Southern Africa’s wildlife economy is often hailed as a successful model. The idea behind this model is that biodiversity and wildlife are used as the basis of sustainable economic growth, through an increase in wildlife numbers and in a country’s revenue.
But how successful has the model actually been in places like Botswana, Namibia and South Africa? We recently edited a special issue in the scientific journal Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space on the theme of southern African conservation. We are political ecologists looking into social and historical developments of environmental issues. In our article introducing the issue we argue that, in fact, the southern African wildlife economy is socially and environmentally unsustainable.
