By Jan Vertefeuille and
Joanna Benn
03/10/2005 - Flying into Windhoek, the capital
of the southern African nation of Namibia,
is like landing in a nature reserve. Located
high on a central plateau, with the Auas Mountains
serving as a backdrop, it is not uncommon
to spot kudu and other antelope shortly upon
arrival.
Namibia is a wildlife paradise with visitors
having the chance to spot the Big Five — lions,
leopards, elephants, buffalos, and rhinoceroses.
Although the country’s red-tinted plains and
rocky mountains are home to some of the world’s
richest biodiversity, they are also home to
some of the poorest communities. Trying to
tackle the ever complex human-wildlife relationship
and poverty reduction have been long-standing
challenges for the government and environmental
organizations alike.
“There is great potential for Namibia to
achieve a healthy environment and development
of its people,” said Chris Weaver, Director
of WWF’s LIFE programme — a programme that
assists local communities to manage their
own land and decide which areas should be
kept as wildlife areas, as well as designating
zones for farming, tourism, and any other
types of sustainable development. Such community-based
initiatives are popularly known as conservancies,
a progressive movement that is linking rural
development with sustainable utilization of
natural resources.
“Large wildlife populations, attractive scenery,
rich fishery resources, and expansive woodlands
are the basis of a sustainable future,” Weaver
added. “The idea is for local communities
to manage the land, wildlife, and natural
resources so they are profitable, and ultimately,
self-supporting.”
Camping in luxury
Pascoleno “Lena” Florry, a one-time goat herder,
rose through the ranks to become the first
black woman in Namibia to manage a tourist
lodge — no small accomplishment for a poor,
rural Namibian woman.
For the past eight years she has managed
the Damaraland Camp, a luxury tented lodge
located on the north face of the Haub River
Valley, some 90km from Torra Bay on Namibia’s
Skeleton Coast. The brooding mass of the Brandberg
Mountains lies just to the south. Until the
initiation of a community wildlife conservancy
in 1988, Damaraland was unprotected and open
to poachers. But the local community soon
put a stop to that.
“People come here to see the desert elephants,
the magnificent scenery and wildlife, the
black rhino, and the local people,” said Lena.
“We have stopped poaching because people value
wildlife and see what tourism can do.”
Damaraland Camp lies within the 352,000ha-Torra
Conservancy, one of the first conservancies
of its kind. Today, Torra is financially independent
and fully managed and staffed by conservancy
residents. Any income made by the conservancy’s
activities, such as tour guide services, tourist
facilities, or trophy hunting where quotas
are set and monitored by the government, is
distributed by the conservancy’s members.
With the money brought in by its projects,
the Torra Conservancy is starting a breeding
station for goats, cows, and sheep that will
be used to compensate farmers when a lion
or other predator kills one of their livestock.Other
funds have been used to invest in local schools
or paid out as cash dividends to Torra’s members,
who in turn use it to pay school fees or cover
other family costs.
“Damaraland employs one person from each
of the 20 families in the nearby village so
that everyone benefits from the lodge,” said
Lena. “The thing about the conservancy is
that we are all very positive and I think
we can go very far in the future.”
The white lady
South of Torra, in the Namib Desert, is the
Tsiseb (pronounced See-seb) Conservancy, which
has partnered with a private business to open
the White Lady Lodge. The lodge is named after
Namibia’s most famous rock painting, which
graces the side of a hill in the Brandberg
Mountains. The lodge is privately owned and
its agreement with the Tsiseb Conservancy
requires that the owners pay NAD20,000 (US$3,170)
a month to the community in rent.
The Tsiseb area is blessed with mountains
and rich mineral soil that yield gemstones,
including amethyst and tourmalines. Before
the conservancy was established, many community
members supported themselves by digging the
precious stones and selling them by the side
of the road, often standing for hours in the
blazing sun hoping a tourist would come along.
But now, thanks to the conservancy system,
many are employed in the tourism industry.
After a local mine closed in the early 11000s,
a group of unemployed miners from the community
organized a tour service to the culturally
significant Brandberg Mountain after unescorted
tourists were found defacing and stealing
the ancient rock paintings. The Brandberg
National Monument now requires tourists to
hire one of the guides when venturing into
the mountains.
The Tsiseb Conservancy has also used some
of the income from its projects to purchase
land and to build an impressive visitors center,
complete with coffee shop, internet café,
and store that sells crafts made by conservancy
members.
“These are things to be proud of, but it
is still a struggle,” admits Eric Xaweb, the
manager of the Tsiseb Conservancy. “We still
have a long journey. There are still a lot
of things that need to be done.”
The conservancy movement
Namibia won its independence only in 11000,
and within a relatively short period time
has proven to be in many ways a success story.
In particular, it has become a model for promoting
the management of community-based natural
resources.
“What our people want is to be involved in
the decision-making process and to actively
participate in decisions, which will ultimately
affect them,” Namibian President Sam Nujoma
has said on more than one occasion. “They
then will take ownership of these decisions
and ensure that they are successfully implemented.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, it was predominantly
white commercial farmers in Namibia who were
benefiting from tourists and hunters visiting
their private land. It wasn’t until 1996 that
Namibia’s majority black population pushed
the government to pass a law allowing for
publicly-managed conservancies to be run by
local communities.
“People were suffering,” explained Bennie
Roman, a member of the board of the Torra
Conservancy. “We were seeing that people from
outside were benefiting from the resources…tour
operators and so forth…and we came to realize
that maybe we could also benefit from that.
Our main objective was to conserve these resources
and by so doing, start something that could
create jobs.”
To form a conservancy, a local community
must define the area’s boundaries, register
its members, develop a constitution, and elect
a governing committee. Once approved by the
government, they are then recognized as a
legal body with conditional ownership and
rights over certain wildlife species and other
natural resources.
“Before the conservancy, there were absolutely
no jobs,” says Vitalis Florry, manager of
the Torra Conservancy’s tour guides. “Now
we see a small economy developing. Now we
see some benefits.”
While leading a game drive in search of rare
black rhinos — one of the conservancy’s newest
business ventures — Vitalis explains how the
Torra Conservancy has diversified its business.
As he stops at the camp of his crew of guides
to pick up a staff member, he points to a
newly fenced area in the distance.
“That’s where we have just planted paprika
and citrus fruits, which we hope will generate
big income as a cash crop, that is, if our
guides can keep the elephants and other crop
raiders from devouring them first.”
Reducing human-wildlife conflict
As human populations expand and natural habitats
shrink, people and animals are increasingly
coming into conflict over living space and
food. The impacts are often huge with people
losing their crops, livestock, property, and
sometimes even their lives. The animals, many
of which are already threatened or endangered,
are often killed in retaliation. Human-wildlife
conflict is one of the main threats to the
continued survival of many species, in addition
to the continued problem of poaching — whether
hunting elephant and rhinoceros for ivory,
or antelope and zebra for bushmeat — which
for many still offers a profitable income.
“If solutions to conflicts are not adequate,
local support for conservation also declines,”
said Chris Weaver. “That is why we are working
hard to increase community awareness and knowledge
of wildlife as an important natural resource
worthy of saving.”
In the early 1980s, there were thought to
be only 50 elephants, less than 1,000 zebra,
and 50 rhinos surviving in north-west Namibia.
A more recent count found approximately 500
elephants, 14,000 zebra and the world’s largest
population of free roaming black rhino. In
addition, antelope sightings, such as gemsbok
and springbok, are up significantly.
“After years of heavy poaching, the springbok
population has come back,” said Bob Guibeb,
Director of environmental services for the
?Khoadi //Hoas Conservancy. “There are still
people who are poaching, but incidents have
come down very low.”
The conservancy movement is proving that
proper management of resources by local stakeholders
can produce good results from a conservation
and economic point of view. Proceeds from
activities like ecotourism and closely regulated
sport hunting are going back to the communities
as wages and investments in healthcare and
schooling, while wildlife populations are
recovering dramatically.
“These programmes work because they give
people an incentive to protect wildlife rather
than poach it,” Weaver added. “When communities
can earn as much, or more, by conserving land
as they can from unsustainable subsistence
agricultural practices, potential conflicts
can be turned into win-win situations for
both people and wildlife.”
As Rosalia Haraes, a wildlife guide from
the Torra Conservancy, explained: “Everyone
in the conservancy wants to look after wildlife.
Everyone knows the importance wildlife holds
for us, as well as tourists…it’s ours now
to look after.”
* Jan Vertefeuille is a Senior Communications
Officer at WWF-US. Joanna Benn is Communications
Manager for the WWF Global Species Programme.
END NOTES:
• There are 31 registered conservancies managing
some 78,000km of communal land in Namibia
through eco-tourism and managed hunting. At
these conservancies, wildlife is thriving
and local communities are beginning to earn
an income and see regular employment opportunities.
Currently, there are another 40 areas emerging
as conservancies, which will involve another
additional 100,000 people across another 80,000km.
It is estimated that in the future, one out
of every nine Namibians will be a participant
in the conservancy movement.
• Poaching pressure escalated during the
1970s and 1980s as a result of the rising
demand for rhino horn in Asia and the Middle
East. Between 1970 and 1992, the black rhino
suffered a 96 per cent decline in numbers.
Today, only about 3,600 black rhinos survive
in the wild and all four subspecies are listed
as Critically Endangered in the IUCN (World
Conservation Union) Red List. Namibia has
one of the largest black rhino populations
in the world.
• The "Living in a Finite Environment"
(LIFE) project, which started in May 1993,
provides assistance to comprehensive community-based
natural resource management programmes through
the provision of technical support, training,
grants, and regional coordination, and information
dissemination to government agencies, NGOs,
and communities. The project is being implemented
by WWF through a cooperative agreement with
the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID). Institutional partners
to WWF under the agreement include: Namibia
Nature Foundation; Cooperative League of the
United States of America; and International
Resources Group, Inc.
• Other on-the-ground support to conservancies
comes from such partners as the Namibia-based
NGO Integrated Rural Development and Nature
Conservation (IRDNC), which works closely
with the Torra Conservancy and 40 other registered
and/or emerging conservancies, as well as
the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism,
13 members of the Namibian Association of
Community-Based Natural Resource Management
Service Providers (NACSO), and numerous private
sector operators.
