Botswana Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) Programme

Botswana's Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) Programme lets communal-area villages form registered Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) or Trusts that hold leases over Wildlife Management Areas and Controlled Hunting Areas, earning tourism and (when permitted) safari-hunting concession revenue in exchange for managing wildlife and other natural resources on their land. Piloted from the early 1990s (the Chobe Enclave project from 1993 is an early example) and formalised nationally by the CBNRM Policy of 2007, it is overseen by what is now the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism, working through the Department of Wildlife and National Parks.

By the mid-2000s roughly 150 villages across 10 districts, covering over 135,000 people - about a tenth of Botswana's population - were involved, and the programme now spans on the order of 100 active community trusts. WMAs and related communal conservation areas cover a substantial share of national land (Botswana's own 2004 figures put established and proposed WMA/CBNRM land at roughly 22% of the country). Under the policy's revenue-sharing rule, 65% of proceeds from a CBO's sale of hunting quotas or concessions goes to the National Environmental Fund, with the CBO retaining the rest. In the Chobe Enclave, tourism and hunting concession sales netted the community close to USD 200,000 in 2002, with hunting historically supplying roughly two-thirds of that revenue; nationally, CBNRM-linked tourism has been estimated at about 3.5% of total tourism value, and pre-ban safari hunting alone supported roughly 600 jobs and about 15% of tourism revenue. Over the same period Botswana's elephant population grew from an estimated 80,000 in 1996 to over 129,000 by 2014 and has stayed above 130,000 for around 15 years, one of the few stable or growing elephant populations on the continent - though this trend reflects Botswana's broader anti-poaching and land-use policies, not CBNRM revenue-sharing alone.

The record is mixed. Peer-reviewed and policy literature documents elite capture within some trusts, weak business capacity, and uneven distribution of revenue among members; CBO registrations stagnated between 2009 and 2012. Botswana's 2014 national hunting ban cut community income sharply - an estimated USD 6 million in lost licence fees affecting roughly 800 families - before the government reversed the ban in 2019, partly in response to rising human-elephant conflict; conservationists remain divided on whether that reversal itself carries risks. A 2020s policy analysis by the South African Institute of International Affairs concludes that communities are generally better off with CBNRM than without it, while stressing that trust governance needs to be substantially strengthened, and that climate-driven drought is worsening human-wildlife conflict pressure on the model.

Read more: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-tourism/articles/10.3389/frsut.2023.1296959/full

Read the full analysis: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-tourism/articles/10.3389/frsut.2023.1296959/full