Performance Payments to Incentivize Conservation

Botswana has a massive protected area network, which includes vast wildlife management areas (WMAs) in addition to national parks and game reserves. Varying degrees of human settlement and livestock production are permitted in the WMAs, which requires management and planning to ensure that over time, options for wildlife conservation are not foreclosed. Cheetah Conservation Botswana (CCB) is working in the vast WMAs that are adjacent to the massive Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). These areas are of great importance as habitat in their own right, but also for connectivity between CKGR and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in SW Botswana. CCB are trialling a performance payments scheme with local communities to help improve livestock management and to incentivise the retention of wilderness blocks within the WMA for wildlife conservation. This project will help fulfil the desire of local communities to engage in wildlife-based land uses.