240502 PR iSimangaliso Wetland Park: South Africa’s New Governance Model of Conservation and Development (P1) (2016S)

iSimangaliso became South Africa’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site in December 1999. It seeks to protect a tremendously rich biodiversity and at the same time assist the local communities with various programmes to give them access to potential revenues of the natural resources, including eco-tourism. It is therefore an exciting example of integrated rural development and nature conservation under the overall paradigm of social transformation.
iSimangaliso Wetland Park is the new official name for the South African Nature Reserve that encompasses 280 kilometres of coastal wetlands, forests and sand dunes. The Field Practice aims to analyze its achievements and governance strategies in the course of almost two decades. It is planned for late May, first part of June with an overall duration of 2 weeks. The key focus of the Field Practice is ethnographic research and the actual implementation of qualitative empirical methods on the problems and intricacies of joining advanced nature conservation and Community-based natural resources management (CBNRM).
Creating awareness on the overall topics of CBNRM, integrative approaches of nature conservation and economic development and testing ethnographic methods under field research conditions. The (planned) field practice will be only open for participants of the preparatory Seminar in the Winter Semester 2015/16 who have adequately proven their interest and qualification for actual research (in content, theory and methodology).