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Transfrontier Parks (TFPs) have been a key feature of nature-based tourism in many parts of the globe since the 1920s, with large expanses of land made available for this purpose. Although African countries are relative newcomers to this form of reserve, since the early 1990s there has been the rapid formation of TFPs -especially in southern Africa. The post-colonial/post-apartheid period has afforded countries the opportunity to develop tourism through the establishment of TFPs. An ambitious example was the establishment of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP). in 2002. Significant tourism development research over a range of themes has been carried out in this TFP, which straddles the borders of Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Themes explored include carrying capacities, communities, management, political ecologies, conservation, travel motivations and poaching. Despite a sustained focus, the need to consolidate academic understanding of tourism in the GLTP through a systemic review is necessary and timely. This paper reviews the core tourism research foci of the GLTP, highlighting the disparity in geographical focus of investigations, being predominantly centred around South Africa. An argument is made for the need to understand the role and influence of each region equally. In addition, the paper proposes a consolidated research agenda for the future.

This paper explores the role of aspirational capacity, one cognitive dimension of well-being, as a driver of deforestation among rural smallholders living in or near Mozambique’s portion of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. Integrating analyses of remote sensing, socio-economic, and semi-structured interview data within a theoretical framework drawn from Amartya Sen’s capability approach, we examine land use decisions in the context of the available options people have to choose from as well as the factors influencing their ultimate choice. Land change detection analysis indicates that more forest conversion occurs within the park, but rates show considerable variation at the community level. We find no association between economic deprivation and deforestation rates. Limited aspirational capacity, manifested in expressions of helplessness and despair, a lack of perceived choices, and fewer agentive pursuits, is one dimension of poverty that does contribute to cropland expansion. Qualitative findings indicate that a more limited capacity to set, pursue, and achieve aspirational goals perpetuates agricultural land use traps and, consequentially, higher deforestation rates. Higher levels of aspirational capacity also contribute to negative conservation outcomes as people adopt the risky but profitable activity of illegal rhino hunting as a means to obtain other valued capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Why do some locals choose to assist rangers and report on poachers, while others refrain from doing so? • We surveyed residents in and near the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. • People that are afraid of rangers and perceive them as corruptible are less willing to assist in information-sharing. • Seeing poaching as condemnable increases people's propensity to report on illegal activities. • To effectively involve locals in rule enforcement, policy needs to change how communities perceive both officials and rules. Conservation rules – e.g. protected area regulations that aim to reduce wildlife poaching – often have an inherent challenge: while relying on that locals should share intelligence about observed crime to authorities, such rules tend to be weakly supported by these communities. Enforcement officials of conservation authorities (such as rangers) are seldom trusted, and this in turn raises doubts about whether locals will provide sufficient information about conservation crime, which is not the least needed in all those settings where a small number of rangers are tasked to monitor vast areas. The case of wildlife poaching in African countries illustrates this tension, where rangers are few, sometimes have a dubious record, and where offenders often are on good terms with locals. This article asks: Why do some locals choose to assist rangers and report on poachers, while others refrain from doing so? We conducted a survey in the years 2017–2018 directed towards 2300 residents in and near the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, where a major challenge is both subsistence and commercial forms of poaching. Our focus was primarily on subsistent poaching. We also conducted in-depth interviews with rangers and park officials to corroborate that our quantitative insights point to the same description of the situation. Our survey demonstrates that people that are afraid of rangers and perceive them as corruptible are less willing to assist in information-sharing. Seeing poaching as condemnable increases people's propensity to report on illegal activities. In contrast, individuals' stakes in conservation and perceptions of wildlife as threatened do not predict our outcome. Our findings suggest that to achieve a more thorough involvement of locals in the enforcement of conservation laws, policy needs to change how communities perceive both officials and rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mozambican state is currently working to relocate 7000 people from the interior of the Limpopo National Park (LNP), itself part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP). As the process began in 2003, this stands out as one of the region's most protracted contemporary conservation-related evictions. I draw from this case to shed light on the increasingly complex spatial dynamics of land and green grabs and, more specifically, demonstrate the importance of zooming out from discrete land acquisitions to examine how their resulting displacements are increasingly shaped by spatial processes at and beyond their borders. In doing so, we begin to see that displacement from the LNP is not a simple case of eviction from a discrete protected area. Rather, it has been provoked by the opening of the international border, hence drawing transfrontier conservation areas ( TFCAs) like the GLTP into the purview of land and green grabs. At the same time, competition over space with an adjacent grab - a sugarcane/ethanol plantation - has severely interfered with relocation, drastically prolonging it. The case, more broadly, sheds light on how conservation, agricultural extraction and climate change mitigation - all forms of land acquisitions that incite dislocation - come together to produce novel patterns of environmental displacement, placing profound pressures on rural communities and their abilities to occupy space and access resources, including labour opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In much of southern Africa, ecotourism has been widely acknowledged as critical for enhancing livelihoods of communities living outside protected areas. Several studies highlight the potential of tourism as a mechanism for driving rural economies in Africa. Using the case of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park shared among Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Mozambique, this paper demonstrates how communities are engaging in ecotourism entrepreneurship. A decade after the emergence of transfrontier parks in the region, no studies have explored how new and vibrant assemblages of individuals and community actors tap the potential of ecotourism. This study is based on 57 semi-structured interviews with participants drawn from four wards in southeast Zimbabwe. In addition, a netnography (online ethnography) of a Facebook page administered by a local community trust promoting ecotourism was undertaken. Findings demonstrate that innovative community leaders imagine, embrace, and exploit ecotourism opportunities that arise from their proximity to transfrontier parks. More specifically, this study characterises these entrepreneurs, their local and extra-local connections, how they actively engage in social networking to promote cultural tourism and development of a visible ecotourism product. This paper contributes to the understudied aspect of social entrepreneurship in ecotourism planning within transfrontier conservation areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The important role indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) is described in redefining the biodiversity conservation agenda of the Chibememe and Tshovani communities in the Sangwe Communal Lands, Chiredzi, in the management of dryland ecosystems of the southeastern low veld of Zimbabwe. These communities constitute part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA). We explored ways in which the use of IKS by Chibememe and Tshovani communities have contributed to the conservation and sustainable utilisation of forest, water and wildlife resources in light of existing contemporary scientific value systems, policy and institutional frameworks. Participant observation, interviews with traditional leaders and elders, focus group discussions and literature review techniques were employed within a case study framework. Our results revealed that IKS approaches are used in the management of dryland forest, water and wildlife resources in the Chibememe and Tshovani communities and have contributed positively to the conservation and sustainable utilisation of dryland resources. We conclude that IKS play a critical role in the management of dryland forest, water and wildlife resources at the local community level and have potential to contribute to the conservation of transfrontier conservation area resources such as in the GLTFCA, provided they are recognised, respected, preserved, protected, as well as integrated into mainstream dryland ecosystem conservation. We recommend that, for communities and their biodiversity to survive, conventional science and IKS should complement and should not seek to undermine each other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Quality and quantity of natural resources are often studied in isolation from access. We question the usefulness of this separation for resolving conflicts over natural resources and present an approach that facilitates a deeper understanding of natural resource use through a joint analysis of quantity of, quality of and access to resources. The approach was developed as part of an in-depth case study of resettlement in southern Mozambique in which newly resettled residents struggled to reestablish their livelihoods. We estimated the quality and quantity of, and investigated rules and norms of access to four key natural resources: water, agricultural fields, grazing, and forest resources in both pre- and post-resettlement. We then contrast this with the actual access that resettled residents gained to these resources in practice, what we call 'accessing.' Our analysis suggests that locally-specific, dynamic relationships among quality, quantity and access are critically important for understanding human-environment interactions and natural resource-based livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interface between local communities and transfrontier parks has received considerable attention, yet the utility of the transfrontier concept in developing livelihoods and environmental sustainability in southern Africa remains questionable. This paper argues that the benefits of transfrontier parks at regional, national and community levels cannot be overstated; neither should the problems be underestimated. Transfrontier parks may be viable alternatives in achieving development that is sustainable by protecting southern Africa's fragile environments, generating more funds and bringing significant and major improvements to the lives of the rural poor. At the same time, transfrontier parks raise issues of sovereignty of national governments, create complexity in governance processes and can lead to the needs of rural communities being sacrificed. Therefore, there is a need to find ways to reconcile conflictual and sometimes controversial circumstances in the establishment of transfrontier parks and, inquire further into the programmatic blueprints for transfrontier initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The recent creation of Mozambique's Limpopo National Park (LNP) and its integration into the larger Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) promise to effect profound political, social, and ecological changes. These range from removing sections of the international border fence and restocking wildlife in the LNP to the planned relocation of several thousand people living within the park. These transformations have inspired complex, conflicting excavations of the past. This paper investigates how history and memory are deployed as strategic political resources to justify competing claims to space, in this case the rural village of Massingir Velho slated for relocation and the larger GLTP/LNP. Official GLTP history strategically rationalizes the creation of a transnational park that is rich in wildlife and tourist opportunities and a vehicle for addressing multiple past violences. Residents of Massingir Velho who are critical of the planned relocation reconstruct a strikingly different history. They draw on intimate place-based and lived memories of two prior displacements to question the legitimacy of the current round of relocation. In short, historical excavations and reconstructions ground claims to space to both reinvent it, for example in the form of a transfrontier park, and to contest such spatial transformations. The mobilization of history, in short, actively shapes present and future spaces and possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In southern Africa, legislative changes that devolved wildlife management authority on private land to landowners and growth in the commercial value of wildlife resulted in a substantial increase in private land dedicated to wildlife. In addition, groups of landowners within the bounds of the Great Limpopo Conservation Area have incorporated their properties into private nature reserves, thereby expanding the management scale of common-pool wildlife resources. Secondary data and experience with the reserves form the basis of our exploration of the contribution of private landholdings to wildlife conservation and the extent to which three private nature reserves appear to exhibit characteristics that promote effective community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). The combined area of private land with wildlife-based enterprises in South Africa is more than double that of formal protected areas, and the three private nature reserves exhibit, to varying degrees, characteristics that enhance CBNRM and coordinated decision making for wildlife conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the early history of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP). In 1927, a year after the Kruger National Park was created, authorities from the Union of South Africa approached their Portuguese counterparts to request that a similar reservation be created on the Mozambican side of the border contiguous to Kruger. Similar requests were made to and by Southern Rhodesian authorities. This article describes the tensions and conflicts surrounding these early proposals for transboundary conservation, highlighting differences in perceptions of the benefits and risks associated with transfrontier projects, and continuities with the conflicts characterising the GLTP today. In Southern Rhodesia, the plans were embraced by businessmen as a wildlife-based tourism initiative and conservation was justified through its revenue-generating potential. Yet influential players in Rhodesia and Mozambique undermined the proposals as they felt the plan was a risky gamble that could jeopardise cattle ranching. Fears of cattle disease spreading through the transboundary wilderness area put a stop to the initiative, until its revival in the late 1990s. The demise of the early plans was also influenced by Portuguese colonial authorities' interpretation of transboundary conservation as a guise for South African territorial expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the legal policy and institutional provisions for community participation in transfrontier conservation using the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) in South Africa. It analyzes the laws, policies and institutional arrangements which are divided in three levels, including the assessment of national provisions for community participation among the countries participating in the GLTP, the evaluation of provisions for community participation at the site level, and an assessment of laws, polices, and institutions at the regional level. Moreover, several strengths and weaknesses of the framework are also presented.

Over the years a plethora of factors have been associated with sustainable tourism in the literature, but little has been done to prioritize those that are most important to stakeholders in destinations. In particular, this research aimed to identify factors perceived as essential for sustainable nature-based tourism operating in transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa. A Delphi consultation was conducted in which 518 southern African experts from government, academia, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and consultancies were invited to contribute. Participants rated the relative importance of 502 policy, planning, economic, environmental and social factors drawn from the literature, and additional factors suggested by regional consultees. A statistically significant level of consensus was achieved on 159 multidisciplinary factors considered to be 'essential' or 'incompatible' with sustainable nature-based tourism in TFCAs. The implications for the assessment of sustainable nature-based tourism in southern African TFCAs are discussed, with a review of how they relate to tourism in the Great Limpopo TFCA: a transboundary protected area that incorporates protected areas in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) is a transboundary protected area that straddles the borders of Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The park's development was partly motivated by the ecological objective of re-establishing traditional migratory wildlife routes once fences between the three countries are dismantled. Besides biodiversity conservation benefits, the park may also provide a basis to generate revenue for conservation and local economic development through tourism. This paper describes current state and private sector tourism within the GLTP and planning initiatives that may promote responsible tourism, and describes the achievements by community-based tourism enterprises and public–private partnerships in generating economic, social and environmental benefits. The livelihoods of people living in the park are outlined in relation to government policies on land redistribution, resettlement and options for the future, and progress in biodiversity conservation and responsible nature-based tourism development within the GLTP over the past five years is evaluated.1Research Fellow, Transboundary Protected Areas Research Initiative, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. This research was supported by the BMW Chair for Sustainability, University of the Witwatersrand and the Transboundary Protected Areas Research Initiative (TPARI), an IUCN-SA programme funded through the Centre for the Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, Carnegie Mellon University, by way of a co-operative agreement with the National Science Foundation (SBR-9521914). Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendation expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or Carnegie Mellon. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who commented on a draft of this paper. This paper is largely drawn from Spenceley (2005); the full paper is available at http://www.anna.spenceley.co.uk/files/Tourism%20InvestmentGLTFCAMar05.pdf [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The merger of three national parks — South Africa's Kruger, Mozambique's Limpopo and Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou — into an 89 000 km² conservation area — the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) — is supposed to boost tourism, protect biodiversity and promote harmony between neighbouring states in southern Africa (De Villiers, 1999; Hanks, 2000; Rupert, 2001). Not one of the anticipated outcomes will be realized if the position or role of local communities (social dynamics) within this mega-conservation area plays a subordinate role. In most African countries the high failure rate of official conservation programmes and policies in both the colonial and post-colonial periods can be ascribed to a tendency to view environmental problems mainly in ecological, physical and technical terms (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999). The predominantly ecological perspective ignores the necessity of a fair and equitable balance between use and preservation in a world that perpetuates the value of human beings at the expense of other life forms (Fennel, 2003). The social aspects of the environment have been neglected both in analysis and policies (Ghai, 1992). For the sake of ecological integrity, the architects of the GLTP sought to open national frontiers for hoofed crossings (Wolmer, 2001). This paper focuses on the global and continental contexts for transfrontier conservation areas, and demonstrates the link between conservation and tourism in the current environmental geopolitical discourse. It also comments of the resettlement of approximately 6000 people from the Limpopo National Park in Mozambique as a factor that can constrain the successful establishment of the GLTP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Limpopo is one of the largest Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in the world, encompassing vast areas ill South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. The TFCA concept is embraced by practically all (international) conservation agencies. The rationale for the support is that the boundaries of ecosystems generally do not overlap with those of the nation-state. Their protection requires transnational cooperation. By arguing that local communities living in or close to TFCAs will participate and benefit economically, TFCA proponents claim social legitimacy for the project. However, analysis shows that communities first have to live up to rigid standards and requirements set by the international conservation authorities, before they are considered 'fit' to participate. Communities attempt to resist this type of marginalization by forming alliances with (inter) national development and human rights NGOs, with mixed results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments the concept of "third nature," in relation to the Great Limpopo Transboundary Conservation Area which spans the boundaries of South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. Suggestion that environmental conservation makes both space and spatial scale; Potential of landforms in a given area to support specific types of wildlife communities; Planning and scale in Southern Africa; Communities in the Great Limpopo conservation area; Continental space imagined by Southern African conservationists for tourists and investors and village spaces for peasants.