the richtersveld cultural and botanical landscape - SAHRA

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