Conservancy Governance Models for Improved Environmental Management in the Western Cape Province, South Africa
Environmental governance is a collaborative approach involving diverse private, state and third sector actors, which contrasts with conventional government, which carries connotations of top-down control by the state over other actors. Conservancies represent a specific category of conservation stewardship in the Western Cape Province of South Africa and is therefore in effect a specific manifestation of environmental co-management, which itself is clearly a governance-based approach. Within this paradigm, a conservancy could ideally be conceived of as a collaborative environmental management institution for improved environmental management on private land. It may do so by facilitating various formal conservation stewardship and informal environmental stewardship mechanisms. In the Western Cape Province of South Africa, a conservancy can be defined as constituting cooperation between two or more landowners to manage the environment collectively across their properties. Although conservancies are landowner driven, they are supported by – and their establishment and activities encouraged by – the state and various private and third sector actors as they are widely believed to bring about improved environmental management on privately owned land. Since over 80% of conservation-worthy land falls under private ownership, conservancies can supplement and complement the state’s more conventional nature conservation estate. To function, a conservancy requires a fit-for-purpose internal governance structure and should interact appropriately with partner institutions through networking. The conservancy as an institution will be shaped internally by its general membership and externally by its network context; however, it can and should itself influence the actions of its general membership and its network partners in order to give effect to its purpose. Acceptance of that influence by its own membership internally and network partners externally – necessary for true improved environmental management – is contingent on the legitimacy of the conservancy as an institution leading to the voluntary internalisation of its “rules”. Legitimacy in turn is achieved through good governance in the form of effective collaboration which relies on active participation achieved through consultation and deliberation. Sustained participation, both internally and externally, is crucial to the long-term functioning of the conservancy, and in building the institutional structure; therefore, due consideration should be given to motivators for and deterrents to participation. Mechanisms and platforms should therefore be put in place to coordinate internal and external cooperation effectively, for conflict resolution, and to allow for adaptive management to enable the institution to self-correct and re-align to changing circumstances to continue fulfilling its purpose of improved environmental management. Strong motivating forces such as external threats, as well as discrete goals to work towards, provide the impetus for participation, while anchor sites and champion figures play a driving role. Through a combination of electronic survey questionnaires, focus group interviews, one in-person interview and multiple conservancy event observations, three working hypotheses were tested. These hypotheses were intended to explore whether good conservancy governance contributes to sustained activity, whether better environmental outcomes result where conservancies remain active resiliently, and whether conservancies contribute to landscape-scale conservation through encouraging an enabling the adoption of formal conservation stewardship and informal environmental stewardship mechanisms. All three hypotheses were supported anecdotally by relying primarily on self-reported qualitative data and only rudimentary quantitative analysis. Future empirical research on this topic may be needed to arrive at statistically relevant conclusions and infer causality between good governance and better environmental management with greater confidence. Finally, theoretical conclusions are presented and study limitations discussed, followed by practical recommendations for the ideal basic conservancy model to achieve sustained better environmental management outcomes. The critical roles of inter alia the chairperson and management committee, champion figures, anchor sites, the constitution, incorporation type, networking, environmental management plans and financial sustainability plans are described. Furthermore, it is argued that some roles and structures are essential for mere nominal conservancy existence, whereas specific additional roles and structures are desirable to create moderately active conservancies and ideally highly effective conservancies. The case for an accessible manual-style popular media product based on the outcomes of this study is presented.
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