refer to the individual and organizational actors who initiated and promoted the institutional arrangement in biodiversity conservation, such as conservation NGOs, game ranchers, community leaders and governmental institutes. The third dimension – the ‘diffusion’ of institutional arrangements – empirically illustrates the growth in numbers of the institutional arrangements under study. The fourth dimension – the ‘form’ of institutional arrangements – profiles the wide variety of institutional arrangements in terms of their legal status, governance system, devolution of rights, the financial means they draw upon and the tourism markets they serve.

This chapter first presents the comparative analysis, structured by the four dimensions described above. We then discuss the impact of these institutional arrangements in broad terms, highlighting how they have contributed to securing land for conservation and improving people’s livelihoods. We also explore how, amongst other factors, climate change, market developments in both non-consumptive and consumptive tourism, governance complexities and the rise of private sector capital for conservation are likely to prompt transformations and adaptations of the institutional arrangements at the conservation-development-tourism nexus. We conclude the chapter by highlighting how these developments are inspiring new research questions.

13.2 The Emergence of Institutional Arrangements

Conservation in Africa has undergone significant changes. The history of state-protected areas goes back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but is often a much more recent phenomenon, especially in eastern and southern Africa. The majority of the experience with the institutional arrangements analyzed in this book has only been gained in the past two decades (see also Suich et al. 2009). As shown in Table 13.1, most arrangements emerged in the 1990s. With the exception of the inclusion of national parks in TFCAs, the institutional arrangements discussed in this book relate to conservation ‘outside’ national parks and reserves, functioning as buffer zones or wildlife corridors and expanding wildlife habitat, on either state, communal or privately-owned land. They typically try to address some of the dilemmas and human-wildlife conflicts provoked by ‘fortress’ conservation and are increasingly combining principles of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) with a neoliberal approach to conservation. That is, they aim to ‘incentivise’ landowners to protect wildlife on their land, using tourism as the main economic mechanism to generate benefits from wildlife.

Table 13.1 Overview of the key events in the emergence of the institutional arrangements under study
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While most arrangements emerged in the 1990s, their origins are to be found in the experimentation with different conservation approaches in the 1970s and 1980s (see for example Hulme and Murphree 2001; Suich et al. 2009; Van der Duim et al. 2011; Western 2002). For instance, Jones and colleagues (Chap. 2, this volume) highlight how conservationists and community leaders experimented with community-based approaches to halt poaching in Namibia between the mid-1980s and 1990. Likewise, Mbaiwa (Chap. 4, this volume) notes that CBNRM in Botswana began with pilot projects. In addition, Noe (Chap. 10, this volume) describes how the first pilot project on community-based conservation around the Tanzanian Selous Game Reserve started in 1988. Van Wijk and colleagues (Chap. 11, this volume) point out that in Kenya, experiments with community-based conservation were already being made around Amboseli national park in the 1950s. ‘Old’ institutional arrangements have thus not simply been replaced by ‘new’ arrangements; instead, existing arrangements have been transformed and altered in novel ways to adapt to the changing and dynamic context. These dynamics not only refer to changes in the natural system (e.g. rapid decline in wildlife numbers, wildlife roaming outside state-protected areas), but also to changes in discourses (e.g. scholarly debates on common pool resource management; conservation and development paradigms) and political systems (e.g. anti-apartheid movements in Namibia and South Africa).

13.3 Change Agents in the Launch of Institutional Arrangements

The emergence of novel institutional arrangements involves change agents; actors who respond to problems or opportunities in the field by developing new models, tools, practices and discourses, bring together actors who support these solutions, and promote these solutions as the way forward (Maguire et al. 2004). Our comparative analysis indicates that the launch of institutional arrangements in the conservation-development-tourism nexus cannot be attributed to a single individual or organizational actor, albeit some individuals have played an important role in the change process (see, for instance, Chaps. 6 and 9, this volume). Rather, it is a collective process involving multiple actors. Furthermore, we found that there are two main pathways along which this collective process can unfold. In the first pathway, institutional arrangements evolve top-down, with the national government as one of the main change agents (centralized approach). In the second pathway, institutional arrangements emerge from the experimentation of actors facing problems in the field in their day-to-day work (decentralized approach).

The first pathway is found in Namibia and Botswana, where the government, supported by NGOs, took the lead in developing and promoting conservancies. As a result, CBNRM in both countries is firmly rooted in national legislation. Contrasting developments are found in South Africa and Kenya, illustrating the second pathway. The PGR industry in South Africa emerged from the grass-roots level. Individual landowners allowed wildlife on their ranches and started to harvest this wildlife commercially to produce biltong. This started out as an illegitimate practice, as wildlife ownership did not reside with the individual landowner at that time (see Chap. 6, this volume). The institutional arrangement of TCEs also emerged from the bottom-up in Kenya. The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) pioneered this organizational form in response to the challenges experienced in the field that were hampering the organization in achieving its conservation mission (see Chap. 11, this volume). In both South Africa and Kenya, government policy thus lagged behind practice. Whereas the South African government responded by legalizing private ownership of wildlife in 1987, the Kenyan government has only recently become interested in regulating and encouraging community-related and wildlife-focused enterprises. This relative lack of attention from the side of the Kenyan government over the past two decades has provided room for experimentation and learning. Since there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to conservation-development challenges, this experimentation has played a critical role in allowing AWF and other NGOs in Kenya (see Pellis et al. 2014) to gain rich experiential knowledge on what works and under which conditions (AWF 2011; Elliott and Sumba 2010; Lamers et al. 2014; Van Wijk et al. 2014). Yet, the downside of each change agent deploying its own product and process standards is that there is a great variety in the estimated 250 community- and nature-based enterprises in Kenya. This diversity hampers the emergence of a coherent market category and effective monitoring of these enterprises, for instance on the extent to which they deliver their conservation and development objectives (see Chap. 11, this volume).

Besides the roles of government, private entrepreneurs, community leaders and NGOs, donors appear to have played a pivotal role in facilitating the emergence of the institutional arrangements under study (with the exception of PGRs in South Africa). Examples of such donors include the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the Swedish Agency for International Development (SIDA), the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Nairobi, the British Department for International Development (DFID) and the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ). USAID, in particular, has played a dominant role in promoting CBNRM in eastern and southern Africa. For example, the Namibian LIFE Project, which started in 1993, is now in its third implementation phase (LIFE Plus). USAID’s COBRA and CORE projects stimulated the market-based approach to conservation in Kenya, with AWF acting as a key organization in realizing this approach. USAID became involved in nature conservation in Africa in the 1980s, driven by a coalition of members of the US congress, USAID, some environmental NGOs and the private sector that mobilized around international biodiversity conservation (Corson 2010).

While donor funding is critical for financing the pioneering stage of finding solutions to problems experienced in the field, it also constrains innovation, as it is earmarked for a particular time period, geographical scope and issue focus. Bologna and Spierenburg (Chap. 7, this volume) provide an illustrative example of this. They describe how the donor required the demarcation of a geographical area for the implementation of community capacity-building projects, thereby leaving out other settlements in the area. Such constraints, amongst others, are increasingly leading conservation NGOs to turn to other sources of funding, as we will highlight in Sect. 13.7.

13.4 The Diffusion of Institutional Arrangements

The importance of the current transformation from ‘fortress’ conservation towards conservation approaches that include CBNRM and neo-liberal practices is well illustrated by the sometimes impressive growth in the numbers of such arrangements. In southern Africa in particular, CBNRM, through conservancies in Namibia and community-based organizations in Botswana, as well as private conservation through PGRs, have gained important ground. Inspired by the southern African examples, similar developments are now taking place in eastern Africa, such as the development of wildlife management areas in Tanzania, the growth of AWF’s enterprise portfolio, and the reintroduction of sport hunting in Uganda. Table 13.2 provides an overview of the diffusion of the arrangements studied in this volume over time. The table clearly demonstrates the momentum of the institutional arrangements, but it also raises the question of what their limits are, or where this will end. The increase in numbers also provides an indication of the scope of the impact of these arrangements across the African continent. Nevertheless, we should be aware that growing numbers are not necessarily synonymous with growing impact, as every case has its own context and is implemented in its own way (see also Chap. 12, this volume).

Table 13.2 Diffusion of institutional arrangements over time
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13.5 The Form of Institutional Arrangements

All of the institutional arrangements examined in this book have at least one thing in common: they aim “to give wildlife as high a value as possible (in both monetary and non-monetary terms), to ensure that these values are captured at the level of the landholder […] through an appropriate combination of rights, and to empower people with discretionary choice over wildlife – accepting that people, given such responsibilities, are normally responsible” (Suich et al. 2009: 429). Yet, the ways in which they aim to achieve this goal clearly differ per arrangement. Below, we summarize some of the main similarities and differences between the various arrangements (see also Table 13.3).

Table 13.3 Comparative analysis of the institutional arrangement forms under study
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First, the arrangements differ in their institutional embedding in ‘legislative systems’. Whereas conservancies in Namibia, CBNRM in Botswana, sport hunting in Uganda and PGRs in South Africa firmly rest on national legislation, other arrangements lack such institutional support. TFCAs are grounded in memorandums of understanding signed by the governments involved, followed by international treaties (see Chap. 9, this volume). However, these agreements do not always provide clarity on which actor has the authority and legitimacy to make claims to cross-border space (see Chap. 10, this volume). TCEs are predominately based on a contractual agreement between three parties: the community, the private operator and AWF acting as a ‘neutral’ broker. These differences in the legal embedding are also evident in the degree of formalization of procedures and standards for establishing arrangements. For instance, CBNRM in Botswana is a highly developed approach with many concepts, tools and instruments, like the requirements for launching a community-based organization, the joint venture partnership model, the management-oriented monitoring system, and land-use zoning concepts such as wildlife management areas and controlled hunting areas. Although rights over wildlife in Namibia are clearly defined in the 1996 legislation, tourism rights are more ambiguous (see Chaps. 2 and 3, this volume). Despite this legislative ambiguity, the Namibian government has used a number of policies to recognize the general right of conservancies to develop tourism on their land and enter into contracts for lodge development with private tourism companies. PGRs in South Africa are administered through governmental regulations (e.g. permits for wildlife relocations and hunting law exemptions for fenced PGRs) and professional standards set by trade associations. This contrasts with TFCAs and TCEs for which no formal guidelines or standards have been stipulated (other than existing legislation on tourism, for instance). Yet, the change actors involved – the Peace Parks Foundation and AWF respectively – have formed their own guidelines, formats and milestones for developing these arrangements. This is not to say that such procedures and guidelines lead to uniform arrangements. As Lamers and colleagues (Chap. 12, this volume) reveal, AWF’s tools and processes in Kenya have been applied quite differently across the TCEs examined. In addition, Noe (Chap. 10, this volume) refers to the wide variety in the tourism governance systems of the countries involved in TFCAs, creating differences in the income derived from tourism services among these countries. There are thus significant differences not only ‘between’, but also ‘within’ the same institutional arrangement.

Second, ‘governance systems’ also vary. Kenya’s TCEs, CBNRM in Botswana and conservancies in Namibia are governed by local trust boards or conservancy management committees respectively. Contrary to TCEs in Kenya, the local governance structures in Botswana and Namibia seem to be more strongly linked to traditional local institutions. That is, traditional authorities and chiefs are granted a (representative) role in conservancy management structures. Moreover, the governance structures in Botswana and Namibia also seem to be better linked to the government. For instance, in Botswana, the government is represented in a technical advisory committee that has to give its approval to the community-based organization (see Chap. 5, this volume). While it is recommended that the government be involved in developing TCEs (see Chap. 11, this volume), there are no formal procedures established for its involvement in Kenya. In the case of the PGR sector in South Africa, game ranchers are the central decision-makers, albeit they are clearly governed by different actors in the industry, such as provincial nature conservation departments and the trade association of game ranchers. TFCAs are governed by multiple institutions at multiple levels, making the establishment of TFCAs a “complex and time-consuming process, requiring intensive and extensive advocacy and facilitation work in all participating countries, with each having a sense of ownership of the whole process” (see Chap. 9, this volume).

Third, all arrangements in this book intend to ‘devolve rights’ over natural resources, such as land and wildlife, to different actors. In the case of PGRs in South Africa, the individual landowner has full ownership rights over the wildlife as well as his land. In many other African countries, land may be owned by individuals or communities, or held in trust by the state for the benefit of communities, but the ownership of wildlife remains with the state. However, through hunting or tourism, the communities have been given user, claimant and proprietor rights (cf. Schlager and Ostrom 1992). For example, by allowing communities in Kenya to develop TCEs, they have obtained the right to use the wildlife on their land for non-consumptive purposes. In many cases, communities also temporarily transfer their right to use and manage parts of their land to lodge operators and hunting companies through lease arrangements and joint venture partnerships. However, private sector involvement in managing common property is complex. For instance, in Namibia, there are already five different models for joint venture partnerships (see Chap. 2, this volume). The role of the private sector in the three TCEs examined in Kenya also differs substantially (Chap. 12, this volume).

Fourth, the ‘sources of finance’ for the institutional arrangements vary. Whereas PGRs in South Africa are financed through private funding and venture capital, the establishment of the other arrangements often involves donor funding leveraged with other sources of finance. Donor funding is necessary for community mobilization, which may take 1–2 years, and capacitating community institutes with management knowledge and skills in tourism, business and conservation. In order to be financially sustainable, all of the institutional arrangements draw on tourism. For instance, since 2005 the Namibian Tsiseb conservancy’s operational costs for nature conservation have been fully covered through tourism (Chap. 3, this volume), and tourism is expected to be the core driver for economic development in TFCAs (Chap. 10, this volume). Drawing on their case study of the Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa, Bologna and Spierenburg (Chap. 7, this volume) argue that tourism development is often used as a justificatory argument for the creation and expansion of protected areas by conservationists. However, the case studies in this book reveal different levels of success in actually generating tourism income to provide a finance mechanism for conservation and development.

Fifth, the tourist dollars are generated by serving different ‘tourism markets’. As shown in Table 13.3, sport hunting plays a pivotal role in the institutional arrangements of South Africa and Namibia. While Kenya was the birthplace of African trophy hunting (Lindsey et al. 2007), the 1977 ban on sport hunting spearheaded community involvement in conservation to advance photographic tourism (Chap. 11, this volume). With the 2014 ban on sport hunting in Botswana, community-based organizations in that country will also need to focus on photographic tourism. However, non-consumptive tourism is far less lucrative than consumptive tourism. It is thus expected that livelihoods in rural areas will be affected by this ban, through the loss of jobs and decrease in income from selling hunting quotas (Chap. 4, this volume). So far, the reintroduction of sport hunting in Uganda has not met its objectives. Current policies are being implemented in varying ways across Uganda, and according to Ochieng and colleagues (see Chap. 8, this volume), the extent to which the policy is meant to contribute to conservation goals, and its impact on conservation on-the-ground, remain unclear.

13.6 The Impact of Institutional Arrangements

The extent to which the institutional arrangements at the conservation-development-tourism nexus contribute to conservation and livelihood improvements varies greatly. Generally speaking, they seem to have been more favorable in terms of conserving land for conservation and protecting wildlife than in terms of livelihood enhancement. For example, in Namibia, around 17 % of the country’s land area has been brought under the conservancy regime, which covers over 50 % of all communal land, supporting significant wildlife recoveries and environmental restorations. This can be illustrated by the elephant population in Namibia, which grew between 1995 and 2005 from around 8,000 to over 16,000 (NACSO 2012). Similarly, AWF claims that six TCEs in Kenya secured 73,000 ha for conservation (Pellis et al. 2014). In South Africa, the PGR industry has been flourishing, covering an area in the order of 21 million hectares. This has resulted in a 40-fold increase in wildlife numbers from the early 1960s to today (see Chap. 6, this volume). These contributions to conservation outside and between state-protected areas are particularly relevant given the increasing continent-wide pressure from poaching and habitat destruction on wildlife and the resulting loss of biodiversity.

Livelihood impacts, however, seem more diverse. While some TCEs have been able to generate sufficient benefit flows from tourism and related services to the adjacent communities and have thus helped to improve their livelihoods (Chap. 12, this volume), there are also examples of TCEs that have failed (Lamers et al. 2014; Van der Duim 2011). Such mixed results are also found among the other arrangements. While CBNRM in Botswana and the conservancies in Namibia have been successful in some areas, they have performed poorly or even collapsed in others. Where they have succeeded, communities benefited significantly from tourism revenue sharing schemes, provision of employment and local procurement opportunities and investments in community projects. However, Bologna and Spierenburg (Chap. 7, this volume) and Noe (Chap. 10, this volume) paint a much darker picture of the socio-economic benefits brought about in the institutional arrangements they have studied. Their cases are illustrative of unfulfilled expectations, reflecting that conservation distributes both fortune and misfortune (see also Brockington et al. 2008).

Besides mixed results, our comparative analysis furthermore suggests that the beneficiaries of the tourist dollars vary among the arrangements. While tourist dollars accrue to individual landowners in the case of PGRs, income generated through tourism in conservancies, community-based organizations and TCEs is predominantly shared at the group level. This collective distribution of benefit flows is in some cases challenged by community members who would rather see benefit-sharing at the individual level (see, for instance, Chap. 5, this volume) or by those who ensure that they benefit disproportionally through corrupt behavior (see Chap. 12, this volume). The number of beneficiaries also differs greatly per arrangement. In Kenya, at the Koija Starbeds lodge, tourism benefits have to be shared among 5,500 people, whilst at the Satao Elerai lodge there are only 638 beneficiaries. Tsiseb conservancy in Namibia involved 504 members, while the Chobe enclave community in Botswana estimated 4,108 people. The latter case could be explained by the fact that in the CBNRM approach, several villages or communities are ‘grouped together’ around a project (see Chap. 5, this volume), which creates a wider dispersal of benefits in the region.

Most importantly, the case studies (with the exception of PGRs in South Africa) in this book illustrate that such benefit-sharing comes with major governance challenges. The heterogeneity of the actors involved in institutional arrangements like conservancies or TCEs and the shifting power balances between these actors lie at the root of these challenges (see, for example, Ahebwa et al. 2012; Lamers et al. 2014; Van der Duim 2011). Besides governance challenges, community members may spend the income generated from tourism in such a way that it counters the conservation objectives. For instance, community members may buy more livestock, which may negatively affect the tourism product when the conservancy is overrun with goats and cows rather than wildlife. This clearly triggers tensions between tourism entrepreneurs and communities (Chap. 12, this volume). Similarly, farmers may invest in equipment to boost agriculture, which may in turn increase the number of human-wildlife conflicts (Chap. 5, this volume). This requires prolonged engagement and mediation from trusted third parties like NGOs to smoothen interactions, ensure the attainment of conservation objectives, safeguard accountability and transparency, and maintain the overall stability of the institutional arrangement.

13.7 Future Challenges for Institutional Arrangements

In this book we have demonstrated the robustness of institutional arrangements at the tourism-conservation-development nexus in terms of their steady growth in numbers, their institutionalization in regulations, procedures, tools, practices and discourses, and the emergence of an identifiable set of actors that promote and sustain these arrangements. However, we have also shown that these arrangements are diverse and unstable, continuously transforming and adapting to the environments in which they are embedded. It is our expectation that in the coming decades, the diversity and volatility of these institutional arrangements are likely to increase further, due to, amongst other factors, challenges related to climate change, developments in both non-consumptive and consumptive forms of tourism, governance, and the growth of private sector capital for conservation.

13.7.1 Climate Change

The future of the institutional arrangements discussed in this book is uncertain, as they will face the increasing impact of several interconnected global challenges, including climate change. Gössling et al. (2008) argue that mitigation policies addressing the aviation industry’s emissions will alter the costs and mobility of traveling, which will have major implications for long-haul holiday destinations. Climate change also affects vegetation cover, biodiversity distribution and water resources in tourism destinations, and is therefore likely to negatively affect the ecosystem services on which tourism depends (e.g. biodiversity, water, scenic landscape). At the same time, climate change mitigation policies might also contribute to the protection of these services (Gomera et al. 2010). Some of these mitigation efforts, including REDD+, are starting to influence and reshape institutional arrangements for natural resource use and nature protection (see, for example, Visseren-Hamakers et al. 2012). Both in eastern and southern African countries, carbon-related income is developing into a land-use option for private and communal landowners already involved in ecotourism (AWF 2012; Rahlao et al. 2012). Potential synergies and conflicts between carbon-related programs and nature-based tourism have not been systematically studied to date, but will likely shake up the institutional arrangements with conservation and development objectives in the future.

13.7.2 Tourism

The tourism industry is one of the key economic drivers for economic development in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), creating jobs, increasing economic diversity and generating foreign exchange revenues. Christie et al. (2013) report that SSA received 6.7 million visitors in 1990, which increased to 33.1 million in 2011 and is forecast to grow to 77 million tourists by 2020. In 2011, tourism accounted for 2.7 % of the region’s GDP. Besides international tourism, intraregional tourism is also on the rise. For instance, South Africa and Angola were the main source markets for tourism in Namibia in 2010. By 2021, it is forecast that 75 % of all tourist arrivals in Africa will be from African source markets (Christie et al. 2013). With the emergence of a middle class of consumers in urban areas, it is also envisaged that domestic tourism will grow. Most tourism ventures described in this book offer attractive products for the high-end tourism market, mainly serving international tourists. The growth of the intra-regional and domestic tourism market, however, offers entrepreneurial opportunities for local entrepreneurs. For instance, Lamers et al. (Chap. 12, this volume) describe how two additional tourism ventures have been launched on Kenya’s Koija group ranch. These ventures are helping to diversify the wildlife tourism product, reduce seasonal fluctuations and increase resilience to market fluctuations due to political turmoil or terrorist threats. However, they are also increasing the governance complexities in the institutional arrangements (see also Sect. 13.7.4).

The growth of tourism in SSA also offers opportunities for inclusive tourism, that is, tourism that benefits disenfranchised members of society, such as young people and women. While limited data are available, the existing studies suggest that tourism employment has been especially productive for women, youth and rural populations (ILO 2001; ILO and UNWTO 2009; Snyman 2012; Spenceley and Goodwin 2007). For instance, in 2010, the female share in the workforce of the African hotel and restaurant industry was 31 %, compared to 21 % in other sectors (Christie et al. 2013). The discourse on pro-poor tourism (Mitchell and Ashley 2010) and ‘inclusive growth’ more broadly has provided and continues to provide an enabling environment for change agents in conservation and development.

13.7.3 Trophy Hunting

The chapters in this book illustrate that over the past decades, support for trophy hunting as an incentive for conservation has fluctuated significantly. Whereas hunting was banned in Kenya in 1977, Uganda re-opened for trophy hunting in 2001. Whereas hunting was central in Botswana’s CBNRM work, it has been banned since 2014, putting communities in a difficult position, as hunting tourism generates more revenues than photographic tourism. For instance, it is estimated that Kenya is missing out on an estimated USD 20–40 million per year in revenue from trophy hunting (Lindsey et al. 2007). With the strong lobby against the re-opening of hunting tourism in Kenya by foreign animal welfare groups and the tourism industry, which fears increased competition in wildlife-rich areas, policy reforms with respect to consumptive tourism will be difficult to accomplish (Nelson and Agrawal 2008). These shifting dynamics illustrate that there is little consensus concerning the use of hunting as a tool for conservation. Such divergent views are also found in this book. Van Hoven (Chap. 6, this volume) is generally hopeful about the future of sport hunting in South Africa, as devolving the ownership of wildlife to private landowners has positively contributed to wildlife populations and ecology (see also Hottola 2009). In contrast, Ochieng and colleagues (Chap. 8, this volume) and Noe (Chap. 10, this volume) are more worried about the future of trophy hunting in Uganda and Tanzania, respectively. Thus, the future of trophy hunting in SSA, paradoxically used as a major source of financing conservation, and the balance between consumptive and/or non-consumptive forms of tourism, remain unclear. The latent threat of radical policy change creates uncertainty and risks for communities, investors and entrepreneurs involved in conservation-development-tourism arrangements.

13.7.4 Governance Complexities

Institutional arrangements in tourism, conservation and development can be considered as “nested systems”, a term which refers to “interconnected, multilevel systems in which each action-level or arena simultaneously is a framework for action and a product of action” (Holm 1995: 398). Changes at the policy level may thus set in motion changes at the grassroots level and vice versa. In addition, the relations between these two layers may also change, forming the impetus for adjustments and transformations in the institutional arrangements. While embedding of institutional arrangements in multiple institutional spheres increases their stability as well as their resilience to external forces, it may also create major governance challenges. For instance, Noe (Chap. 10, this volume) narrates how in Tanzania, the wildlife user rights granted to a community and a hunting safari company overlap. The discovery of uranium in this wildlife management area has complicated matters even further, because mining companies and the Ministry of Energy and Minerals have now entered the stage to capitalize on this land. Another example is found in the work of Lamers and colleagues (Chap. 12, this volume). They describe how the tourism entrepreneur at the Sanctuary at Ol Lentille has created a new sphere of influence and frame of action by enlarging the conservancy through partnership agreements with surrounding group ranches and investing philanthropic capital in different communities. This is interfering with the original deal between the entrepreneur and the group ranch, and is increasing the complexity of the governance of this partnership. Such governance complexities are likely to increase and intensify in future.

13.7.5 Conservation Finance

Traditionally, public sector funds and philanthropic capital have been the main sources of finance for conservation. It is estimated that in 2010, they accounted for 80 % of the conservation finance market. The remaining 20 % was generated by market activities such as offset markets and green commodities (Credit Suisse et al. 2014). For instance, the Dutch Embassy in Nairobi sponsored four Kenyan conservation organizations (the Laikipia Wildlife Forum, the African Conservation Centre, the Northern Rangeland Trust and the AWF) with almost USD 29 million between 2007 and 2014, to address rural poverty and generate livelihood alongside their conservation work (Pellis et al. 2014). However, after 12 years of funding, the Embassy will soon discontinue its funding, illustrating that biodiversity aid is dwindling (Miller et al. 2013). With the shift of attention among donors and governments from biodiversity towards poverty reduction (Hickey and Pimm 2011), in the coming decades, market-based activities are likely to play an increased role in generating funding for conservation, a development that is criticized by political economists and ecologists in particular (see Chap. 1, this volume; Brockington and Duffy 2011). The use of private sector capital for conservation is, however, deemed necessary to address the shortfall in funding for biodiversity conservation. Gutman and Davidson (2007) estimate that global investment in conservation is only 30 % of the total required investment to achieve the objectives of the Convention on Biodiversity Conservation. A recent report by Credit Suisse and other organizations (2014: 6) also points out that “[t]o meet the global need for conservation funding, investable cash flows from conservation projects need to be at least 20–30 times greater than they are today, reaching USD 200–300 billion per year, if we assume that current government and philanthropic funding at least doubles”. It is estimated that the required capital investment for biodiversity conservation could be mobilized by wealthy individuals, retail and institutional investors, if they were globally to direct 1 % of their capital towards conservation (Credit Suisse et al. 2014). Kiernan (2008: 2) therefore believes that the entrance of the mainstream investment markets into conservation issues “will have as great an economic impact and be viewed as being at least as transformational as the development of the Internet or, before that, the advent of the railroads and electricity.” Yet, before mainstream players such as these enter the conservation finance market, proven and scalable conservation financing concepts are needed. To finance this pioneering work, public funding is still required (Credit Suisse et al. 2014).

The upsurge in innovative, often international, market-based and experimental financing mechanisms will gradually build on or replace existing financing mechanisms run by governments and NGOs (Gutman and Davidson 2007). Examples include payments for ecosystem services, carbon-related income, environmental mortgages and biodiversity derivatives (Mandel et al. 2009a, b; Whitelaw et al. 2014). In addition, conservation NGOs are increasingly experimenting with new ways to finance the achievement of their conservation missions. Chapter 11 in this book pointed out how AWF has launched a for-profit social impact investment company to exploit these conservation finance opportunities. AWF is not the only conservation NGO exploiting novel financing opportunities; Conservation International has also launched an investment fund to support small and medium-sized businesses with the potential for generating conservation and human-wellbeing impacts (CI n.d.). This shift in problem-based financing towards opportunity-based financing is likely to foster changes not only in the way institutional arrangements for conservation, development and tourism are financed, but also where such institutional arrangements will be developed (i.e. where there is most chance of success in terms of returns on investment, conservation benefits and social impacts). Again, political economists and ecologists are strongly critical of this neoliberal frame of reference in allocating funds (Brockington et al. 2008; Brockington and Duffy 2011; Corson 2010; Holmes 2012).

13.8 Towards a Research Agenda for Understanding the Dynamics of Institutional Arrangements

Climate change, developments in tourism and trophy hunting, governance challenges and the emergence of new forms of conservation financing are all creating a dynamic environment for actors operating in the field of conservation, development and tourism. In this final section, we highlight how these developments are inspiring a new research agenda for understanding processes of change and stability in institutional arrangements at the conservation-development-tourism nexus. More specifically, we identify four broad themes that merit further research: (a) the effects of climate change; (b) tourism as a lever for inclusive growth; (c) governance mechanisms in institutional arrangements; and (d) private capital streams in conservation finance.

The first research stream focuses on climate change and its effects on critical ecosystem services provided for tourism and livelihoods, such as the distribution of wildlife, water resources and scenic landscapes. Climate change is expected to lead to wide-ranging changes in temperature, precipitation and water availability, which will have consequences for the spatial and temporal distribution of biodiversity. The scope of these consequences, and their effects on nature conservation and, in particular, on tourism in Africa, are not well understood (Amelung et al. 2008). Addressing this regional research gap is considered a priority area for research (UNWTO/UNEP/WMO 2008). Formulating effective climate change adaptation (or mitigation) policies in eastern and southern Africa will be impossible without a solid research base.

The second research stream focuses on tourism as a lever for inclusive growth. Current understanding of the extent to which the tourism sector generates employment opportunities, and the extent to which it complements traditional sectors that are facing an economic downturn due to the global economic and financial crisis, is scant (ILO and UNWTO 2009). With conservation tourism being one of the key drivers of economic development in rural areas in Africa, research into the extent to which the institutional arrangements that feature in this book leverage employment and livelihood opportunities for rural populations, especially for young people and women, is urgently needed. In addition, we need more insight into the role that different actor constellations and policies play in the delivery of productive employment. For instance, it would be particularly interesting to systematically compare different joint venture models like the ones presented in Chaps. 2 and 12 in this book, as well as to compare tourism and other productive sectors and forms of land-use, on their direct, secondary and dynamic economic effects on the poor (see, for example, Mitchell and Ashley 2010; Snyman 2012; Spenceley and Snyman 2013; Van de Mosselaer and Van der Duim 2012). Such research would benefit from comparative analyses and the use of large-scale quantitative methods, moving beyond single or multiple case study designs.

The third research stream involves questions about governance and meta-governance. In this chapter we have shown that there has been an increase in the number of institutional arrangements, indicating their momentum. However, we have also emphasized that these arrangements are vulnerable to governance challenges, which in turn result from the diversity of the actors involved with divergent resources, views and interests and the multiple institutional spheres in which they operate. We also pointed out that these arrangements are increasingly being scrutinized by scholars who are worried about the neoliberalisation of nature more broadly, posing legitimacy threats to such arrangements. This raises the question of how institutional arrangements can meet such governance challenges and gain and maintain their legitimacy. In many cases presented in this book, NGOs are performing ‘meta-governance’ roles (Glasbergen 2011) in and among the institutional arrangements, facilitating social interactions, solving conflicts and stimulating trust among the parties involved. Yet, the cases also indicate that there are limits to NGOs’ involvement, as the donors who sponsor them are generally more interested in initiating change than in sustaining change. In addition, in a highly politicized environment, the organizational legitimacy of NGOs is also increasingly being questioned. This raises the question of whether NGOs are best positioned to perform the role of ‘meta-governor’ of these multi-actor partnerships (Glasbergen 2011), and whether their role is bounded in time. Other relevant research questions within this research theme revolve around the features and conditions that make institutional arrangements more or less vulnerable to governance challenges, what measures and mechanism are put in place in response to these challenges, and how effective these are.

The fourth research theme focuses on the entrance of private capital in conservation, indicating a new phase in the conservation-development nexus. Whereas the chapters in this book highlighted the emergence in the 1990s of collaborations between representatives of the tourism services industry, such as tour and lodge operators, and communities, we are now witnessing the increased involvement of the financial services industry in these collaborative arrangements. However, we still know very little about the implications of these new forms of financing, especially for the communities that are entering into new forms of partnerships, in which they increasingly have to become ‘commercial partners’. It is also unclear which sectors will be the recipients of new flows of capital. Hence, the scale of these developments, the key players involved, their motives, incentives and practices and what role conservation tourism plays and is to play in these developments are all questions that deserve further research.

Overall, our intention to provide an overview of institutional arrangements for conservation, development and tourism in this book has not only increased our understanding of the issues, but it has also revealed that many questions remain unanswered and new questions are continuously emerging. Given the major challenges the world is facing in terms of conservation and development, such as the increasing illegal trade in horn and ivory, continued wildlife habitat destruction, persistent poverty and climate change, we need to know more about the changes and stability in the institutional arrangements that aim to address these challenges, in order to get these institutional arrangements and their conservation incentives right.