The effects of nature conservation on Local Economic Development in Timbavati, Mpumalanga Province

Abstract

The rationale for the establishment of nature reserves and protected areas has emphasized community benefits in terms of job and market opportunities, generation of income, facilitation of entrepreneurship and business, and the creation of an enabling local development environment within which locals would acquire the ability to make productive use of available opportunities and to resist the threats associated with poverty, deprivation, social exclusion and inequality. Evidently, the promotion of nature reserves has in recent years seen an unprecedented and, in many ways, uncomfortable convergence of the local economic development and environmentalism. Theoretically, the increasing popularity of nature reserves rests on the assumption that an enabling local economic development environment would be established wherein increased tourism would precipitate economic growth, job-creation and such other qualities which are collectively characterized as local economic development. However, in practice the interface of nature conservation remains scarcely tested. The study used Timbavati Nature Reserve which is adjacent different Villages including among others Timbavati Village to argue that the practice of nature conservation is far from popular pronouncements, captivated by the conjecture of an enabling local economic development environment. For the purpose of this study, a sample of 99 households from Timbavati Village was used to investigate the effects of nature conservation on LED. The findings of the study affirm that nature reserves are inherently preservationist and focus on protection of biodiversity, maintenance of critical ecological processes as well as ecosystem goods and services rather than “pro-poor growth” and “growth-focused” development paradigms. That is, the findings demonstrated that the Timbavati Nature Reserve is not contributing optimally towards LED as expected by the local communities. Although a general judgement could not be made, however, 28.3% of the respondents disagreed that the nature reserve produces desirable effects and 15.1% agreed that the nature reserve have undesirable effects on the village while 86.5% of the respondents were neutral on both effects. Additionally, the dearth of LED activities in the village vi indicated that the Timbavati Village does not get an injection from the nature reserve towards LED. Such findings indicate that the question of community ownership and access to natural resources remains unresolved where abundance of natural capital co-exists with poverty among communities. Thus, lack of integration, coherence, access to resources, local ownership, community participation and equal benefits sharing is apparent in most nature reserves and other protected areas including Timbavati Nature Reserve. Therefore, the study concludes that the Timbavati Nature Reserve is yet to contribute towards local economic development because its practice is devoid of community development principles.