the richtersveld cultural and botanical landscape - SAHRA

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Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape World Heritage Site Nomination 71 links between the Conservancy and related existing World Heritage Sites. A field trip was undertaken to the Robben Island World Heritage Site where team members noted the similarities with the Conservancy in regards to segregation and social deprivation. A larger field trip was undertaken to Norway to learn about the similarities between the Nama people and the Sami people whose culture and cultural landscape is recognized in the Laponian Area World Heritage Site in Sweden. Links were also established with the Alta World Heritage Site Museum. These visits were vital in the establishing an understanding of and foundation for the World Heritage Process in the Richtersveld Community. Later the Environment Minister of Norway again invited Richtersvelders to participate in World Environment Day in Trondheim in 2004 where they had the opportunity to visit the emerging World Heritage Site of Vega which is now fully declared and operational. Local government support for the Conservancy being a World Heritage Site is also demonstrated in local government publications, where the Richtersveld Municipality’s IDPs of 2000, 2002, and 2003 include points about World Heritage Site nomination for the Richtersveld Community Conservancy. IDP 2002 states: “As for the proposed Richtersveld World Heritage Site, a good relationship has been established with the Northern Cape Arts and Culture Department and a way forward has been identified: to conduct a feasibility study and investigate possible management options for the proposed (World Heritage) site.” To facilitate the on-going discussion of the World Heritage Site process is the Distance Learning and Information Sharing Tool (DLIST; www.dlist.org), an internet portal focusing on community heritage and development along the coast of Namibia, Angola and South Africa. It has been used as a forum for discussion for World Heritage Site in the Conservancy and also has facilitated the link across the Orange River to make the cultural and natural connection between the South African and Namibian cultural areas. To build on this process, cross border visits were initiated in 2003 and 2004, where local people of the Richtersveld travelled to //Gamaseb Conservancy and the town of Warmbad to strengthen the cross border revival of Nama culture.
Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape World Heritage Site Nomination 72 3. Justification Until recently, the harsh lands of South Africa’s northwestern border with Namibia were regarded by many as a forbidding wasteland. However, closer examination revealed a mountainous desert alive with thousands of species of unusual succulent plants, many proving to be endemic, and a unique pastoral culture spanning back two thousand years to the early transition from hunter gatherer to pastoral livelihoods of a branch of KhoiKhoi, known as the Nama people. The Richtersveld National Park was developed to preserve components of the biodiversity and wilderness and the Nama culture, architecture, language and transhumance livelihoods gained recognition as a very special part of South Africa’s social diversity. These two aspects of the Richtersveld – culture and nature – have revealed themselves as being inextricable from each other. In the Richtersveld, humans and their traditional livelihoods have become part of the environment and, conversely, the environment has shaped human culture through thousands of years of survival and growth in an extreme environment with limited water, the impossibility of agriculture and severe temperature conditions. What has emerged is a community-owned and -managed protected area comprising one of the richest and scientifically most important areas in the Succulent Karoo Biome and the last remaining stronghold of Nama people living a transhumance existence. This area, called the Richtersveld Community Conservancy, is justified in being including the World Heritage Site list, as an important natural and cultural site of outstanding universal value. This justification for inclusion in the World Heritage list, is significantly supported by reports by IUCN, ICOMOS, and UNEP pertaining to “filling the gaps.” In this regard – filling gaps where the World Heritage Site list has little or no representation – the Conservancy’s rich and unique biodiversity, cultural landscape and examples of traditional human settlement and interactions with the environment provide sound evidence for why it can fill these gaps in many ways and be justifiably enscripted as a World Heritage Site. The recognition of the Richtersveld Community Conservancy’s biological importance by international conservation bodies is wide and strong. The Succulent
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