Global Environmental Law at a Crossroads

Facilitating Inclusive, Participatory and Human Centered Legal Approaches to Conservation- Lessons from the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve

Room 205

Prompted by developments in the international human rights, governance, ecological, property rights, protected areas and climate change discourses, the past two decades have witnessed a significant shift in international thinking on how best to conserve the globe’s natural resources through the designation of protected areas. Historically founded on protectionist, exclusionary and state-centred orientations, contemporary thinking promotes a more inclusive, participatory and human-centred approach to conservation. Translating this shift from theory into practice is naturally vexed. South Africa, like many jurisdictions, is currently grappling with this challenge, one compounded by the need to simultaneously balance the country’s contemporary socio-economic, land reform and conservation imperatives within and adjacent to these protected areas. South African policy-makers have in the past decade introduced a range of innovative laws and policies to guide this process. While providing a first step in the right direction, these initiatives appear to be beset by several theoretical problems that undermine their future utility and legitimacy. This paper seeks to critically reflect on the practical manifestation of these theoretical problems in the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve (DCNR) situated on the Eastern Coast of South Africa. This Reserve provides a perfect microcosm for doing so as it: contains some of South Africa’s most pristine coastal landscapes and estuaries; it is situated on the interface between the terrestrial and marine environs; it has a novel governance regime including communal land tenure schemes and co-management arrangements; the resources situated within it are subject to significant access and use pressures given the endemic poverty in the adjacent area; and it is currently economically unviable and requires the introduction of novel financing schemes to ensure its sustainability. The paper proceeds by providing a brief historical overview of the form and nature of the legal regime at play in the DCNR. Having provided this context, the paper turns to critically reflect on the implementation of this regime under a range of themes, namely: form of protected areas governance; planning processes; land tenure arrangements; consultation and negotiation; declaration; institutional structures; management regimes; access, use and benefit-sharing schemes; and financing and support. In respect of each of these themes, the paper seeks to: firstly, briefly introduce the nature of the theme; secondly, reflect critically on the successes and challenges relating to the theme in the context of the DCNR; and finally, draw lessons from these successes and challenges which could potentially inform the resolution of both DCNR’s challenges and those facing other jurisdictions seeking to fashion more nuanced, effective, equitable and legitimate solutions aimed at giving domestic effect to the contemporary conservation paradigm within protected areas.