Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the west and south. Most land in the country is only suitable for extensive grazing
by livestock or wildlife. Forty-three per cent of the country, mostly in central and
southern drier parts, contains private, medium scale, commercial ranches, and 45
per cent, mostly in the more remote north, is communal land. Communal land is
state-owned, but occupied by rural tribal communities - most of the country's
population. Traditionally communities have practised pastoralism in the south
and west, and agropastoralism in the north and north-east, but their access to
markets and infrastructure has been poor. In the north-east, among San commu-
nities, some sedentary hunting and gathering is practised.
Wildlife resources of high value for tourism occur in less densely settled
north-western and north-eastern communal lands. Elephant (
Loxodonta africana
),
buffalo (
Syncerus caffer
), hippopotamus (
Hippopotamus amphibius
), sable
(
Hippotragus niger
), roan (
Hippotragus equinus
), lechwe (
Kobus leche
), sitatunga
(
Tragelaphus spekei
), lion (
Panthera leo
), leopard (
Panthera pardus
) and wild dog
(
Lycaeon pictus
) are of conservation importance in the north-east. In the north-
west, desert-adapted wildlife species such as elephant, black rhinoceros (
Diceros
bicornis
), mountain zebra (
Equus zebra
), springbok (
Antidorcas marsupialis
), kudu
(
Tragelphus strepsiseros
) and oryx (
Oryx gazella
) occur. Attractive scenery,
enhancing tourism value, exists in both places.
By far the most important natural resource uses in CBNRM are non-
consumptive wildlife viewing tourism and consumptive trophy-hunting tourism.
Conservancies develop their own campsites from which they derive profits, and
they also enter into joint ventures with private operators, where wildlife viewing
and trophy hunting activities are pursued. Thus, communities offer concessions
to operators where lodges and camps are developed, the communities generally
contributing the site and possibly capital and the private operator contributing
capital, skills, market access and other specialized inputs. Some subsistence and
commercial use of natural plant and wildlife resources takes place in conservan-
cies, for example, to produce fuelwood, poles, plant foods, meat and raw materials
for crafts, but this is relatively minor. Tourism has received priority as it has been
able to give communities large injections of new income.
A key policy question associated with CBNRM is whether it can generate
viable and sustainable returns. Can the private benefits to communities and
households resulting from CBNRM be significant and outweigh the associated
costs? Can the massive donor investment that has gone into CBNRM in southern
Africa be shown to be justified in terms of sustainable economic growth and rural
development? The existence in Namibia of 16 years of quality data on the costs
and benefits associated with CBNRM and a programme of ongoing economic
analysis provides an unparalleled opportunity to answer these questions.
The economics unit of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism has
analysed the financial and economic development of selected individual conser-
vancies and the national CBNRM programme as a whole. These analyses have
been aimed at determining the financial viability of conservancies and the contri-
bution that these make to the national income (Barnes et al, 2002). They have
been carried further at the national level to measure the economic impact that the
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