14 



I should acknowledge that there is some controversy around 

 some of these programs. The Campfire Program, particularly, and 

 aid's support of it has been criticized by some of the animal rights 

 groups. Those groups are concerned because the benefits that flow 

 to communities through the campfire program come from utiliza- 

 tion and come from consumptive utilization, specifically hunting. In 

 the case of Campfire, it comes from the hunting of elephants. The 

 other programs, like the Cullman Program and the Zambia pro- 

 gram, do have a hunting base but they are not hunting elephants. 

 The work in Kenya, the work we are doing with TANAPA in Tan- 

 zania and our Uganda projects, do not involve consumptive use. 

 Thev involve nature tourism of the more traditional variety. But all 

 of these projects have a common central theme which is commu- 

 nities need to benefit. And, although there may be controversy 

 about utilization of wildlife, the simple fact is that in Zimbabwe, 

 in less than a decade, the land that is dedicated to wildlife con- 

 servation has grown from 12 percent, all in government reserves, 

 to over 35 percent of the country and almost all that new land that 

 is dedicated to wildlife is in private and communal lands. These are 

 private people — individuals and communities who have decided 

 that wildlife conservation is an important resource for their devel- 

 opment. This is a very significant change that has taken place. 



Now, I would like to highlight a couple of general lessons that 

 we have learned from this wildlife experience and perhaps expand 

 it into a slightly larger set of issues. First, that conservation 

 projects, if they are to succeed, have to offer economic alternative 

 to people. We cannot simply ask people to conserve and tighten 

 their belt one more notch. There are no notches left in Africa's belt. 



Second, we are not focused on the rain forest, which perhaps 

 makes us a bit of a heretical organization, we are particularly con- 

 cerned about savannahs and some of the arid lands of east and 

 southern Africa. So as we look at tropical forests, we should not 

 lose sight of the importance of the diversity on these arid lands 

 and, particularly, the degree of dependence the people living on 

 those lands have on that diversity for their survival. To protect 

 these arid lands, where often wildlife is the best use, we must in- 

 crease the production on the good agricultural lands and we must 

 make sure that there is an equitable distribution of the production 

 of those lands. 



Third, that a modern and urban economy is going to be critical 

 to helping meet the needs of Africa's growing population. We are 

 not going to be able to meet human needs on the rural landscape 

 alone. So focusing on urban areas is important. We have not done 

 so and I think by early the next decade, none of us are going to 

 have the luxury of only focusing on the rural countryside. Africa's 

 urban areas are increasingly critical. 



Fourth, sustainable resource development for the poor, and espe- 

 cially for poor women, is not a process of technology transfer but 

 an institutional and social process. This means that we must be in- 

 volved in issues of land rights and resource rights. This is not a 

 technical issue; it is a political and social issue. And increasingly 

 we are not hiring scientists, we are hiring anthropologists. There 

 is a real change in conservation thinking about the issues we are 

 trying to address. The issues of wildlife conservation are not of 



