Evaluating transboundary protected areas: Linking theory and practice

1
Evaluating transboundary protected areas Linking
theory and practice
Jonah Busch IGERT Fellow, Economics and
Environmental Science Donald Bren School of
Environmental Science and Management, Santa
Barbara, CA This work has been supported by the
National Science Foundation under grant no.
0114437
Methodology This study was undertaken to
determine the current size of the tourism
industry within the Kaza TFCA region, focused
specifically on accommodation providers and tour
operators. Managers of establishments were
surveyed in personal interviews regarding their
visitor numbers and composition, nightly rates,
revenue, spending patterns, employment, and
attitudes toward the TFCA. The research focused
only on direct tourist expenditure indirect and
induced effects were expected to be relatively
small in the region, which is characterized by a
relatively non-diverse economy. It is
anticipated that this survey will be the first of
several implemented over the medium to long term,
and was designed with subsequent studies in mind.
The results of this study provide a baseline of
economic activity against which future studies
can be compared to determine the magnitude of
economic growth in the region. Regional trends
will be compared to national growth trends
outside the study region over the same time
period, in the context of observed changes in
tourist visitation patterns, to elicit the
magnitude of economic change specifically
attributable to the transfrontier conservation
area.3
Transboundary Protected Area Research A
transboundary protected area (TBPA) refers to a
cluster of protected areas which meet across
international borders. The first TBPA was
created in 1932the Waterton-Glacier
International Peace Park between the United
States and Canada. Today there are 188 TBPAs
involving 818 protected areas in 112 countries on
all continents but Antarctica. TBPAs represent
approximately 17 of the global extent of
protected areas.1 Some of the worlds highest
profile national parks are part of transboundary
protected areas, including Tanzanias Serengeti
NP, South Africas Kruger NP, and Ugandas
Mgahinga Gorilla NP. Yet in the majority of TBPAs
(57), international management cooperation is
minimal or non-existent.2
What explains TBPA formation? Because of
ecological returns to scale and transboundary
spillover of benefits, countries have incentives
to locate their parks adjacent to other
countries parks, rather than in geographical
isolation. This model is submitted as one
explanation for the worldwide prevalence of
transboundary protected areas.
Table 1. Sample and population size of
establishments open in 2004 surveyed, by region
Figure 1. Game theory model of TBPA formation
Figure 2. An elephant crosses from Kazuma Pan
National Park, Zimbabwe into Kasane Forest
Reserve, Botswana, oblivious of the international
border.
EES IGERT Policy Internship A key component of
UCSBs Economics and Environmental Science IGERT
fellowship program is the opportunity for fellows
to undertake an environmental economics policy
internship. EES Fellow Jonah Busch took an
internship during the summer between the second
and third year of studies with Conservation
International (CI) South Africa, a regional
office of a worldwide environmental NGO. Buschs
assignment, in collaboration with a CI economist,
was to measure the economic impact of the
Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area
on the regional tourism economy.
Results Tourism is a major economic activity in
the study region, currently bringing in over 100
million annually in direct revenue and employing
more than 5500 people. However, this wealth is
unevenly distributed. The half of all hotels
which are locally owned receive less than one
fifth of total revenue, while corporate hotels
which comprise less than one tenth of hotels
receive over half of the revenue in the region.3
Future studies will determine how the magnitude
and distribution of tourism benefits to the
region change with the introduction of the
transfrontier conservation area.
BA (XA)r CA p(XA)q 1ltq 0ltrlt1
BA (XAXB)r(XA/(XAXB))s
(XA)s(XAXB)r-s CA p(XA)q 1ltq 0ltsltrlt1
BB (XAXB)r(XB/(XAXB))s
(XB)s(XAXB)r-s CB p(XA)q 1ltq 0ltsltrlt1
BB (XB)r CB p(XB)q 1ltq 0ltrlt1
Protected areas provide the countries which
designate them, iA,B, with both biological
benefits, Bi (decreasing at the margin in area,
following the species-area curve) and
opportunity costs, Ci (increasing at the margin
in area, as more valuable alternative land uses
are foregone). When parks are transboundary
rather than isolated, biological benefit to one
country is based on some portion of the benefit
of the total area, rather than solely on area
within that country. Countries choose both the
location and the size, Xi, of their protected
area, to maximize their welfare, Wi (benefit
minus cost), in a non-cooperative game.
20 April 2005 Dear Helen and Jonah, "...where
does the money come from, how does it flow in the
region, where does it end up, what are the
factors influencing income and flow, and what
influence does the proposed Kaza TFCA have on all
of this? Does the transboundary element make the
region more attractive and generate more income
than it would if it were merely a provincial
tourism initiative?" Leo BraackDirector
Southern Africa Transfrontier Conservation Areas
UnitCONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL
Table 2. Magnitude of tourism industry benefits,
by region
Isolated Nash Equilibrium XA(XB) XB(XA)
(r/pq)1/(q-r) WA(XA,XB) WB(XA,XB)
(r/pq)r/(q-r)-p(r/pq)q/(q-r)
Transboundary Nash Equilibrium XA(XB)
XB(XA) (2r-s(rs)/2pq)1/(q-r) WA(XA,XB)
WB(XA,XB) 2r-s(2r-s(rs)/2pq)r/(q-r)-
p(2r-s(rs)/2pq)q/(q-r)
Area Xisolated gt Xtransboundary Welfare
Wisolated lt Wtransboundary
Kaza Transfrontier Conservation Area In July
2003, the tourism ministers of five southern
African nations agreed to establish a
world-class transfrontier conservation area and
tourism destination in the Okavango and Zambezi
river basin regions of Angola, Botswana, Namibia,
Zambia and Zimbabwe, within the context of
sustainable development. The incipient
Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area,
or Kaza TFCA, will extend up to 750,000 sq km,
and encompass national parks, wildlife management
areas, and forest reserves, as well as
agricultural land, villages, and cities in the
five countries. Potential Kaza-related
management changes include transboundary
integration in natural resource management (e.g.
migration corridors, fencing, and ecological
research), economic activity (e.g reduced border
bureaucracy, common visa zone, infrastructure
investment, and joint tourism marketing), and
politics (a forum for resolving international
disputes). The changes will take place
incrementally in the coming years.3
Welfare for both countries is unambiguously
greater in the transboundary nash equilibrium
than in the isolated nash equilibrium, even as
individual countries designate less land for
protection. The biological superiority of one of
the two arrangements over the other is ambiguous
without the introduction of further parameters,
reminiscent of the single large or several
small (SLOSS) reserves debate. Extending the
model to include edge effects, interior value,
species survival thresholds, or human-wildlife
conflict along the park perimeter all have the
effect of making transboundary parks more
desirable relative to isolated parks. This
model implies that TBPAs are common because
countries obtain greater ecological value, at
lower economic cost, through transboundary parks
than through isolated parks. Empirical
Testing A contrasting hypothesis of TBPA
prevalence is that outstanding natural features
worthy of protection occur disproportionately
along the mountain ranges and rivers that often
form international borders. Further empirical
research seeks to determine which, if either, of
these two explanations for transboundary park
designation has been dominant. I will use a
logistic regression to compare whether or not a
unit of land has been included in a protected
area with both the underlying biophysical and
country-specific attributes of that unit and with
whether or not the unit is adjacent to a
neighboring countrys protected area.
Table 3. Distribution of tourism industry
benefits, by region
Figure 3. Kavango-Zambezi (Kaza) TFCA Study Area
References 1Mittermeier, R. et al,
Transboundary Conservation A New Vision for
Protected Areas, CEMEX-Agrupacion Sierra
Madre-Conservation International, Mexico, 372 pp,
2005. 2Zbicz, D. Transboundary cooperation
between internationally adjoining protected
areas, doctoral thesis, Duke University,
1999. 3Suich, H., J. Busch, and N. Barbancho,
Economic effects of transfrontier conservation
areas Baseline of tourism in the Kavango-Zambezi
TFCA, Conservation International South Africa,
February 2006.