RESOURCE UTILIZATION, PROPERTY-RIGHTS AND WELFARE - WILDLIFE AND THE LOCAL PEOPLE

The paper analyses the conflict between wildlife conservation and the costs and benefits obtained from it in an East African context. Tn the model there are two agents: a park agency managing a national park of fixed size and a group of agropastoralists living in the vicinity of the park. The park authority produces tourism services and sells hunti ng licences, whereas the agropastoralists produce livestock products. Wildlife and livestock interact with each other and wildlife is a nuis ance for livestock production. The conflict is analysed under differen t market solutions as the agropastoralists, to various degrees, are gi ven profit shares from the park activities. It is demonstrated that a market solution where they are given property rights in the form of a fixed share of the harvesting profit, will increase the nuisance on th eir production and therefore generally give no clear welfare gain for the local people. On the other hand, if they also receive a profit sha re from the tourist activity above that of the hunting benefit, the nu isance from the roaming wildlife will decrease as this scheme gives in centives for the park manager to increase the offtake and thereby decr ease the wildlife stock in the long term. There will therefore be more livestock and a clear welfare gain for the agropastoralists compared to the situation where they have no property rights. Under certain con ditions, the stock sizes will also be closer to what is optimal from a n overall point of view. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights res erved.