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BUILDING ROBUSTNESS TO DISTURBANCE: GOVERNANCE IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN PEACE PARKS Michael L. Schoon Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the joint degree Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Department of Political Science, Indiana University December 2008 Copyright 2008 by 6FKRRQ0LFKDHO/ All rights reserved 2008 “Building Robustness to Disturbance: Governance in Southern African Peace Parks” Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. __________________ Chairperson, Elinor Ostrom, Ph.D. __________________ Patrick O. O’Meara, Ph.D. Doctoral Committee __________________ Roger B. Parks, Ph.D. Date of Oral Examination September 4, 2008 __________________ Vicky J. Meretsky, Ph.D. __________________ Marco A. Janssen, Ph.D. ii “Building Robustness to Disturbance: Governance in Southern African Peace Parks” © (2008) (Michael L. Schoon) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii “Building Robustness to Disturbance: Governance in Southern African Peace Parks” Acknowledgements The amount of help that I required in completing this dissertation goes far beyond what I could have expected from my friends and colleagues, advisors and peers. The number of people that deserve my thanks, respect, and unending gratitude is very long, and I can only begin to note everyone that garnered my appreciation. In the course of my research I spoke with hundreds of people involved in transboundary conservation. The southern African conservation community took me in and made me welcome. They answered my questions in spite of my ignorance and lack of experience on the subject. The park staff of Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks, of DNAC in Mozambique, and SANParks of South Africa made me feel welcome and spent a tremendous amount of time with me. They all deserve my thanks. I can only hope that I have the opportunity to help them as much as they have helped me. The southern African academic community welcomed me as a peer. I would like to thank my fellow researchers and scholars at the University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch, the University of Witwatersrand, UNISA, and the University of Pretoria for their help. In particular, the political science department at the University of Pretoria provided me with an office to work from and a staff to engage in debate. Likewise, Dr. Coleen Vogel and the Wits Geography Department and Dr. Kevin Rogers in the Environmental Science groups provided a forum for presenting my ideas and a South African group of advisors. In no way would this dissertation have been feasible without the love, care, and advice of our adopted South African family, the du Pisanies. Johann and Maureen took me and my wife in, provided entry into the South African academic community, created a venue for sharing my research findings, and treated us like members of their family. We are forever grateful. I would also like to thank the good people at Indiana University for the most enjoyable, intellectually stimulating, fun, and rewarding time in my life. The faculty, staff, and fellow iv “Building Robustness to Disturbance: Governance in Southern African Peace Parks” students at SPEA, the Workshop, and the university at large created a rich environment for growth and exploration. I feel very fortunate to have had five committee members that took the time to read and comment on my work time and time again, advise me as I asked innumerable questions, and cared about me as person as well as a student. Individually, I would like to thank Patrick O’Meara for taking the time from his busy schedule to comment on my writing, to put me in contact with several researchers in southern Africa, and for providing a South African perspective to my work. Vicky Meretsky opened up the world of conservation biology and kept me in line as I rapidly got over my head on environmental science issues. Roger Parks’ kind and jovial manner kept the spark burning in times of doubt. He managed to combine critical comments with a light touch, resulting in improved papers and soothed egos. I would like to thank Marco Janssen for introducing me to the worlds of resilience and robustness and for his insightful feedback. I have enjoyed working with him, writing with him, and publishing with him. Most importantly, I can never repay the debt of gratitude that I owe to Elinor Ostrom. She has been my intellectual mentor from the very beginning, a source of inspiration, a fount of energy, and a role model for how to succeed in academia and in life. I will never cease to be amazed by her sound and caring advice to her graduate students, her quick grasp of critical issues, and her breadth of understanding and contribution to so many research endeavors. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support through the years. My parents, brothers, and in-laws have never ceased to encourage me through the long journey to this point. I want them to know how much they mean to me. In my wife, Lyrna, I have the source of my inspiration and the rock in my life. She has sacrificed as much as I have, professionally and emotionally, as we traveled the rough road of academia together. I can only hope that the rewards of the journey have been worth her sacrifice. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. v “Building Robustness to Disturbance: Governance in Southern African Peace Parks” Abstract Transboundary conservation has gained currency over the past decade as an effective means for achieving a wide array of goals ranging from improved biodiversity conservation to regional economic development to the promotion of peace between countries. Studies to analyze these competing claims oscillate between views of transboundary protected areas (TPBAs) as panaceas that can solve wide-ranging societal challenges in any type of setting to studies that view them as idiosyncratic entities with no generalizable traits, and few studies assess institutional arrangements for governance. This study, by contrast, uses 150 key informant interviews within two TBPAs in southern Africa – the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in Botswana and South Africa and the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe – to address analytically how different governance structures of transboundary protected areas maintain robustness in response to various types of disturbance. The insights arise from the fundamentally different institutional development paths of the two cases. This study argues that that the bottom-up institutional development and the slow, unforced evolution of governance in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park have allowed governing bodies to learn how to adapt and respond to transformations in the social-ecological system from an operational level. By contrast, institutional development in the Great Limpopo has struggled operationally due to the top-down imposition of the park on local-level communities and officials and the short time horizons permitted for goal attainment. However, top-down park formation has resulted in other accomplishments, primarily in bridging international boundaries. The central premise is that the national-level commitment to the Great Limpopo results in greater degrees of cooperation at a policy level than in a park that develops from the bottom-up. Such high levels of policy cooperation without parallel gains in operational cooperation have led to unexpected challenges in the Great Limpopo. vi “Building Robustness to Disturbance: Governance in Southern African Peace Parks” ___________________________________ Chairperson, Elinor Ostrom, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Patrick O. O’Meara, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Roger B. Parks, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Vicky J. Meretsky, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Marco A. Janssen, Ph.D. vii “Building Robustness to Disturbance: Governance in Southern African Peace Parks” TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………….iv Abstract……………………………………………………………………………....vi Abbreviations………………………………………………………………………xiii List of Figures, Tables, and Appendices………………………………………….xiv Glossary……………………………………………………………………………..xv 1. Chapter One: Introduction – Transfrontier Conservation Areas in Southern Africa………………………………………………………………………………….1 1.1. Insight into Transboundary Conservation……………………………………………2 1.1.1 What are TBPAs, TFCA, and Peace Parks………………………………………..2 1.1.2 A Brief History of Transboundary Conservation…………………………………3 1.2 What is the Rationale for TBPAs?..................................................................................8 1.2.1 Ecological, Economic, and Political Arguments for TBPA……………………….8 1.2.2 Are TBPAs the most effective means for achieving these goals?...........................8 1.3 What does the evidence show?......................................................................................10 1.3.1 The Ecological Case for Transfrontier Conservation…………………………...10 1.3.2 The Development Case for Transfrontier Conservation………………………..16 1.3.3 The Political Case for Transfrontier Conservation……………………………...21 1.4 Theoretical and Practical Questions about TBPA Governance……………………..22 1.4.1 The Theoretical Challenges……………………………………………………….23 1.4.2 The Policy Puzzles………………………………………………………………….24 1.4.3 The Research Question…………………………………………………………….25 1.5 Introduction to the Case Studies……………………………………………………...25 1.5.1 The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park……………………………………………….28