Staff Writer

By Zig Mackintosh Although there is debate around the validity of the term, the “tragedy of the commons” is a metaphor widely used in environmental science, economics, and policy to describe a state where individuals acting independently and rationally according to their self-interests deplete a shared resource, at odds with

By Dr Doug Wise The debate over whether the “preservationist” conservation model is superior to the “sustainable use” one is hotly contested.  However, this is somewhat academic. The imposition of a ban on international trade in Africa’s most valuable wildlife products has greatly weakened the potential benefits of the

Mitigating Human-Wildlife Conflict The Mozambique Wildlife Alliance (MWA) takes a multifaceted approach to handling human-wildlife conflict. When conflict information is verified, a team is deployed to the area to conduct a workshop with the community. Legal issues are clarified, and the range of mitigation measures is explained. In high-conflict areas,

Wildlife management in Zululand, South Africa, started with the attempt to eradicate the tsetse fly at the start of the 20th century. The tsetse fly carries the Trypanosoma parasite, which causes sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in domestic animals, particularly cattle. White farmers wanted to move into the area

By Prof Brian Child The purpose and importance of quotas—a form of regulation that costs the landholder or community some degree of sovereignty—needs to be analyzed. Where wildlife proprietorship replaces a tragedy of the commons, quotas set in distant administrative capitals serve no purpose; they are administrative window

By Zig Mackintosh Resource-hungry China has prioritized relationships with Africa to gain access to the continent's vast natural resources. In 2000, the 3-yearly Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) was established to boost trade, investment and aid. Unlike the Western World's insistence on "aid consensus"