As has been well documented, the Covid-19 pandemic unleashed unprecedented changes across the planet as related to both the disease itself and the mechanisms put in place to minimize its spread. In this talk, I share data from a collaborative project supported both by a CUPC and Hazard Center Converge Grant that looked specifically at impacts on dryland communities in East and Southern Africa as related to community-based-conservation and tourism. We partnered with local co-researchers to conduct research during the pandemic in conservation landscapes in Namibia, Kenya, and Tanzania; in communities where tourism and conservation have been adopted as market-based solutions to social and environmental vulnerabilities. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the cessation of international tourism and the suspension of most employment related to community-based conservation in the region. Our research highlights three important findings and a provocative challenge. First, we show the dangers of promoting tourism as the catchall solution to combat rural poverty while simultaneously promoting conservation, with possible outcomes detrimental to both communities and conservation. Second, we show the highly uneven ways in which the impacts of COVID-19 and the measures used to contain it play out in rural communities. And third, our research illustrates the resilience of dryland communities and their ability to rebuild livelihoods while experimenting with possible futures. This leads to the question of how such research can help challenge existing conservation/tourism models and make space for new models and conservation futures. IBS Speaker Series. University of Colorado, Boulder, USA: November 14, 2022 (presented by Mara Goldman).

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