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The CAMPFIRE programme in Zimbabwe: Payments for wildlife services
Frost, P.G.H., & Bond, I. 2008.
Ecological Economics 65 (4): 776-787.
Abstract
Payments for environmental services (PES) have been distinguished from the more
common integrated conservation and development projects on the grounds that PES
are direct, more cost-effective, less complex institutionally, and therefore
more likely to produce the desired results. Both kinds of schemes aim to achieve
similar conservation outcomes, however, and generally function in analogous
social, political and economic environments. Given the relative novelty of PES,
what lessons can be learnt and applied from earlier initiatives? In this paper,
we describe the evolution over the first 12 years (1989–2001) of Zimbabwe's
Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE), a
community-based natural resource management programme in which Rural District
Councils, on behalf of communities on communal land, are granted the authority
to market access to wildlife in their district to safari operators. These in
turn sell hunting and photographic safaris to mostly foreign sport hunters and
eco-tourists. The District Councils pay the communities a dividend according to
an agreed formula. In practice, there have been some underpayments and frequent
delays. During 1989–2001, CAMPFIRE generated over US$20 million of transfers to
the participating communities, 89% of which came from sport hunting. The scale
of benefits varied greatly across districts, wards and households. Twelve of the
37 districts with authority to market wildlife produced 97% of all CAMPFIRE
revenues, reflecting the variability in wildlife resources and local
institutional arrangements. The programme has been widely emulated in southern
and eastern Africa. We suggest five main lessons for emerging PES schemes:
community-level commercial transactions can seldom be pursued in isolation;
non-differentiated payments weaken incentives; start-up costs can be high and
may need to be underwritten; competitive bidding can allow service providers to
hold on to rents; and schemes must be flexible and adaptive.
Keywords: CAMPFIRE, conservation, rural development, safari hunting, Zimbabwe
Note: For further information about this publications, please contact
the corresponding author, Dr. Peter Frost (pghfrost@xtra.co.nz)
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