**2. Cubo community's socioeconomic profile and rationalization to adopt collective land stewardship for biodiversity conservation as a strategy to improve their livelihoods, and contribute to rural development**

The Cubo community comprises three adjacent villages (Cubo, Chivovo and Mbidzo), collectively referred to in this chapter as the Cubo community, inhabited by at least 2500 people of the Shangaan tribe. Based on a socioeconomic sample survey of 152 households, carried out by Munthali, et al. [2], the Cubo community occurs in a predominantly savannah woodland, typified by poor soils, and low and erratic rainfall (300-400 mm/annum). Consequently, conventional agriculture is generally unsustainable. Hence, people's livelihoods largely depend on livestock, forestry, and wildlife resources. At least 51 plant species are being utilized for food, medicinal purposes, timber, and firewood [2]. In addition, 21 wild animal species are being used for food leading to the extinction of almost all large mammals outside the protected areas [2].

As the population of this community is predominantly of middle age (49 ± 4.0 years), with a fairly large family size (5 ± 2 children per household), the pressure on natural resources can be expected to escalate with time, aggravating land degradation and poverty, which is already characterized by unacceptable indices, such as high illiteracy rate (56.2% among males and 83.8% among females); low employment (≈ 6% of the population); and high food insecurity (with 65% of male-headed and 50% of female-headed households) running out of food within 6 months of the year; and scanty household possessions [2]. Additionally, social amenities, such as schools and health facilities are scarce, and community members have poor access to clean drinking water. Household earnings averaged about US\$0.56/day [2], which was below the US\$2/day threshold recommended by the United Nations [3].

In recognition of the high levels of social dissatisfaction, the Cubo community opted to adopt biodiversity conservation, production of wildlife, and ecotourism development adjacent to the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (**Figure 1**). In southern Africa, local communities usually adopt biodiversity conservation through programs commonly known as Community-based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM). CBNRM has been variously defined as "a broad rubric encompassing a wide range of resource management programs that share a recognition of the participation of people who live near or interconnected with natural resources [4], or as a broad spectrum of new management arrangements and benefits sharing partnerships for the involvement by people who are not agents of the state, but who, by virtue of collective location and activities are well placed to enhance the present and future status of natural resources, and their own well-being [5]. The approach is a community based because the communities managing the resources have the legal rights, the local institutions, and the economic incentives to take substantial responsibility for sustained management and use of these resources. CBNRM has been firmly rooted in wildlife management with income earned from tourism and trophy hunting providing the main economic incentive for rural communities to invest in wildlife as a form

#### **Figure 1.**

*Positioning of the secured community land (Cubo, Chivovo and Mbindzo) relative to the Kruger and Limpopo National Parks (map drawn by Gordon Ringani).*

of land use, improving local economic options, and extending the amount of land used for wildlife across the region to communal areas.

At the core of CBNRM initiatives is widespread recognition among policymakers that for wildlife to persist outside state protected areas, and private and communal lands, it must be an economically competitive land-use option for landholders [6]. This perception has led to a proliferation of CBNRM initiatives, all with a common agenda—integration of biodiversity conservation and improvement of rural livelihoods, with the wildlife economy providing multiple private sectors and community partnerships opportunities in the live wildlife animal sales, ecotourism supply chain and game meat production for local consumption as well as commercial trade in supermarkets and urban restaurants, thus being the trigger for improved household incomes of the rural poor, who usually have very limited economic capital assets. Additionally, several compelling reasons have forced governments to adopt CBNRM as an operational tool for their national biodiversity conservation programs. Notable among these being (i) a realization that protected areas (a system widely adopted to safeguard representative examples of ecosystems and biodiversity worldwide) are expensive to maintain without the support of rural communities, and are rarely financially sustainable in the face of competing demands on dwindling government budgets [7, 8]; (ii) the growing realization both from the conservation movement, starting with the 1980 World Conservation Strategy [9] and within the rural development theory of the importance of understanding the needs and perspectives of local people; and (iii) the Convention on Biological Diversity, which emphasizes three equally important objectives: conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits—has reinforced the role of local people in nature conservation and management.

For the Cubo community, their quest to venture into CBNRM, through the establishment of a Community Conservancy, under a community-private sector partnership was triggered by an opportunity arising from its location adjacent to the Great

#### *Community Collective Land Stewardship Contributions to Sustainable Rural Development… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104212*

Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA). The Conservancy was strategically positioned where the Kruger and Limpopo National Parks meet (**Figure 1**); close to the existing tourism markets of the southern end of Kruger National Park (a world's renowned wildlife park, which prior to the Covid-19 pandemic attracted more than a million tourists per annum), and near an airstrip, and the Massingir Dam; thus, making the Conservancy quite attractive for investments in wildlife production, and tourism development and marketing—enabling community members to earn additional income from fencing and management of the Conservancy, and services, such as the supply of food to lodges, laundry, maintenance of the Conservancy fence, and waste disposal. Communities would have been shareholders through the allocation of their collectively owned and secured land to biodiversity conservation, wildlife production, and, tourism development and would have benefited from profit dividends.

For the Cubo community securing a collective tenure of its communal land, as described below, was essential because the provision of security of tenure is a prerequisite for better natural resources management and sustainable development [10]. Rural people generally need both secure individual rights to farm plots and secure collective rights to common-pool resources, such as flora and fauna upon which they depend. These are also preconditions for sustainable rural development, which aims to improve the rural people's livelihoods and preserve the environment at the local level, as well as guarantee intergenerational equity, and ensure that the current generation must not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their material needs and enjoy a healthy environment [1].
