The Protected Landscape Approach - Centre for Mediterranean ...

The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community
residents continue with their usual land-use practices but combine them with wildlife. Some
conservancies have set aside (unfenced) areas specifically for wildlife and tourism. Those
conservancies with good wildlife resources and attractive scenery are able to generate con -
siderable income and other benefits through consumptive and non-consumptive forms of
tourism, live sale of game, and hunting for meat.
Continuity and change in the communal landscape
Livestock farming forms the main economic activity of most residents of the Kunene Region
communal areas. In response to the arid and uncertain climatic conditions, mobility has evolved
as the pastoralists’ main strategy for livestock management. The region can be divided into two
main sub-areas in terms of communal livestock management. The Himba and Herero pastoral -
ists of the northern area are still largely semi-nomadic. Despite the provision of waterpoints by
government and development agencies, the pastoralists still move their livestock over large
areas in search of grazing. However, according to Owen-Smith and Jacobsohn (1991) the
provision of water points considerably disrupted the pastoralists’ traditional rotational grazing
system and led to widespread degradation of the palatable shrub and perennial grass cover in
the vicinity of natural springs and artificial water points. There have also been considerable
social changes among the Himba with young people looking to a formal “western” education
and wage labour in the towns as the way ahead in life. Many younger men have no desire to
work as herders and this also affects the ability of people to maintain appropriate grazing
management regimes.
In some areas of Kunene however, pastoralist systems still appear to be working. Behnke
(1997) for example reported on work carried out for a donor-funded livestock project. He
concluded that grazing systems in the Etanga area were finely tuned to local environmental
conditions and it was difficult to see how the project could technically improve on existing
grazing management.
The southern part of the Kunene communal lands is characterized by former freehold farms
that were surveyed, fenced and given to white South Africans after the Second World War. In
the 1960s these farms were bought up and allocated as part of the Damaraland homeland as part
of South Africa’s apartheid plan for Namibia (then known as South West Africa and essentially
a fifth province of South Africa). Typically a small group of people live on cattle posts on these
farms where there are artificial water points and often the farm fences are maintained. Although
people in this region are more sedentary than the Himba and Herero of further north, mobility is
still important for them in times of drought, during which livestock are moved temporarily over
considerable distances to find grazing.
Some important features that are important for the success of pastoralism in northern
Kunene have emerged from research in the region (e.g. Owen-Smith and Jacobsohn, 1991;
Bollig, 1996; Sullivan, 1996; and Behnke, 1997). One of these features is access to
“emergency” pasture, in other words, grazing that is still available in times of drought. In the
north-west such grazing was available because of rotational grazing being applied, but in some
instances herders needed to move their livestock far west into areas of the Namib Desert where
there had been rainfall, and some grass production.
Further, flexibility is a key feature of pastoralist management in north-west Namibia. It is not
just necessary to be mobile, but to have the flexibility to move to different areas, and different
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