Duration: 2007-2009

This a subproject under the broader Environment for Development (EfD) global project headed by Professor Thomas Sterner, Department of Economics, Gothenburg University funded by SIDA. The team of researchers for the South African component is headed by Dr Edwin Muchapondwa, Environmental Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Cape Town, while the other researcher is Dr Eric Mungatana, Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy Analysis (CEEPA), University of Pretoria.

There has been a growing realisation that when dealing with natural resources, ecological boundary demarcation should take precedence over governance boundary demarcation so that management decisions have a complete effect on the ecological system. Furthermore, congruence between ecological boundaries and governance boundaries reduces the likelihood of conflicting management decisions. In dealing with fugitive natural resources such as wildlife, at an international level, this realisation has brought in its wake the creation of a good number of transfrontier national parks, examples of which are the three-nation Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, the two-nation Maloti-Drakensburg Transfrontier Park, the two-nation Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, the three-nation Limpopo/Shashe Transfrontier Conservation Area and the proposed five-nation Caza Transfrontier Park. Indeed the removal of fences between adjacent national parks in adjacent countries might help in the de-fragmentation of wildlife habitats, which has long been recognised as a major cause of biodiversity loss particularly in literature on large mammals.

The extent of enhancement of conservation under transfrontier parks will necessarily be affected by at least three factors: (i) the resultant payoff matrix of conservation benefits for the participating countries, (ii) the wildlife migration patterns particularly those of large range and more valuable species, and (iii) the nature of governance institutions in each of the participating countries.

Even though transfrontier arrangements are potentially conducive to sound conservation in the sense that wildlife, especially large range species, has access to more land, the same arrangements entail that a more diverse range of managers has access to wildlife and if the dominant majority of managers responds to perverse incentives transfrontier parks could actually open up more areas to biodiversity loss. In particular, given that wildlife moves across the countries participating in the transfrontier park why should any particular country make conservation sacrifices if it cannot control the other countries? The situation which might arise is, in part, akin to international free-riding and tragedy of the commons.

We intend to investigate (i) the bioeconomic perspective on the need for coordination of conservation efforts among neighbouring nations: here, we actually evaluate whether it is better to have a single large national park or several disjoint ones, and investigate how different habitat qualities affect species and how spatial dispersal helps to maintain viable wildlife populations (ii) the benefits culminating from coordination: we reason that to ensure minimisation of opposition to the transfrontier parks, we should identify the situations in which local communities might actually gain from them, and (iii) the threshold of governance institutions that guarantee increased conservation in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. (Under what conditions will the benefits from coordination of conservation of fugitive natural resources outweigh the detrimental effects of opening up such resources to parts of the governance system with weak institutions? Show that coordination of conservation of fugitive natural resources is pro-conservation. Show that weak institutions of some parts of the governance system result in a leak in conservation output. Investigate the resultant outcome in instances where coordination is undertaken but includes parts with weak governance systems).