The valuation of biodiversity conservation by the South African Khomani San “bushmen” community

Johane Dikgang and Edwin Muchapondwa

Ecological Economics, 2012, vol. 84, issue C, 7-14

Abstract: The restitution of parkland to the Khomani San “bushmen” and Mier “agricultural” communities in May 2002 marked a significant shift in conservation in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and environs in South Africa. Biodiversity conservation will benefit from this land restitution only if the Khomani San, who interact with nature more than do other groups, are good environmental stewards. To assess their attitude toward biodiversity conservation, this study used the contingent valuation method to investigate the economic values the communities assign to biodiversity conservation under three land tenure arrangements in the Kgalagadi area. For each community and land tenure arrangement, there are winners and losers, but the winners benefit by more than the cost that losers suffer. The net worth for biodiversity conservation under the various land tenure regimes ranged from R928 to R3456 to R4160 for municipal land, parkland, and communal land respectively for the Khomani San, compared to R25600 to R57600 to R64000 for municipal land, parkland, and communal land respectively for the Mier.

Keywords: Biodiversity; Contingent valuation; Khomani San; Land restitution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q01 Q53 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180091200359X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:84:y:2012:i:c:p:7-14

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.09.001

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().