The Protected Landscape Approach - Centre for Mediterranean ...

The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community
areas of key resources. Hardened boundaries, even if actually unfenced, are likely to make it
more difficult to negotiate access to key resources when needed. Would people living outside
the proclaimed area be able to move livestock into a zoned wilderness area, if they needed
grazing there How would the zoning of the park for different land-use practices fit with local
resource management practices that view the whole area as important for different reasons at
different times of the year or in different years Much would depend upon the level of
decision-making power of local communities compared to government officials.
Similar problems are posed by the community conservancies that have been, and continue to
be, established in the region. Based on the self-definition of specific social units living within
identified geographical boundaries, the conservancies provide rights over wildlife and tourism.
Conservancies do not provide land rights, but proponents of conservancies have argued
strongly that local communities should have secure group tenure over the land, which is owned
by the state. The need for such tenure arrangements is justified by the argument that it is
difficult under existing arrangements for communities to exclude unwanted persons from using
their grazing or water. Further, it is difficult for conservancies to exclude outsiders from
moving on to land being zoned specifically for wildlife and tourism. However, the con -
servancies are also possibly imposing a new set of boundaries over the existing network of
reciprocal and negotiated relationships that govern access to resources. Following research in
the southern communal lands of Kunene, Sullivan (1996) concluded that security of tenure to
units of land would not ensure security of livelihood, unless options for movement between the
units were retained. This means that sufficient flexibility must be retained to allow negotiated
access to resources between one conservancy and another.
Putting the people back into protected landscapes
Community conservancies in northwestern Namibia have been successful in contributing to
wildlife conservation. There is no conservation crisis that requires state intervention. However,
there is a need for cooperative management at a landscape/ecosystem level. Such cooperation
needs to take place between the individual community conservancies, some of which could also
be linked in partnerships with the Skeleton Coast Park, the Etosha National Park and informal
conservation areas established by white freehold farmers bordering communal land.
A protected landscape approach in this region of Namibia could promote such cooperation
and integration of conservation areas under different forms of land tenure and management
regime. However, such an approach would need to put the pastoralists themselves at the
forefront of decision-making concerning their own land. Planning across the greater landscape/
ecosystem would need to take into account the holistic way in which people view the land and
its resources. It would also need to be based on residents’ own informal, unwritten maps that
record in the mind a system of tenure and access rights as well as knowledge of the location of
specific resources. In this way it would ensure that the mobility, flexibility and reciprocity that
have underpinned their successful range management in the past would continue into the
future. At the same time people would have the opportunity to adapt to and manage some of the
changes that the cash economy and links to broader Namibian society have brought to what was
once a very isolated, localized society.
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