ABSTRACT
The positioning of transboundary conservation approaches since the mid-1990s in the midst of southern African governments’ conservation, regional economic integration and social development objectives heralded a remarkable convergence of interests in international relations. Transfrontier conservation initiatives have also been strongly supported by Southern African Development Community (SADC) wildlife-related policy and protocol, which seeks to promote these initiatives as a means for interstate cooperation in managing and sustainably using ecosystems that transcend political boundaries, and to develop a common framework for natural resource conservation (see SADC, 1999). The political interest aroused is demonstrated by the nine (current and former) presidents of the region, who are patrons of the Peace Parks Foundation, a South Africa-based NGO dedicated to raising funds for, and facilitating the implementation of, transboundary initiatives (Hanks, 1997). Further support to cross-border conservation occurred when, in the late 1990s, following years spent funding community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programmes, foreign donors financing environmental initiatives shifted en masse to funding transboundary conservation activities (Hutton et al. 2005; Frei, 2007).
