Research Statement

Building on the pathbreaking work of Elinor Ostrom and Marshall Murphree, the design of CAMPFIRE was a highly intellectual process. As a leader and architect of Zimbabwe’s pioneering CAMPFIRE programme (1989-1995)[2], I pioneered several aspects of community based natural resource management (CBNRM), mostly relating to economic performance and governance. In African Wildlife and Livelihoods, Murphree supported the academic critique of donor-designed CBNRM, but expressed disappointment that academia was ignoring the oral and grey literature and knowledge generated by dedicated people over many years through the process of implementation.

As Chair of the IUCN Southern African Sustainable Use Specialist Group, and following Murphree’s observation on the invisibility of these ideas in the formal literature, I facilitated this community of practice to define an alternative future for wildlife and protected areas (Parks in Transition), to document the evolution of these ideas on public, private and community land (Evolution & Innovation in Wildlife Conservation), and to collate effective tools for CBNRM (Practical tools for community conservation in southern Africa). This series include an edited volume on the political economy of wildlife led by Fred Nelson (Community Rights, Conservation and Contested Land) and the sustainable tourism economy led by Anna Spencely (Responsible Tourism). Through my leadership of IUCN-SASUSG, I contributed to the integration of these principles into national policies and guidelines, regional SADC protocols, and text within CITES, IUCN and CBD resolutions (e.g. the CBD’s Addis Ababa Sustainable Use Guidelines).

Brian Child, PhD

My life’s mission is to align the conservation of Africa’s wildlife with the well-being of its rural people. My research is guided by the knowledge and systems needed to address this challenge, and I hold myself accountable to the peer review of empirical results.

My career was launched by the puzzle of why Africa’s exceptional wildlife was being replaced by exotic commodity production systems like livestock, and fear of the environmental degradation associated with this. As a Rhodes Scholar working for Zimbabwe’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management, my DPhil focused on the relative financial viability and environmental sustainability of wildlife vs commodity-based agricultural economies. For the first time, I demonstrated that wildlife generated more economic impact with less environmental degradation. The primary audience for this research was the farmers and industry, disseminated through field days, reports. Showing that wildlife profits doubled livestock, or more if big game was available, encouraged bankrupt and degraded cattle ranches to recover at scale through the large-scale rewilding of private drylands. There are now over 12,000 private wildlife properties in the region, and wildlife has expanded more than six-fold[1].

Community-Based Natural Resource Management

By combining practical implementation with research, I have become a leading expert on wildlife and CBNRM governance[3-5]. My major intellectual contribution to CBNRM may be the profound (but unrecognized) empirical difference between participatory and representational governance at community level. Learning from CAMPFIRE, I replaced six area-based committees with participatory governance in 43 villages in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia (1996-2002). Careful tracking of this project[6] demonstrated that the new participatory system outperformed the old representational governance by multiple factors [7] – it reduced financial misappropriation from 40-80% to less than 1%, and substantially improved social capital, wildlife management, and community projects.

When I transitioned from being a practitioner to a scholar in late 2004, I developed and applied the “governance dashboard” across CBNRM programmes in multiple countries [8]. This showed that participatory systems were surprisingly rare, but consistently outperformed representation governance in terms of equitable benefit sharing and social capital formation [9, 10]. Case study work with and by my students validates and deepens this understanding [11-14]. Although implicit in the work of Ostrom and Murphree (“all people affected by the rules should participate in making them”), these profound differences have not been highlighted in the literature, and most donors continue to perpetuate top-down governance systems, a major cause of the disappointing performance of CBNRM.

Protected Area Performance

As a practitioner, I brought the failing South Luangwa National Park to sustainability by establishing it as a devolved cost center that retained its income, and by outsourcing all commercial activities to the private sector[6]. Working with NORAD and the World Bank, I reduced poaching in Kafue National Park by 80% in three months using data (operational research) and participatory governance rather than guns, helicopters and human rights abuses (never published), leading to a $45 million investment.

I incorporate my empirical experience as a park manager and consultant into my graduate class “Parks and People,” to emphasize performance management, the difference between park finances and economic impact, and the potential for parks as economic engines in many rural areas. Years of student case studies revealed that these issues are almost totally ignored, a conclusion confirmed in my role at the Biodiversity Panel Member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the GEF in evaluating over a billion dollars of park financing. Consequently, with UNDP funding, I led a multinational group of students to develop a set of methodologies to track the socio-economic impacts of protected areas [15, 16]. Our goal was to assist tourism associations (Luangwa) and park agencies (Kruger, Brazil) to make the economic case for park investments by showing high returns on investment in parks in terms of jobs and economic value add [17-20].

I provided strong contrary advice to GEF through a STAP policy paper entitled “Local Commons for Global Benefits[21].” I was and am appalled at the continued underperformance of billions of dollars of investment through centralised GEF financing, and a GEF strategic planning process that assumed that saving the planet (i.e. 30% by 3030, or Half Earth) required the globalization of local resources.

Higher Education Development

In late 2004, I joined the University of Florida as an Associate Professor.  I am a joint hire in the Center for African Studies and the Department of Geography, with a non-traditional mandate of bridging scholarship and practice through non-conventional funding.

First, funded by NSF, NASA, DFID, McArthur and others, I led inter-disciplinary teams of colleagues (Southworth, Binford, Goldman, Keys, etc.), graduate students (60+), and young African professionals (that I found funding for) to undertake impact-orientated research with southern Africa field partners for nine years. This research integrated land use land cover change[22, 23], rural economics[1, 24], wildlife [25] and community governance produced at least 15 PhDs (not all mine) and substantial work on remote sensing and savannas by colleagues and students [26, 27]. I specifically developed African scholarship, with these students now taking up key position: Patricia Mupeta leads the TNC community programme, Shylock Muyengwa is influential in Resource Africa, Rodgers Lubilo (who I mentored for many years), leads the Community Leaders Network of Africa, Germain Mavah works for WCS in Republic of Congo, Jessica Musengezi is a TNC economist in the USA, etc.

Second, following my passion for higher education for development (HED), I conceptualised the Masters in Sustainable Development Programme (MDP) at UF as a joint programme between the Centers for African and Latin American Studies. With Dr Grenville Barnes, I obtained a MacArthur grant ($1.3m, with University of Botswana) to support this (one of two successful proposal out of 100 submissions). With a USAID Transforming CBNRM Education grant ($600,000), I brought faculty from seven African HED institutions to UF to audit CBNRM classes and write their own book[28]. I acquired a NORHED grant ($3.4m) to develop wildlife economy and CBNRM capacity in Africa, including a new Masters in “protected area economics and governance” at Copperbelt University (9 faculty registered for PhDs), CBNRM training at Southern African Wildlife College (3 Masters), and expanded the curriculum for University of Stellenbosch’s Masters in Environmental Management. (As a 9-month appointment, I did this in summer and, later, as semester buy-outs). With my concerns that the classroom often loses touch with reality, I emphasised learning-by-doing and establish a new CBNRM programme on the Kruger border in Mozambique as a demonstration teaching site (funded by DFID grants through WWF South Africa, $400,000), which is being documented through theses[29-31] and publications[32].

Inclusive Conservation

I have been fortunate to be deeply involved in the development of a new paradigm of inclusive, market-led wildlife governance in southern Africa, a global outlier where the expansion of wildlife and wildlife-based livelihoods contrasts starkly to the global loss of 84% of mammal biomass under a business-as-usual paradigm. My recent book Sustainable Wildlife Governance and Community Based Natural Resource Management[33] begins to conceptualize this paradigm. In the tradition of Douglass North, it explains the loss of high value wildlife and the alienation of communities through the lenses of economic history and institutional economics. Next, in redefining wildlife as a “complex private resource with common pool characteristics that provides global public benefits”, it reconceptualizes wildlife governance as the cross integration of privatization and collective action [34]. Finally, it expands and operationalizes Ostrom and Murphree’s ideas about commons governance to provide direct recommendations for governing CBNRM.

The future – research through participatory implementation

In 2021/22, I piloted a graduate certificate in Wildlife Economy and CBNRM Governance based on the principles developed in Sustainable Wildlife Governance and Community Based Natural Resource Management. Two Zoom-based online courses and a two-week field course in Namibia were attended by over 30 students including my own UF PhDs (5) plus Africans from 10 countries, selected because they were in transformation positions in regional CBNRM projects. The key finding from the field trip were (1) that the Namibian private sector was earning $40-50/ha from wildlife, compared to $1 in most CBNRM contexts around the region and (2) the need to devolve CBNRM to participating villages.

Through this emerging community of practice, we are establishing an adaptive research-into-practice programme with two purposes: to transform the regional wildlife economy from $3 to $30 billion (with the slogan “from $1/ha to $20/ha”), with an emphasis on empowering communities to enter the wildlife economy as participatory village companies. I have obtained seed funding (Jamma Foundation) to establish village based PEESG monitoring (policy barriers – economic/livelihood performance and impact; environment; social; governance). This is based on monitoring tools I have developed over many years (e.g. governance dashboard[8], livelihoods survey[35], hunting management systems[36], investor performance systems[37-39]) which will be administered by national and regional CBNRM associations (often led by people I have trained).  This will be supported by technical training based on key books [33, 40], while real time feedback (monthly) will provide data for two major projects. The first is to develop a financial topography map/model of the wildlife economy ($/ha) to benchmark current performance, envision potentials, and identify barriers, as the foundation for selling a “regional wildlife economy vision and strategy” to key decision-makers. In the second initiative, we will develop demonstration sites for participatory governance with partners in multiple countries (TNC-Kenya, BioFund-Mozambique, TNC/FZS – Zambia, NCONGO Botswana, etc.). We will use comparative analyses of these and representationally governed counter-factuals to interrogate my hypothesis that participatory governance outperforms representational systems across most social variables (e.g. social and associational capital, trust, knowledge, empowerment, efficiency, attitudes, etc.), but that some functions are better scaled (e.g. wildlife management, economic management). This process of co-learning by co-doing will produce new scholarship, while experimenting with adaptively improving community governance through a combination of information technology and peer review.

  • 1. Child, B., et al., The economics and institutional economics of wildlife on private land in Africa. Pastoralism Journal, 2012. 2(18): p. 1-32.

    2. Child, B., The Practice and Principles of Community-Based Wildlife Management in Zimbabwe: the CAMPFIRE programme. Biodiversity and Conservation, 1996. 5: p. 369-398.

    3. Barnes, G. and B. Child, eds. Adaptive cross-scalar governance of natural resources. 2014, Earthscan: London. 307.

    4. Kabiri, N. and B. Child, Wildlife governance in Africa, in Adaptive Cross-scalar Governance of Natural Resources, G. Barnes and B. Child, Editors. 2014, Earthscan: London. p. 102-130.

    5. Child, B. and G. Barnes, The conceptual evolution and practice of CBNRM in southern Africa – past, present and future. Environmental Conservation, 2010. 37(3): p. 83-295.

    6. Dalal-Clayton, B. and B. Child, Lessons from Luangwa. The story of the Luangwa Integrated Resource Development Project, Zambia. 2003, London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). 338.

    7. Lubilo, R. and B. Child, eds. The rise and fall of community-based natural resource management in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley: An illustration of micro- and macro-governance issues. . Community rights, conservation and contested land: the politics of natural resource governance in Africa ed. F. Nelson. 2010, Earthscan: London.

    8. Child, B., et al., Using the governance dashboard to measure, understand and change micro-governance, in Adaptive cross-scale governance of natural resources, G. Barnes and B. Child, Editors. 2014, Earthscan: London. p. 203-237.

    9. Child, B., et al., Community-based natural resource management: micro-governance and face-to-face participatory democracy. , in Governance for Justice and Environmental Sustainability. Lessons Across Natural Resource Sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa, R.W. Merle Sowman, Editor. 2014, Earthscan: London. p. 156-179.

    10. Shimansky, T., The effects of governance type and scale on community conservation in southern Africa. 2021, University of Florida: Gainesville.

    11. Muyengwa, S. and B. Child, Re-assertion of elite control in Masoka’s wildlife program, Zimbabwe. Journal of Sustainable Development 2017. 10(6): p. 28-40.

    12. Muyengwa, S., B. Child, and R. Lubilo, Elite capture: a comparative case study of meso-level governance in four southern Africa countries, in Adaptive Cross-scalar Governance of Natural Resources, G. Barnes and B. Child, Editors. 2014, Earthscan: London. p. 179-202.

    13. Muyengwa, S., Determinants of Individual Level Satisfaction with Community Based Natural Resources Management: A Case of Five Communities in Namibia. Environments, 2015. 2(4): p. 608-623.

    14. Lubilo, R., An assessment of the impact of devolved governance in natural resoruces management: A case study of Wuparo Conservancy, Namibia' 2011, University of Kent, UK.

    15. Souza, T.d.V.S.B., et al., Economic impact assessment approaches: TEMPA, in Handbook for sustainable tourism practitioners, A. Spencely, Editor. 2020, Edward Elgar.

    16. Franks, P. and R. Small, Social Assessment for Protected Areas (SAPA). Methodology Manual for SAPA Facilitators. 2016, London: IIED.

    17. Chidakel, A. and B. Child, The economic impact of Kruger National Park and the surrounding reserves: a policy brief. 2018, University of Florida: Gainesville.

    18. Chidakel, A., C. Eb, and B. Child, The comparative financial and economic performance of protected areas in the Greater Kruger National Park, South Africa: Functional diversity and resilience in the socio-economics of a landscape-scale reserve network. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2020. 28(8): p. 1100-1119.

    19. Chidakel, A., B. Child, and S. Muyengwa, Evaluating the economics of park-tourism from the ground-up: Leakage, multiplier effects, and the enabling environment at South Luangwa National Park, Zambia. Ecological Economics, 2021. 182: p. 106960.

    20. Souza, T.d.V.S.B. and B. Thapa, Tourism Demand Analysis of the Federal Protected Areas of Brazil. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 2018. 36: p. 1-21.

    21. Child, B. and R. Cooney, Local Commons for Global Benefit, in Scientific and Technical Panel, 7th GEF Replenishment Review. 2019, Global Environmental Facility.

    22. Gibbes, C., et al., Climate variability as a dominant driver of post-disturbance savanna dynamics. Applied Geography, 2014. 53.

    23. Herrero, H., et al., A Healthy Park Needs Healthy Vegetation: The Story of Gorongosa National Park in the 21st Century. Remote Sensing, 2020. 12(476).

    24. Musengezi, J., Wildlife utilization on private land: understanding the economics of game ranching in South Africa. 2010, University of Florida: Gainesville. p. 150.

    25. Fullman, T.J. and B. Child, Water distribution at local and landscape scales affects tree utilization by elephants in Chobe National Park, Botswana. African Journal of Ecology, 2012. 51(235-243).

    26. Southworth, J., et al., Using a coupled dynamic factor – random forest analysis (DFRFA) to reveal drivers of spatiotemporal heterogeneity in the semi-arid regions of southern Africa. PLOS ONE, 2018. 13(12): p. e0208400.

    27. Bunting, E.L., Fullman T.J., Kiker, G.A. and Southworth, J. , Utilization of the SAVANNA Model to Analyze Future Patterns of Vegetation Cover in Kruger National Park under Changing Climate. Ecological Modelling, 2016. 342: p. 147-160.

    28. Breen, C., et al., Community-Based Natural Resource Management in Southern Africa 2013, University of Florida.: Centre for African Studies.

    29. Vundla, N.L., Mangalane community’s perceptions of socio-economic factors influencing involvement in illegal wildlife trade: A case study of Mangalane community, mozambique, in Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at Stellenbosch University. 2018, Stellenbosch University: Stellenbosch.

    30. Merz, L., Situational Analysis of Mangalane, Mozambique for a Community Based Natural Resource Management Program, in Sustainable Development Practice. 2014, University of Florida.

    31. Themba, M., Using the governance dashboard to track progress in social capital in CBNRM in south western Mozambique, in School of public leadership. incomplete, University of Stellenbosch.

    32. Leandra Merz, et al., Do People in Protected Area Borderlands Think Wildlife is Important and Why? Conservation Science and Practice, in review.

    33. Child, B., Sustainable governance of wildlife and community-based natural resource management. 2019, London: Routledge. 401.

    34. Child, G. and B. Child, The conservation movement in Zimbabwe: An early experiment in devolved community based regulation. Southern African Journal of Wildlife Research, 2015. 45(1): p. 1-16.

    35. Mulindahabi, F., Assessment of the impacts of the conservation of protected areas to the improvement of livelihoods of adjacent communities of the Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda, in School of Natural Resources and Environment. 2017, University of Florida: Gainesville.

    36. Child, B., A summary of the marketing of trophy quotas in CAMPFIRE areas 1990-1993. 1995, Department of national parks and Wildlife Management, Zimbabwe: Harare. p. 32.

    37. WWF-SARPO, Marketing Wildlife Leases. 1997, Harare: WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund) Programme Office, Zimbabwe.

    38. Child, B., the Application of Certification to Hunting: a Cae for Simplicity. 2008 forthcoming.

    39. Child, B. and C. Weaver, Marketing hunting and tourism joint ventures in community areas. Participatory Learning and Action, 2006. 55: p. 37-44.

    40. Child, B. and D. Wojcik, Developing Capacity for Community Governance of Natural Resources: Theory & Practice. 2014, Bloomington: AuthorHouse. 234.