Story by Yolanda Moyo
SOUTHERN African nations, home to the world’s largest elephant population, are renewing calls for greater authority over wildlife management and trade, arguing international restrictions are impacting the region’s conservation efforts.
The debate is expected to dominate high-level meetings of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA), which opened in Victoria Falls this Monday, bringing together officials from Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The five-country conservation bloc spans over 500 000 square kilometres and supports an estimated half of Africa’s remaining elephants, making it the most significant wildlife landscape in the world.
For years, growing elephant numbers have become both a conservation achievement and a management challenge, with communities increasingly bearing the cost of human wildlife conflict, crop destruction and competition for shrinking natural resources.
Zimbabwe’s Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Wildlife, Mr Simon Masanga, said member states will continue pressing for greater recognition of the region’s conservation record, particularly regarding the trade of elephant-derived products.
“Within the region, we have one of the biggest populations of elephant herds, and this has always been an issue at Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meetings. It has been on the agenda for a long time, and this is definitely going to be a topical issue. In principle, Zimbabwe has been allowed, provisionally, to use elephant leather to develop products that can be traded. And we see a gradual softening on the part of CITES, and we will galvanize support from within the region,” he said.
“This is the biggest transfrontier conservation area, bringing together Angola, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia, and these should catalyse the conversation at the CITES level so that we be allowed to trade in elephants or elephant byproducts. You know that we have to maintain a sustainable elephant herd, but we are not allowed to take any action without the express authority of CITES. We believe the region should be allowed to trade in products emanating from elephants. This remains a topical issue because elephants move freely across borders and the burden of maintaining sustainable populations is shared by all countries in the region.”
KAZA Secretariat Executive Director, Dr Nyambe Nyambe said the region had made significant progress since the last summit of Heads of State and Government, including securing fresh funding aimed at strengthening conservation and community resilience.
“A major achievement since the KAZA Heads of State and Government Summit has been the mobilisation of five million euros from the European Union under the Nature Africa programme. The funding will support conservation planning, transboundary development initiatives and the advancement of sustainable financing mechanisms across the KAZA landscape.”
Delegates meeting in Victoria Falls are expected to review progress on regional conservation strategies, tourism development and community-based natural resource management before recommendations are presented to the Council of Ministers later this week.
The discussions come against the backdrop of growing climate-related challenges across Southern Africa, where prolonged droughts, rising temperatures and increasing pressure on water resources are affecting both wildlife and communities.
Conservationists and policymakers are increasingly debating how to balance biodiversity protection with economic opportunities for people living alongside large wildlife populations.
As pressure grows to reconcile conservation objectives with local development needs, the outcome of the KAZA discussions could influence future debates at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), where Southern African countries have long argued for a greater role in determining how their elephant populations are managed and utilised.
