A critical evaluation of international agreements towards a revised categorization for transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs)

摘要: Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) are widely promoted as an international instrument to achieve certain conservation, cooperation and developmental goals, especially within the Southern African Development Community (SADC). In the SADC context, the status of TFCAs is categorized based on the extent to which international agreements have been signed. These agreements take different forms such as treaties, memorandums of understanding (MoUs), protocols and bilateral agreements. However, the efficacy of agreement-based approaches towards the categorization of TFCAs has been questioned because it does not acknowledge the implementation complexities of TFCAs and lacks a sound conceptual basis. This research evaluates the international TFCA agreements in SADC with a view to recommending a revised categorization. This is achieved by applying Theory of Change (ToC) to a sample …