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the project rather than counter them through overuse, poaching, or other practices deemed at odds with
conservation goals. For a local resident, participation may mean simply the chance to express concerns
about the way a project is being implemented – and for those concerns to be heard and taken into account.
It may also mean quietly finding ways to sabotage those efforts that are considered insensitive to local
concerns. But should all of these activities be called ‘participation’?
This paper seeks to uncover the assumptions behind participation as the ‘spinach’ of a democratic
diet, and to examine in detail how participation may be constituted at the local level. First, a brief
examination of the literature on participatory development will illuminate some of the key problems in
the way participation is approached. Second, a detailed case study will sketch out examples of how local
participation structures were created for the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP), a massive new
international conservation and development project in which people are still resident. The base of the
GLTP is in South Africa’s Kruger National Park; Mozambique created the Limpopo National Park (LNP)
specifically to be incorporated into the GLTP while Zimbabwe’s contribution consists of Gonharezhou
National Park and a ‘corridor’ area that is currently Sengwe communal land. The case study focuses on
tracing participation in Mozambique, one of the three partners in the GLTP. Third and finally, lessons
from the case will be illustrated with the use of a new typology that addresses the practical and theoretical
shortcomings of ways to engender participation in development. I will argue that all too often,
participation strategies are not only ineffective at shifting control of projects to the local level, but that
they often instead reinforce existing social and political inequalities and only benefit those who are in a
position to be consulted. Moreover, if participation is implemented because it is supposed to be
democratic, then its deficiencies have implications for establishing democratic practices at the local level
in new democracies that are also pursuing development.
Doing Participation in Development: Questionably Democratic Practices
While it may have begun as a radical critique of modernization and top-down development
approaches (Freire 1970), participation has become an expectation in local development projects (Cernea
Convention