Integrating Conservation and Development: A Namibian Case Study

Resume Integrer conservation et developpement: etude de cas en Namibie Cette recherche examine les initiatives de gestion des ressources naturelles locales (GRNL)--en anglais community-based natural resource management (CBNRM)--prises par les gardiens de troupeaux semi-nomades Himba et Herero, situes dans la partie isolee de la Namibie du nord-ouest, et par les chasseurs-amasseurs au nord-est. Cette recherche montre que la conservation comme les personnes peuvent beneficier de la GRNL et sontient que les nomades de Namibie ont ete avantages par cette approche de conservation dans le contexte d'un Etat africain moderne en voie de developpement. Resumen Integrar la preservacion y el desarrollo: un estudio de csos de la Namibia Este estudio de casos examina las iniciativas de gestion de los recursos naturales locales (GRNL)--en ingles community-based natural resource management (CBNRM)--tomadas por los pastores semi-nomadas en el noroeste remoto de Namibia y por los cazadores-recolectores en el noreste. Este estudio de casos muestra que tanto la conservacion como las personas pueden beneficiar de la GRNL y afirma que los nomadas de Namibia son favorecidos por este metodo de conservacion en el contexto de un estado moderno africano en vias de desarrollo. Introduction This case study presents a practical, field-based, implementation perspective--that of a Namibian Non-Government Organisation (NGO) providing technical support to more than 30 rural communities to take advantage of new, enabling, community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) legislation in Namibia. More than half of these communities fall within the definition of mobile peoples, as pastoralists or hunter-gatherers. The paper briefly outlines the development of what is today a national CBNRM programme and examines an approach to conservation and development that has evolved over 20 years. This approach was able to turn around massive commercial and subsistence poaching, including desert-adapted elephant and black rhino in northwest Namibia in the 1980s. Game increases have continued over the past decade-and-a-half and today wildlife and tourism are thriving in this region and there is widespread grassroots support for CBNRM. The national programme is expanding beyond wildlife to include fish, forest and other plant resources, and now involves communities in nine of Namibia's 13 regions, 12 NGOs and government. As importantly, CBNRM has enabled some of Namibia's most marginalised people--including and perhaps especially, the nomads--to develop and start implementing a vision for their future, as elucidated below. It is a vision that links wildlife conservation and development so that both people and their natural resources are beneficiaries. The wildlife figures (Figure 1) and expanded area under conservation status in Namibia (Figure 2) speak for themselves. [FIGURES 1-2 OMITTED] At the same time rural people are benefiting from: * More rights over their resources and the tools to exercise those rights * Improved natural resource management * Social empowerment via increased capacity, skills and knowledge * The growth of grassroots democracy as CBNRM promotes opportunities for the voices of remote rural people to be heard at national and regional forums * Diversification of rural economies The tangible successes of this programme, as highlighted by the game increases and start-up income generation (Figure 3), should not obscure the complexities and challenges of making CBNRM work on the ground. CBNRM is the long, slow and difficult route. It can and often does challenge or change previously existing power structures--traditional leaderships, government bureaucrats, politicians and other elite groupings--by extending rights over valuable resources to ordinary people. Thus community and other conflicts are to be expected and, we believe, are a necessary step to be negotiated. …