Local Management of Global Values: Community-Based Wildlife Management in Zimbabwe and Zambia

Community-based natural resources management (CBNRM) is being increasingly promoted as the solution to problems of nature conservation, and some national programs like the Zimbabwean CAMPFIRE and Zambian ADMADE 1 have been championed as models for others to imitate. The approach seeks to fuse two very different kinds of agendas--preservation of nature based on biocentric premises, and decentralized rural development based on anthropocentric premises--into a win-win combination. However, as the implementation strategy relies on pragmatic reasoning, where economic rationality constitutes the main criterion, it fails to take into account the various noneconomic values involved. While individual success stories are on record, the experience this far does not provide replicable models for either decentralized resource management or efficient conservation of biodiversity.