Conservation for livelihood improvement through cooperation of rural communities and the related externalities: A case of Moepel farms in Limpopo Province, South Africa

Optimal use of land in rural areas has the potential to reduce poverty and attain rural economic development. Conservation with tourism benefits could potentially reduce poverty in rural areas where agricultural potential is limited. However, land use conflicts exacerbated by multiple interests for land use are prevalent and can hinder rural development. This paper explored the potential for rural communities to cooperate with each other to establish a conservation project in South Africa. Data were collected through several ways including focused groups and semi structured interviews with forty-six members of three communities which were beneficiaries of the land restitution programme. The study determined benefits from livestock and tourism land uses under different scenarios and interactions of decisions among the three communities were analysed using game theory. The analysis revealed that opting for tourism would allow the communities to earn seven times more than for livestock farming and that development of tourism through their cooperation could constitute a good option for the community development. However for cooperation to work, there would be need to address pressing issues for the communities. Such analysis can assist communities to make informed decisions on alternative sources of income and their related payoffs. Landscape scale management can also benefit from such analysis.


INTRODUCTION
Rural poverty is a major obstacle to development in South Africa.The poverty head count in some rural areas is as high as 98% as compared to 44% for the national average (PROVIDE, 2009).Most rural households depend on agriculture for livelihoods and employment (Shackleton et al., 2001), relying on land classified as communal and registered in the name of the state.Communal tenure constitutes 12.2% of the total land in South Africa, with 83% of the rural population residing on it (Isaacs and Mohamed, 2000).Tenure insecurity in *Corresponding author.E-mail: Mmapatla.Senyolo@ul.ac.za.Tel: +27152684628, +27711446203.
Author(s) agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License communal areas leads to problems such as inadequate legal recognition of communal tenure systems, abuse by powerful elites, and breakdown of the old permit-based system, among others (Ntsebeza, 2002;Cousins, 2002).These problems result in conflicting claims to land and bitter disputes over authority, which hampers development efforts such as infrastructure and service provisions (Cousins and Claassens, 2006;Peires, 2000).According to Cousins (2007), "the tensions normally occur between local government bodies and traditional authorities over the allocation of land for development such as: housing, irrigation schemes, business centres, and tourist infrastructure".Moreover, tenure insecurity and lack of well-defined property rights, among others, exacerbate the land use conflicts in communal areas (Claassens, 2003).
Land use conflicts are further exacerbated by multiple interests for land use in these rural areas.Wildlife tourism is seen by many development organisations as a potential source of rural economic development and poverty alleviation, particularly in marginal rural areas where agricultural potential is limited (Barnes, 1998;Mahony and Van Zyl, 2002;Muchapondwa, 2003).Although, wildlife often has a complementary role to play in relation to agriculture when it comes to households livelihood diversification (Barnes, 1998;Ashley and LaFranchi, 1997), it directly competes with other land uses (Cousins, 2009;Skonhoft and Schulz, 1996).For this reason, various stakeholders intending to initiate any rural development projects need to reach a consensus as to what land use option is economically viable, ecologically sustainable and socio-politically acceptable given the context of the communities in question (Colyvan et al., 2011;Muchapondwa, 2003).This is vital because the solutions or strategies to rural development are context bound in most cases.Furthermore, the choice of land use option should not only be economically viable, but should also be environmentally viable in order to promote sustainable land use (Munthali, 2007).Analysis of institutional frameworks, arrangements and decision-making in communal areas can inform land use choices made.This includes the definition of rights and obligations of different stakeholders involved.However for this to happen, the driving forces behind the use of these resources need to be well understood and the conditions under which the optimal use of these resources can be realised known prior any development of rural communities (Pearce, 1996).For wildlife tourism, the habitat needed is often much larger than the property of individual agents.As a result, people have to cooperate to get the most out of their resources.For rural communities to secure continued access to benefits and to be motivated to sustainably manage the resources, capacity of local institutions representing them need to be enhanced.Community-private partnerships which are functional and legally binding are needed to ensure tangible benefits from biodiversity conservation by these rural communities (Munthali, 2007).However, the Interaction of stakeholders (particularly rural communities) can be influenced by their location in relation to others or it can be induced by the incentive to realise economies of scale in dealing with comparable problems.Moreover, location is important because the benefits from wildlife tourism depend on the contiguity of the wildlife area (Skonhoft and Schulz, 1996).Lastly, poverty further complicates the issue because poor people may be less inclined to postpone consumption for a future benefit than less poor people.
Considering the potential of conservation through yielding of tourism benefits and the fact that often people have to cooperate to get the most out of their resources, it is necessary to understand the dilemma facing the rural communities when cooperating for establishment of conservation.Furthermore, the benefits from tourism investments require a waiting period as they do not materialise in the short term as is the case with agriculture.Previous studies on the impact of tourism development on the rural people (Ashley et al., 2001;Mahony and Van Zyl, 2001;Roe et al., 2001a, b;Mahony and Van Zyl, 2002) did not consider the dilemmas that rural communities face when they wish to cooperate to establish conservation yielding tourism benefits.
This paper explores the potential for rural communities to cooperate with each other to establish conservation projects in the presence of positive externalities.We consider the case of Moepel Farms (which are owned by three communities, namely; Motse Molekwa and Legata) in Limpopo Province of South Africa.See some background information about the Moepel Farms in the research methods section.Specifically, the study describe how the location of the different farms relative to each other influences the possibilities of cooperation and interactions of the three communities and identifies optimal land use option(s) to make the three communities realise economies of scale.The following questions are addressed: First, how does the location (that is, spatially dispersed or concentrated) of the case study farms influence possibilities for cooperation in tourism development?Second, to what extent are rural communities willing to cooperate in conservation to benefit from tourism?Last, to what extent are some communities willing to gain buy-in of 'unwilling' communities into cooperation?

Study area
Whilst, the main objective of many developing countries remain to be the reduction of abject poverty, recognition of balancing this objective with natural resource conservation is on rise.Therefore, it is important for countries to strive for successful delivery of socioeconomic and conservation benefits at local level.In South Africa, different instruments for landscape-scale management includes "World Heritage Sites, biodiversity initiatives transfronteir conservation areas and biosphere reserves" (Pool-Stanvliet, 2013).
This author indicates that biosphere reserve concept embraces most of the essential principles of the major landscape-scale management initiatives and is internationally designated by UNESCO.Currently, South Africa has six UNESCO designated biosphere reserves and one of them is the Waterberg Biosphere Reserves located in Waterberg District of Limpopo Province designated in 2001 (Pool-Stanvliet, 2013).Biosphere reserves are defined as "...areas of terrestrial and coastal/marine ecosystems or a combination thereof, which are internationally recognised within the framework of UNESCO's programme on Man and the Biosphere (MAB)" (UNESCO, 1996).
Although, concept of biosphere reserve has the potential to allow for interconnectedness between people and nature thereby representing sites for sustainable management; there are other pressing issues like poverty, job creation, etc. that need attention in South Africa (Pool-Stanvliet, 2013).Therefore, understanding several issues to be considered as biosphere reserve and/or any other instruments becomes part of landscape-scale management initiatives in some areas is necessary.
It is within this context that that the study seek to understand the potential for rural communities to cooperate with each other to establish conservation projects in the presence of positive externalities using the case of Moepel Farms.Moepel farms are located in the Waterberg District Municipality in Limpopo Province of South Africa.This municipality covers 4 951 882 ha of land with a population of 596 104 (Waterberg District Municipality, 2010).Moepel farms belong to Motse, Molekwa and Legata communities, recent recipients of land in the Waterberg through the land restitution process.Although, these farms were previously devoted to cattle and crop farming and these communities have expressed intentions to dedicate their farms for conservation and ecotourism (De Klerk, 2002;Waterberg Meander Brochure, 2009).Different types of activities, both consumptive and non-consumptive which ranges from tourism to hunting, birds viewing and ecotourism developments have been identified (Waterberg Meander Brochure, 2009).Moepel comprises of 14 specific farms which are referred to collectively as Moepel farms throughout this paper.Twelve of these specific farms are owned independently by the three communities, namely: Motse, Molekwa and Legata; owning six, four and two farms, respectively.Figure 1 shows which community owns which farm, how these farms are located spatially and total hectares for each farm.The carrying capacity of these farms measured in large stock units (LSU) ranges from 8 to 30 ha/LSU for cattle and 11 to 40 ha/LSU for game.
As can be seen from Figure 1, the different farms are (A) Klipbank ( 2360

Research approach
The study used both qualitative and quantitative methods of research.The research team had a meeting with the Limpopo Department of Economic Development and Tourism (LEDET)1 officials where the research objectives were discussed and a common understanding was reached on what was expected from the research team during the study period and at the end of the study.A general idea of what was happening within the three communities to enable preparation for the field work was established through the first visit in a workshop between LEDET, 3 communities represented by Communal Property Associations (CPAs) 2 ., Limpopo Regional Land Claims Commission (LRLCC) 3 , Limpopo Tourism and Parks (LTPs) 4 and Non-Governmental Organisation, Khulile Africa 5 .The communities were informed about the field study to be undertaken in their area via their CPAs committee members and the government officials.Key informant interviews was held with officials from LEDET, LDA 6 , LRCC and LTP and semi-structured interviews with households within three communities who are beneficiaries of the land restitution programme 7 .The main purposes of these interviews were to explore specific experiences of individual households and to document the stories of selected households.Respondents were asked questions related to their goals and objectives in relation to Moepel farms development; rights and obligations with regard to land use decisions in Moepel Farms; and perceived opportunities and challenges with regard to Moepel Development Initiative.Two focused group discussion (one before household interviews and one after) were held to triangulate some information gathered from the semi-structured interviews.Most of the data was collected between October and December 2009.Follow up visits to fill information gaps and to verify some of the findings were done in January 2010.Interview data was analysed manually as the sample size was small and data collected was not complex and involves community perceptions on possibility of conservation and tourism land use.
In order to understand the extent to which the three communities were willing or 'unwilling' to cooperate to realize conservation benefits, game theory was applied.Game theory is defined by Mas-Colell et al. (1995) as the study of strategic decision making including the mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers and is useful in analysing interactions between decision makers (that is, communities in this case) (Chew et al., 2009).The theory has been applied to conservation problems (Harsanyi, 1967;Harsanyi, 1968;Harsanyi, 1968a;Walters, 1994;Milner-Gulland and Mace, 1998;Bimonte, 2008;Magombeyi et al., 2008;Chew et al., 2009) except that the scope has been limited.Moreover, game theory has proved to be a handy tool in different biodiversity conservation planning and modelling contexts (Frank and Sarkar, 2010) and can further be used to compare different land use option scenarios (whilst taking into account the interaction among players) and the related costs and benefits.In this study, game theory was used to analyse the various strategies and resulting pay-offs of the three communities when they cooperate in establishing conservation.

Community perceptions on possibility of conservation and tourism land use
There were differences in attitudes towards prospects for 2 CPAs which are statutory institutions associated with representing communities and their communally held assets on communal lands 3 LRLCC is the arm of the Department of Land Affairs is responsible for the development of land and their targets are claimants of land, mainly being rural communities 4 LTPs is a parastatal organisation and its mandate is "to promote, foster and develop tourism to and within the Limpopo Province". 5Khulile Africa is an NGO which deals with rural community development 6 LDA is one of the government departments in Limpopo Province responsible for the development Agriculture ( Mokopane branch was visited as it was closer to the study area and possibly servicing the respondents) 7 The land restitution programme is one of the pillars of South African Land Policy which aims to restore land to those communities or people who were disposed of land after 19 June 1913 as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices (i.e.Native Land Act of 1913) development of conservation and tourism land uses in the three communities.In Molekwa and Motse, there was a general positive attitude towards the idea of developing tourism, irrespective of the waiting time for benefits to be realised.The communities indicated that conservation and tourism development was the only viable land use option in their farms.We gathered that the positive attitude was a result of a study by De Klerk (2002) which illustrated that agriculture was unsuitable in this area.The study found that only small patches in Moepel had grass suitable for cattle and the area was also mountainous making it unsuitable for cattle production.Thus, the communities were convinced that conservation and tourism development was the only viable land use at Moepel, with potential for employment creation, income generation and poverty alleviation.At the time that this study was conducted, the Motse and Molekwa communities had already removed their livestock from the concerned farms to pursue conservation and tourism development.Consequently, waiting time for tourism benefits did not seem to be a problem with this community.These two communities also had alternative land outside Moepel where they could still practise their livestock farming whilst waiting for tourism to yield benefits.
In Legata, although community members were generally aware that the benefits of conservation and tourism were greater than that of livestock, the time scale and sharing of benefits (that is, in case of cooperation with other communities) made them sceptical about the former land use practice.They raised concerns that conservation and tourism take time to show benefits in contrast to livestock benefits which could be enjoyed ''now''.Thus, this community was likely to opt for livestock in the absence of incentives to wait for tourism income.In addition, they indicated unemployment as a challenge and without alternative means to get some income were unlikely to prefer waiting for benefits.
To determine the potential gains from the different land uses, a number of land use scenarios were considered.These were; (i) Livestock only with communal grazing livestock system; (ii) Fully developed game farm with wildlife viewing options (iii) a five star fully developed ecotourism lodge with wildlife viewing and up market accommodation and; (iv) A mega reserve established in the form of private-public-community partnership involving the community, government and private companies.The plan is to transform the Moepel farms into community owned eco-tourism destination of note in the Waterberg biosphere and create a government and community conservation partnership as the basis for a successful biodiversity and tourism destination.Mr. Du Toit Malan, a Planning and Development Manager at LTP was interviewed8 and gave official estimates of fixed incomes per ha for alternative land uses (see first 3 columns of Table 1).The table shows that income from tourism could be 7 to 100 times higher than income from livestock.The Mega Reserve had the potential to give the highest income as compared to other tourism land uses.However, in order for the mega reserve to be possible the minimum land size was 20 000 ha (LTP1), which meant the three communities individually did not qualify it.
Considering waiting period of four years, column five in Table 1 shows that there is no income from tourism land uses.Potential incomes from tourism and livestock in the beginning of year 5 are given in present value terms, using a discount rate of 12%.The sixth column shows the potential income from both livestock and tourism at the beginning of year 5 and the seventh column gives the total present value terms of the estimated potential income per ha.
Table 2 gives an overview of the potential revenues associated with different land use that the three communities are likely and able to choose given the minimum ha size of land at their disposal individually and their rationality in maximizing their incomes.The revenues used in this study were calculated by multiplying the area of the farms by the income per hectare of a particular land use.The last column of Table 2 shows the land use with the highest revenues that each community can achieve individually when other factors (that is, discount rate and waiting time) are not considered.However, time factor cannot be ignored when judging/evaluating decisions as it plays an important role in making decisions regarding whether to consider some development or project initiative over the other (Pearce and Turner, 1990).With Moepel Farms, this was largely explained by the fact that farms of these communities were not yet fully developed, hence the time consideration was vital.Therefore for this study, waiting time was assumed to be fixed at 4 years for tourism and 0 years for livestock whilst the discount rate was varied from 12 to 0% and 12 to 24%.
Based on the results of the interviews with the three communities and analysis of benefits in Tables 1 and 2, we analyse three land use scenarios.The first scenario considers the three communities maximising revenues independently.For this scenario, it is assumed that each community maximizes its revenue irrespective of any minimum income restrictions during the waiting time, thus communities are willing and able to temporarily forgo consumption in the short term if it is compensated by higher income in the long term.Rationally, the three communities will choose the land use options as indicated in Table 2 column 8, as it is the highest each can achieve individually.
In second scenario we determined what land use option the three communities would choose to maximize revenues independently subject to the condition that income must be greater than or equal to an assumed minimum income at all times.The underlying assumption here was that these communities will opt for tourism if they are having alternative ways to obtain the minimum income whilst waiting for tourism income in four years or if they can receive some form of incentives for waiting such as some social grants.As can be seen from the interview results, Legata was one community which stated that they would prefer the land use options which will give them an income at all times (that is, not willing and able to wait).

Interactions between the three communities
The fact that these three communities reallocate their land use practise when subjected to the condition of minimum income has implications for several things.For example, whilst pursuing conservation and tourism as land use practice will be ecologically and economically beneficial, the specific farms of Molekwa community are not located next to each other.This will pose some challenge when this community wants to fence its farms, especially if both Motse and Legata communities opt for livestock.
The location of these farms possibly call for cooperation between the two communities, Legata and Molekwa (Figure 1).Considering the preference of the Legata community for livestock, Molekwa community may consider paying Legata community to go for tourism.Alternatively, Motse and Molekwa could both opt for tourism and then further decide to disregard Legata or to pay Legata to go for tourism.Of the potential businesses or development that can be pursued in Moepel Farms, the mega reserve gives the highest income (Table 1).However, for the mega reserve to be of use, the land should be at least 20 000 ha which none of these communities have on their own.Therefore, through interaction analysis, this paper first established how one community's decisions impact the others' payoffs for any of the two land use options; next the nash equilibrium that comes out of that, third if the nash equilibria are not yielding the largest total income how can the problem be solved and maybe in this case the last step may involve payments from one community to another.The payment decision depends on three questions: how much will Motse and Molekwa pay maximally to persuade Legata to go for tourism, how much will Legata have to be paid minimally to go for tourism instead of livestock and can Molekwa and Motse afford the payment?
For example; if we assume that Legata's coalition partner pays Legata to bridge the income gap between year 0 and 5, then the PV of the payment would yield  1407 203.93.Therefore, Motse and Molekwa can share the burden of paying Legata proportionally to their size.However, this is unrealistic since Molekwa and Motse are poor themselves.For this reason, we also calculated how much of their current livestock income they would lose if they have to fully compensate Legata for any loss of income.Table 3 presents the possible strategies that can emerge from the cooperation of the three communities and the related payoffs.This table further shows how much compensation (in the form of side payment) is needed if Molekwa and Motse need Legata's buy-in and cooperation.
The work of this paper is in line with Bimonte (2008), Magombeyi et al. (2008), Mahony and Van Zyl (2002) and Muchapondwa (2003).Bimonte demonstrated why an unsustainable path may emerge even when both players prefer preservation to exploitation and no free ride incentive exists and continued to addresses some policy issues to prevent the dreaded result that noncooperative behaviour would yield.For instance, Legata community (despite their knowledge of tourism benefits relative to livestock) was less inclined to wait for future benefit (from tourism) and therefore indicated a preference for land use option which will give them an income at all times.Moreover, the result of this study concur with Pool-Stanvliet (2013)'s study which indicated that persistent issues like poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, etc. in South Africa demand urgent attention prior to consideration and perhaps the support of any/most sustainable land management strategies such as biosphere reserve.Magombeyi et al. (2008) explores how the application of games can be used as a tool to facilitate negotiations and rules of equal access among upstream and downstream irrigation water users in Ga-Sekororo, South Africa.The idea was that through games, communities would be able to better relate with their realities as presented by other stakeholders.From the analysis in Tables 2 and 3, the 3 communities can use those results to facilitate their negotiations on the possibility of cooperation and partnerships.Mahony and Van Zyl (2002) analysed the extent to which tourism projects in South Africa have improved the livelihoods of rural communities and contributed to rural economic development.Muchapondwa (2003) analysed the economics of wild tourism in Zimbabwe and its potential to reduce risks in agricultural production.He argued that farmers could manage risks of drought in agriculture through diversification into wild conservation whilst they contribute to efforts to conserve wildlife.The result of this study shows that the income from tourism could be 7 to 100 times higher than income from livestock.Therefore, if three communities can forge partnerships with other stakeholders and be able to cooperate with each other, successful nature-based tourism and ecotourism ventures could be established, thereby contributing to both poverty reduction and conservation.

Conclusion
This paper explored the potential for rural communities to cooperate with each other to establish a conservation project which yields tourism benefits in the presence of positive externalities and their abject poverty in South Africa.The study achieved this by first identifying with the relevant stakeholders of the two proposed land use options (livestock and conservation which yield tourism benefits).Therefore, this study determined which of the two land use has the potential to give highest revenues (and under what conditions).From the interview results and determination of potential revenues, it was evident that opting for tourism would allow the communities to earn seven times more than by opting for livestock farming.In spite of the existing tourism potential, there is scepticism among the communities due to the fact that tourism is profitable only in the long run.The implication is that if the sceptical community cannot buy-in into cooperation, then they are likely not to cooperate and this will result in all the communities receiving lesser revenues than they would if coalitions were achieved.Game theoretic analysis of interactions of the three communities revealed that at best, if Molekwa and Motse share the burden of paying Legata to help Legata bridge the waiting period (or even lending Legata the money), they would miss one fifth of what they earned from their Moepel property as livestock farmers.Thus, it is evident that the development of tourism through a strong Senyolo et al. 683 cooperation among the communities could constitute a good option for the community development, particularly where livestock production alone is not adequate for alleviating poverty of rural communities.
The findings of this study further pose some policy implications for government and other developmental advocates.First, it is important to enhance the participation of the main beneficiaries (that is, communities) as these communities have an imperative role to play in biodiversity conservation (Berkes, 2007); particularly making them aware of the benefits of conservation.Second, it is relevant to inform the communities on the alternative sources of income and their related payoffs so that they can make informed decisions.Finally, in areas where agriculture potential is limited, those policies and strategies that enhance wildlife conservation with social welfare should be considered.

Table 1 .
Possible income from different land use options, minimum size of hectare required and present value income from Moepel farms at 12% discount rate and waiting period of 0 and 4 year(s) for livestock and tourism, respectively.

Table 2 .
Potential income from the farms of the three communities individually and their related possible land use options.

Table 3 .
Interactions among the three communities, strategies pursued, the potential payoffs in present value, and annual side payments.