Sustainable Use: A Contentious Promise - A Case Study on International Funding of Consumptive Sustainable Wildlife Use in South Africa's Biodiversity Economy

Abstract: In South Africa, sustainable use of wildlife is widely recognized as providing economic incentives and actively engaging rural communities in conservation management. Aiming to combat rampant poverty and wildlife crime in communities around protected areas (PAs), the country’s biodiversity economy envisions to scale (non-)consumptive activities in the pursuit of creating economically and environmentally viable wildlife businesses. Nevertheless, past findings suggest that international funding of previous communal resource programmes has focused mainly on the development of non–consumptive uses, namely ecotourism, while neglecting multidimensional benefits arising from consumptive wildlife uses (i.e. hunting, bioprospecting). Using qualitative research, this study assesses international conservation finance actors' (ICFAs) attitudes toward consumptive sustainable use and its perceived potential and limitations in scaling up in the biodiversity economy. Through interviews with six major ICFAs and three regional cooperation partners (RCPs) operating in South Africa, the relationship between the non-consumption paradigm and ICFA’s willingness to finance consumptive sustainable use is explored. The Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) framework is applied to examine the process of adopting consumptive sustainable use into ICFA funding agendas. The findings suggest ambiguity in the way ICFAs view and address consumptive sustainable use in project funding following uncertain sustainability implications and ethical concerns over animal welfare. The study identifies three key limitations to scaling: local resource governance, market and supply chains, and the enabling environment. Insecure land tenure thwarts communal wildlife use rights, limiting conservation incentivization and beneficiation. Meanwhile, uncertain harvest conditions, tight markets and short-lived commercial partnerships are met with nascent regulatory mechanisms struggling to manage international finance and multi-stakeholder cooperation. The study concludes that despite South Africa’s productive infrastructure and ambitious strategies for a biodiversity economy, consumptive sustainable uses are not yet regarded as bankable and viable as their non-consumptive counterpart. The latter thus prevails in ICFA funding prioritization.