The Protected Landscape Approach - Centre for Mediterranean ...

8. Pastoralists, conservation and livelihoods in East and Southern Africa
important economic activity it is likely to be excluded in the evolving changes on the group
ranches.
If the necessary incentives are in place for maintaining wildlife as a land-use, then the
protected landscape approach can be achieved and maintained through appropriate land-use
planning that would identify areas where agricultural potential exists. Remaining rangeland
would then be left for livestock and wildlife. The existing and emerging wildlife sanctuaries
could be zoned in this land-use plan as localized core wildlife areas, but within and linked to a
larger multi-use and multi-species system. Land-use planning would be based on the involve -
ment of local communities. Such a land-use plan would provide for a combination of activities
(agriculture, pastoralism and ecotourism) that are likely to optimize the use of land as well as
economic benefits for the Maasai, while retaining the nature and character of the Tsavo-
Amboseli landscape.
Conservation and mobile people: conflicting paradigms and
agendas in Namibia’s Kunene Region
The protected landscape character of communal lands in
north-west Namibia
The communal lands of the Kunene Region are inhabited by a number of different ethnic
groups. In the extreme north, Himba and Herero pastoralists dominate and to the south the
Damara are the main group. There are a few administrative centres where the government has
provided a school and a clinic and some large settlements based around strong perennial
springs, but for the most part, people are scattered in small settlements across a harsh and
rugged landscape.
Many of the communal lands in Kunene Region support considerable wildlife populations,
including endangered species such as black rhino and Hartmann’s mountain zebra. Decimated
by drought and poaching in the 1970s, wildlife numbers have increased again due to a
combination of better rainfall, increased patrolling by conservation officials and NGOs and
community involvement in conservation. Numbers of elephant and black rhino have also
increased considerably since the early 1980s. That the last rhino poaching incident in the region
was in the early 1990s is a testament to the success of community involvement. The escarpment
that marks the descent from the central plateau to the desert margins in north-west Namibia is
recognised as an important habitat for several endemic species. The central communal lands of
the Kunene Region form a wildlife dispersal area for the Etosha National Park to the east.
Because large mammals such as elephant, black rhino, giraffe and lion occur well into the
Namib Desert, and the area offers spectacular desert scenery, the communal lands of Kunene
are a popular tourism destination.
Community-based conservation has a long history in the region. In the mid-1980s, NGOs
began working with local people in order to address the decline of wildlife. Community game
guards were appointed and a pilot project was established to return some income from
wildlife-based tourism to Himba pastoralists. In the mid-1990s, the Namibian Government
passed legislation that gives rights over wildlife and tourism to local communities who form
common property resource management institutions called conservancies. In Kunene Region
there are now 16 registered conservancies. The conservancies are multiple-use areas in which
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