“Animals I never saw”: Community-based natural resource management & health in a Game Management Area of northern Zambia

This dissertation analyzes how the implementation of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has affected the health and well-being of people living in Mukungule, a Game Management Area (GMA) adjoining northern Zambia's North Luangwa National Park ("the Park"). The development of the Park has been billed as a successful model for integrating conservation and development initiatives. The author carried out nine months (September 2006–May 2007) of ethnographic fieldwork in Mukungule, conducting structured and semi-structured in-depth interviews and performing both direct and participant observation while living in a village in the GMA. Employing the extended case method, the author analyzed health issues as they emerged in the everyday lives of area residents—using nutrition, violence, and HIV/AIDS as lenses through which to focus on the relationships among health, conservation, and development. These analyses highlight residents' deployment of tactics as they compete for material resources (especially cash). CBNRM in Mukungule is predicated on the idea of keeping the area "wild," but encouraging sufficient modernization to dissuade residents from engaging in livelihood activities deemed environmentally deleterious (such as poaching game and using "unsustainable" agricultural techniques). While illegal wildlife offtakes have decreased dramatically in Mukungule, CBNRM has driven residents to adopt alternate forms of "poaching" as they struggle to survive and thrive in the area. Such poaching has allowed some Mukungule residents to become quite wealthy, but has exacerbated instability, uncertainty, and inequalities within the area's population, with significant implications for health and welfare. Despite increased availability of modern material goods in the area, and improvements in overall standard of living, Mukungule residents continue to make short-term sacrifices in pursuit of longer-term gains—often risking their health as well as that of their families and neighbors. The development of the Park has fostered conditions ripe for the annual return of seasonal hunger as well as for the eruption of violence, and it has complicated and challenged people's attempts to cope with diseases such as HIV/AIDS. These findings have critical public health significance for international efforts to integrate environmental management with development goals