Transboundary Conservation Areas and Tourism

The development and evolution of transboundary natural resources management (TBNRM) in Southern Africa is a new phenomenon that has been welcomed and implemented with the hope of solving conservation and development issues that have been in existent for time immemorial. TBNRM gave birth to Transboundary conservation areas (TBCA) that link two or more countries and call for the interstate(s) co-management of natural resources. This chapter specifically focuses on wildlife resources that are co-managed by interstates in southern Africa and assesses the performance of TBCA in their mandate of delivering conservation and community development through transboundary tourism development. The chapter made use of available secondary data sources to review, integrate and synthesise the growing body of literature and empirical evidence on the development and performance of transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs). Materials gathered mainly focus on the benefits, challenges, and tourism potential of TFCAs. The results indicate that transboundary conservation areas in southern Africa are increasing in number facilitated by numerous international and regional policy frameworks. Transboundary conservation areas have contributed to conservation, peace, security, and tourism development. Nevertheless, several challenges have been identified, including issues of stakeholders’ engagement, balancing livestock production and wildlife conservation in and around TFCAs, and conservation and peace tourism contradictory outcomes. All these challenges have implications on tourism development in TFCAs.