Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
16
Community-based Tourism and Natural
Resource Management in Namibia:
Local and National Economic Impacts
Jonathan I. Barnes
Introduction
In this chapter the economic characteristics of Namibian community initiatives in
tourism and natural resource management are described. Community-based
natural resource management (CBNRM) in Namibia has been developing since
before 1990. Legislative change in 1994 made it possible for communities in
Namibia's communal lands to acquire limited common property rights to manage
and use their wildlife resources. These changes extended similar rights already
available to private landholders in Namibia to communal lands, where residents
practising traditional agro-pastoral and livestock-based land uses, had had no
rights to use wildlife. Thus communities were enabled to register conservancies,
through which they could take on rights, and manage and use wildlife resources
with the assistance of NGOs and government. The primary motivation for
CBNRM, as described elsewhere in this topic, has been to give landholders incen-
tives to invest in their natural resources. With support from donors and
government, communities have established some 50 conservancies on large
portions of the communal lands. Details on Namibia's CBNRM programme are
given by the Namibian Association of CBNRM Support Organizations
(NACSO, 2004, 2006), and Libanda and Blignaut (2007).
Namibia is a large country, embracing some 830,000km
2
, with a mostly rural
human population of some 1.7 million. It is very dry, with habitats ranging from
semi-arid savanna woodland in the north-east, through to extremely arid desert in
Search WWH ::
Custom Search