Growing the Wealth of the Poor - World Resources Institute

UPDATE: SCALING UP NAMIBIA’SCOMMUNITY CONSERVANCIESTHE LAST EDITION OF WORLD RESOURCEShighlighted Namibia’s Communal Conservancy Program asa successful model of community-based natural resourcemanagement with a growing record for poverty reduction.The program empowered rural communities with unprecedentedmanagement and use rights over wildlife, creating new incentivesfor communities to protect this valuable resource anddevelop economic opportunities in the tourism and trophyhunting industries.Since its genesis in 1996, the Namibian conservancy programhas achieved considerable scale. After a decade of rapid growth,the program has expanded to 50 registered conservancies in2007, an increase of nearly 20 in the last 3 years alone. Conservanciesnow cover nearly 11.9 million ha—over 14 percent of thecountry’s area—and benefit more than 230,000 rural Namibians.Many more communities are still in the process of formally establishingconservancies (WWF et al. 2007:ii).At the same time, there has been a marked increase in thenumbers of wildlife in the conservancies after a decades-longtrend of decline. In conservancies in the northwest, forexample, elephant numbers more than doubled from 1982 to2000 and populations of oryx, springbok, and mountain zebraincreased 10-fold. This recovery is the result of a decrease inillegal hunting and poaching and reflects the economic valuethat conservancy members now place on healthy wildlifepopulations—a direct link between wildlife and economicdevelopment (NACSO 2006:25; Seitz 2008).In this update we reexamine Namibian conservancies using theframework for scaling up introduced in this volume, concentratingon the development of local ownership, the building of localcapacity for enterprise, and the creation of connections thatnurture these enterprises.Background: The Conservancy StructureCommunal conservancies are legally recognized commonproperty resource management institutions in Namibia’scommunal lands. They were codified under Namibia’s 1996Nature Conservation Act, which granted rights to any ruralcommunity living in the communal lands to form a conservancy,provided they can establish a defined membership, define theirgeographic boundaries, form a representative managementcommittee, and draft a constitution that guarantees theequitable distribution of economic benefits. The use rightsgranted to conservancies include the rights to hunt, capture,cull, and sell “huntable game” such as kudu, oryx, springbok,SwakopmundWalvis BayProtected areasStateprotected areasConservanciesestablished before 2003Conservanciesestablished after 2003ANGOLAOshakatiN A M I B I AWindhoekRehobothRunduSOUTH AFRICAKatima MuliloBOTSWANAwarthog, and buffalo. These rights are not unlimited, however;for example, the government still determines the overall cullingrate and establishes quotas for protected game used for trophyhunting (WRI et al. 2005:115; Seitz 2008; Jones andMosimane 2007:11).Conservancies benefit from a variety of income-generatingactivities, including entering into contracts with large tourismcompanies, selling hunting concessions, managing smallcampsite enterprises, selling wildlife to game ranchers, sellingcrafts, and distributing various in-kind benefits, such asbushmeat. These activities have brought significant profits that,due to safeguards in each conservancy’s constitution, havebeen reinvested into households and communities. Communitiesadd these opportunities to their existing land uses, such asfarming and rearing livestock (WRI et al. 2005:117).The conservancy program has also brought employment to aregion where few formal opportunities existed before. Mostpeople were previously engaged in subsistence farming, with afortunate minority owning and selling livestock. For the poorest,remittances were the only hope for additional income. Conservancieshave offered a chance to generate a new source of incomeand, in some cases, opportunities for social mobility in thecountry’s impoverished communal areas (Boudreaux 2007:13).30