Zambia’s conservation estate has long been described in the language of loss. Land set aside for wildlife is land not under maize; a national park is a fence that keeps people out. For the households living along those boundaries – in the Barotse floodplain, the Bangweulu wetlands, the Luangwa valley – the ledger has often read one way. The animals are protected, the tourists arrive, and the revenue settles somewhere else. Tourism was meant to close that gap. Too often it simply moved the gap out of view.

The more useful question now is not whether tourism can pay for conservation, but whether it can be made to pay for conservation and household income at the same time, visibly, on a model anyone can inspect. That is the premise behind the forward scenarios set out in African Parks’ 2024 annual report: a transparent model in which tourism revenue is shown to improve both the state of the ecosystem and the incomes of the people around it, with indicators to track progress toward 2031.

The Transparency Problem: Why Disclosure Comes First

Conservation finance in Zambia has rarely failed for lack of a good story. It has failed for lack of a visible one. A community on the edge of Liuwa Plain or Bangweulu is asked to accept restrictions on grazing, fishing and hunting in exchange for a promise that tourism will make the trade worthwhile. When the accounts behind that promise stay closed, the promise erodes, and with it the local consent that protected areas depend on.

A transparent model changes the terms of the argument. If a park publishes what it earns, where the money goes, and how much reaches surrounding households, the conversation shifts from faith to evidence. That is harder to operate and easier to defend. In a country where trust between wildlife authorities and border communities has often been thin, disclosure is not a nicety – it is the precondition for everything that follows.

Two Ledgers, One Model: Conservation and Community Revenue

The strategic choice African Parks frames is whether tourism revenue can serve two ledgers without robbing one to pay the other. Conservation needs funding for ranger salaries, anti-poaching, habitat management and monitoring. Communities need a share that is direct enough to feel – employment, procurement, cultural tourism income, revenue transfers – rather than a distant benefit they must take on trust.

The risk in Zambia is familiar. When budgets tighten, community revenue is the line most easily deferred, because wildlife cannot lodge a complaint and a delayed disbursement rarely makes the news. A model that treats household income as a tracked output, not a residual, disciplines that instinct. It forces the operator to show both numbers moving together, and to answer when one lags.

Indicators to 2031: What Gets Measured, Gets Defended

The value of a 2031 horizon is that it converts intention into something checkable. Indicators – visitor numbers, revenue retained locally, jobs, the health of key species and habitats – turn a mission statement into a scoreboard. For an operator, investor or minister, that scoreboard is where the model either earns credibility or loses it.

For Zambia specifically, the indicators matter beyond any single park. The country is positioning tourism as a pillar alongside copper, and Western Province in particular carries cultural and natural assets – the floodplain, its wildlife, the ceremonies tied to the seasons – that a transparent conservation economy could lift. If the numbers hold to 2031, the case for expanding the model elsewhere writes itself.

The Choice Ahead

The strategic choices are not really about wildlife. They are about whether Zambia’s protected areas can be run as institutions that pay their neighbours honestly and prove it. The transparent model is a bet that openness compounds – that a community which can see the revenue defends the park that generates it, and a park that is defended earns more revenue to share.

The alternative is the older pattern: good intentions, closed books, and border communities who conclude the trade was never theirs to begin with. A park that shows its accounts is harder to walk away from.