WHEN the Communal Areas Management Programme For Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) concept was first introduced in the late 1980s, Price Waterhouse, a United States based multinational accounting firm noted that local communities in the 52 rural district councils it was introduced, “viewed it as another exercise in land alienation which meant relocation, loss of grazing lands and exploitation of their wildlife by outsiders”.
Three decades on, the programme has bred resentment from the very communities it purports to serve.
The purpose of the programme is one of sustainable rural development that enables rural communities to manage, and benefit directly from, indigenous wildlife.
Although over two decades or so have passed since the inception of CAMPFIRE and millions of donor funds have been pumped into external organisations for fulfillment of programme goals, there is little evidence to show that the programme has contributed significantly to rural development.
The programme structure has become one of dependency rather than of self-reliance.
CAMPFIRE is largely directed by external organisations and the private safari operating industry both of whom are benefitting the most from millions of donor funds and lucrative revenues generated through the programme.
At the local level, the programme is essentially a business agreement between Rural District Councils (RDCs) and the private safari operating industry, by which RDCs allow private safari operators to exploit wildlife resources in their district in exchange for a small percentage of about five to 15 percent of the profits.
The little revenue channelled to local communities has proved insignificant to household income and is viewed by local communities more as compensation for losing their wildlife.
At the national level, CAMPFIRE is a strategy devised and supported by the white dominated private wildlife industry to retain land and increase control of national policies on land reform and wildlife.
At the international front, the programme has been used as a strategy to increase the profits of the trophy-hunting industry in several countries.
The ‘rural development’ theme has been used as an effective tool by programme implementers to increase donor funds, influence wildlife policies in other African countries and keep international markets open for trade in endangered species products.
The social sustainability of the programme is undermined by continued evictions or coerced resettlement of households to make room for the programme, the creation of rifts among villagers as a result of the financial benefits promised by the programme. The absence of strong local institutions and the failure of the programme to incorporate local knowledge and practices results in the lack of popular grassroots support for the programme.
There is no evidence that the programme is actively addressing the current inequalities of land ownership.
While there is plenty of mention in programme documents on land appropriation during the colonial era, no reference is made to the large tracts of land currently under the control of commercial farmers and private individuals.
To compound the problems created by the CAMPFIRE programme, non- governmental organisations (NGOs), private hunters and donor agencies all devise land use plans without consulting the villagers concerned.
Community participation becomes passive participation.
Research has revealed that Zim Trust dominates the CAMPFIRE implementing process.
Zim Trust is not a local NGO.
Its head office is in Britain where its director-general and Board of Trustees reside.
With one exception the board of Zim Trust is comprised entirely of the British elite, some of whom have received knighthoods for their high level of involvement in Britain’s former colonies of Nothern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) or Nyasaland (Malawi).
International support for CAMPFIRE has mainly come from groups like the Worldwide Fund for Animals (WWF) African Wildlife Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Society, National Wildlife Conservation Federation and IUCN who are also recipients of USAID funds.
Other avid supporters of the programme are Safari Club International (SCI), a well funded organisation created to protect hunters’ rights, and its affiliated organisation the National Rifle Association (NRA), created to protect and promote the use of firearms in killing animals.
While CAMPFIRE literature states that it has, “engaged more than a quarter of a million people in the practice of managing wildlife and reaping the benefits of using wild lands, and communities at the lowest levels can now decide on how their wildlife should be managed, who should be appointed a safari operator”, implying to the readers that local communities are indeed in full control of their wildlife resources.
Additionally programme materials repeatedly refer to the philosophy of CAMPFIRE, “that the village should be the main management unit of natural resources (including both wildlife and land)”.
Such claims by CAMPFIRE are challenged by existing wildlife laws which still do not permit rural communities in the communal areas to use wildlife for their own social, economic and cultural purposes as I mentioned in my previous articles in this series.
Instead CAMPFIRE has placed the control of wildlife resources in the communal areas in the hands of private safari operating industry and the implementing agencies.
The CAMPFIRE model should be re-modelled along the lines of Community Ownership Trusts where ecological profits are cascaded down to the poorest members of the community.