Programme History

From nature conservation to CBNRM

Some notes on the history of the programme

A comprehensive history of conservation in Namibia has yet to be recorded because it continues to be written by its actors: the conservancies, NGOs, the MET and many individual conservationists. Two books have started the process: ‘An Arid Eden’ by Garth-Owen Smith is an autobiographical account of conservation in Kunene, and ‘Life is Like a Kudu Horn’ by Margaret Jacobsohn adds personal reminiscences on the same topic from an anthropological point of view.

The article below is informed by information from Owen-Smith, Jacobsohn, and Brian Jones, a journalist who joined the Ministry of Wildlife, Conservation and Tourism. The history of post-independence conservation in Namibia is the story of how conservation begun by individuals became Community Based Natural Resource Management, which is now an established Namibian conservation programme.

The Namibian National CBNRM programme had its origins in the period just before and just after Namibia’s independence from South Africa in March 1990.

The legacy of apartheid

After the implementation of apartheid under the South African Odendaal Plan in 1970, major commercial and subsistence poaching occurred in all Namibia’s communal areas, initially by government officials and security forces, but later by local communities. At the time wildlife and tourism were not seen as having any role to play in the economic development of the South African created ethnic “homelands”.

North-west Namibia, known as Kaokoland, previously the stronghold of black rhino and desert-dwelling elephant, had virtually lost both species by 1982. Poaching for rhino horn and ivory then moved south into Damaraland. In 1982 the newly established Namibia Wildlife Trust, supported by the Endangered Wildlife Trust in South Africa, started their Damaraland/Kaokoland Project to assist Chris Eyre, the only nature conservator based in the region. Garth Owen-Smith was appointed as its field officer.

Originally from South Africa, Owen-Smith, supported by the Namibia Wildlife Trust, had worked with local communities to establish a community game guard system which proved highly successful in restoring to local communities a sense of responsibility over wildlife and in reducing poaching.

Having previously worked as a government agricultural extension officer in the region, Owen-Smith was able to re-establish his relationship with the local communities and their traditional leaders and discuss the value of wildlife and the potential future benefits it could bring. This later this resulted in the first three chiefs appointing their own community game guards. They were not an anti-poaching unit, but simply the eyes and ears of their traditional leaders, who would now be accountable if poaching occurred.

The game guards also provided a service to the broader community by actively assisting with human-wildlife conflict. As additional donor funding became available, more community game guards were appointed and the poaching by local community members stopped. A local vision of wildlife being more valuable alive than dead had spread among the majority, isolating the small percentage of potential law-breakers.

Owen-Smith later teamed up with social scientist and former journalist and anthropologist Margaret Jacobsohn to form a new NGO, Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC). They continued to work with the community game guards and assisted a small community to channel income from photographic safari operators to community members, linking the income to wildlife and wild habitats. The community game guard system was extended to eastern Zambezi Region in 1989.

Up until independence, the involvement of the conservation authorities with local communities remained limited, and came more from the interest and vision of individual conservators rather than official policy. Government Nature Conservator Chris Eyre, for example, played a major role with Garth Owen-Smith in working with local communities to stop poaching.

An opportunity for the post-independence government to explore approaches to working with local communities came in early 1990 with the withdrawal of the occupying South African Defence Force (SADF) from the Caprivi Game Reserve (now Bwabwata National Park) prior to Namibia’s Independence.

The Caprivi Game Reserve had been proclaimed in 1968, but occupied by the SADF soon afterwards and run as a military zone for operations into Angola and as a training base for Angolan rebels. The Directorate of Nature Conservation in the pre-independence government had little access to the reserve, and when the SADF withdrew, it was necessary to investigate the ecological status of the area and its conservation potential.

Surveying new opportunities

The task of leading this investigation was given to ecologist, Dr Chris Brown, who realised that the Directorate’s investigation had to be expanded beyond ecology to include socio-economic issues as well. The SADF had left behind about 4,000 people, mostly of San origin, who had been soldiers or worked for the military. Many of these people lived with their families in villages attached to the military bases. For generations before military occupation in the mid-70s, San people had used this area for hunting and gathering.

Brown put together a multi-disciplinary team to carry out a socio-ecological survey of the Caprivi Game Reserve in April, 1990, one month after Independence. Included in this team were Brian Jones of the Directorate, Owen-Smith and Jacobsohn from IRDNC, and Megan Biesele and Patrick Dickens of the Nyae Nyae Foundation of Namibia, an NGO working with San people in the area then known as Bushmanland (now the Nyae Nyae Conservancy).

The survey resulted in a series of recommendations for the Caprivi Game Reserve which included the zoning of the park into core conservation areas and a multiple use area covering the area inhabited by people, the sustainable use of wildlife for the benefit of residents, the establishment of a community game guard system and the establishment of a joint steering committee for the park. A project was put together to carry out these recommendations with IRDNC playing a major implementation role, with funds provided by WWF-US.

Initially, Simon Mayes, working for the environment ministry, had supported the setting up of a community game guard system in West Caprivi, but in 1993 Simon left the ministry and joined IRDNC, which had been asked by the ministry to support the residents of West Caprivi.

Similar socio-ecological surveys were carried out between 1991 and 1993 in in eastern Bushmanland, eastern Caprivi, the lower Kuiseb River in the Namib-Naukluft Park, the Huab River Catchment and the Sesfontein District, both in Kunene Region, either to develop new projects and partnerships with the local community or to build on work already begun by IRDNC.

At the time of the Caprivi Game Park survey, the pre-independence Directorate of Nature Conservation was being transformed into the Ministry of Wildlife, Conservation and Tourism as part of the post-independence reconstruction of government.

Partly due to their involvement in the surveys and in a number of broader environmental issues, Brown and Jones were seconded to form an Environmental Planning Unit (EPU) in the Directorate of Wildlife Conservation and Research within the new Ministry.

The socio-ecological surveys confirmed two things. First, Namibian communities in northern Namibia did not want to see wildlife disappear, although they wanted something done about predators that killed livestock and elephants that ate crops or destroyed water installations. They also resented the attitude of some government officials who behaved as if they owned the wild animals.

Communal farmers wanted the same rights over wildlife as had been given to white freehold farmers by the pre-independence South African administration. Before being able to benefit financially from sustainable use of wildlife the commercial farmers were shooting wildlife that they viewed as competing with their livestock for food and water. Enabling the farmers to gain an income from wildlife on their land, as well as a sense of ownership of it, had reversed the decline of wildlife on freehold farms.