Bushbuckridge is an area located adjacent to the Kruger National Park in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. Currently, there is widespread unsustainable natural resource use in the Bushbuckridge area, and the related poverty. This is due to factors such as the previous apartheid dispensation and the growing human population. During the apartheid era, local people were forcefully removed from the areas in which they lived and placed in small homelands, which alienated them from their natural resources and broke down indigenous knowledge systems. Bushbuckridge is located in the former homelands of Gazankulu and Lebowa. The constantly growing human population in the area has also greatly increased pressure on the natural resource base.

The Bushbuckridge Nature Conservation Project (BNCP) is a community-based organisation that seeks to coordinate and support community based natural resource management initiatives in the area. It aims at achieving increased environmental awareness and an improvement in people's livelihoods through capacity building and training. BNCP involves the implementation of various projects related to the sustainable use of natural resources. This includes the implementation of projects for both education and development purposes. BNCP is committed to bringing about sustainable development within the Buishbuckridge area through the implementation of practical projects that empower local communities to improve their livelihoods and conserve the environment.

Documents include:
Community Outreach Program
Permaculture Gardening and Environmental Education
Mnisi Traditional and Cultural Craft Village
Tipfuxeni Women's Empowerment Project

CODEOSUB is a regional southern African initiative, taking place in the eight member countries of the Southern African Development Community. The regional goal of CODEOSUB is to increase the success of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) projects in the communal areas of southern Africa.

The purpose of CODEOSUB is "to strengthen the national and regional capacity of southern African Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) to promote CBNRM initiatives within the context of National Strategies on Sustainable Development (NSSDs) and Biodiversity Strategy Action Plans (BSAPs), within the broader framework of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and related instruments"

Documents include:
Regional Project Summary
South Africa National Project Summary
First South African National Workshop Report
CITES Follow up Workshop Report
Case Study of CBNRM 'Best Practice' in South Africa

ResourceAfrica is engaged in a programme of work on the harvesting of and trade in the southern African medicinal plant, Devil's Claw (Harpagophytum procumbens).

The Past, Present and Future of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Edited by Jon Hutton and Barnabas Dickson. Published online by ResourceAfrica.

Chapters:
1. CITES: The Vision
2. CITES and the Causes of Extinction
3. When CITES Works and When it Does Not
4. Precaution at the Heart of CITES?
5. The Significant Trade Process: Making Appendix II Work
6. Who Knows Best? Controversy over Unilateral Stricter Domestic Measures
7. Assessing CITES: Four Case Studies
8. Conservation of the Nile Crocodile: Has CITES Helped or Hindered?
9. Are All Species Equal? A Comparative Assessment
10. Zimbabwe and CITES: Influencing the International Regime
11. CITES and the CBD
12. Developing CITES: Making the Convention Work for all of the Parties
13. Decentralization, Tenure and Sustainable Use
14. Global Regulation and Communal Management
15. The Lesson from Mahenye

Precaution – the "precautionary principle" or "precautionary approach" – is a response to uncertainty, in the face of risks to health or the environment. In general, it involves acting to avoid serious or irreversible potential harm, despite lack of scientific certainty as to the likelihood, magnitude, or causation of that harm. Precaution is now an established principle of environmental governance, prominent in law, policy and management instruments at international, regional and domestic level, across such diverse areas as pollution, toxic chemicals, food and phytosanitary standards, fisheries management, species introductions and wildlife trade. The immediate and obvious importance of precaution in the context of natural resource management (NRM) and biodiversity conservation, where impacts can clearly be both serious and irreversible, has been recognised through its endorsement by all major biodiversity-related multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), as well as myriad policy and legislative instruments at all levels.

However, the meaning and application of precaution is highly contested. Strong sentiments surrounded recent negotiations around the precautionary principle at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), and the principle has been at the core of series of disputes in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) arena. Controversy is sparked by the perceived ambiguity or impracticality of the precautionary principle, the potential for its operation to conflict with trade, economic or development priorities, cost implications of its adoption, the wide discretionary leeway it allows decision makers, and the potential for this leeway to allow imposition of particular environmental values or disguise trade-protectionist abuse.

Controversy and dissent is provoked by lack of consensus on the meaning of precaution and guidance on how it should be operationalised. Within the arena of conservation and NRM, the various governance instruments that adopt precaution offer little guidance for its implementation, leaving this development to other processes. In order to underpin and assist such processes, IUCN, TRAFFIC, FFI and ResourceAfrica have launched this international initiative.