Contractual national parks : meeting conservation and development objectives in South Africa and Australia

Contractual national parks (CNPs) are one of many community-based conservation models. They are usually established on land owned by a group of private individuals, but managed by the national conservation authority. Management is according to the terms of a joint management agreement drawn up by a joint management board consisting of representatives from the landowners and the conservation authority or other officials. CNPs are popular in Australia and South Africa, where they are seen as a model through which conservation and development objectives can be met, particularly where landowners are previously disadvantaged communities. This study looks at six South African and two Australian CNPs to assess whether they are successful in terms of meeting conservation objectives, providing sustainable income for both landowners and the conservation authority, and providing social sustainability, assessed in terms of strength of tenure, intangible benefit accrual, resource use rights and equity in benefit distribution. Management criteria, stakeholder institutional capacity and the policy environment in which the CNP operates were also assessed. Lessons are learnt from Australia’s much longer experience with joint management, and comparisons are also drawn with one South African national park without joint management. Few CNPs met conservation objectives and demonstrated economic and social sustainability, but this was usually a problem of implementation rather than concept. Moreover, sustainability at the ecological, economic and social levels was not necessarily a prerequisite for success. Some landowners valued intangible benefits at least as much as quantitative benefits, and CNPs running at an economic loss were subsidised by government and other high-earning national parks. CNPs contribute much towards meeting conservation and development objectives, and successful joint management should rather be defined as a process which facilitates an equitable power balance between the landowners and conservation authority, through which the social and economic objectives of the landowners, and the ecological and economic objectives of the conservation authority are met.