Large landscape conservation is linking state protected areas with communal conservancies, community forests, and freehold land with conservation goals.
Transfrontier conservation areas are building common platforms for the movement of wildlife across international borders, with community-based tourism as an economic driver.
International learning exchanges have enabled conservationists worldwide to study the Namibian model of Community Based Natural Resource Management.
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Community conservation is contributing to the national economy, principally through tourism and related enterprises.
Apart from the direct returns to rural communities, conservation has a broad and significant impact on the economy of the country, and promotes nation building by contributing to national economic growth. This national impact can be assessed by taking into account all income streams flowing to communities, government and the private sector through related value chains as a consequence of community conservation.
Additional income is derived from:
- airlines, hotels and car rental companies;
- private sector tourism and hunting operations related to conservancies;
- sales of crafts, fuel and food;
- further spending generated by the additional income above.
Marketing Namibia
All of Namibia is benefiting from the country’s status as a community conservation model. Tourism and hunting operators active in conservancies have a distinct marketing advantage in this regard, especially if they can show that they are contributing to sustainable growth through the equitable sharing of income and by engaging with communities in development activities.
The net national income
Economic contributions from CBNRM may be termed contributions to net national income (NNI). The NNI contributions can be defined as the value of goods and services that community conservation activities make available each year to the nation.
Estimates of the national economic returns from CBNRM compared to economic investment costs
Investment in the conservancy programme started before the first conservancies were officially gazetted in 1996, as community game guards were being trained and the communities mobilised around the concept of CBNRM. Investment was higher than economic returns until 2002, when the programme broke even.
Over the years, community conservation has contributed to the national economy through tourism, conservation hunting, and other enterprises. In 2021, the net national income (NNI) contribution made by CBNRM was about N$ 913 million. Between 1990 and 2022, the cumulative value of the NNI contribution amounts to an estimated N$ 13.466 billion. Since 1990, the programme has had an economic internal rate of 18% and has earned an economic present value of some N$ 2.03 billion, this indicates a highly positive economic return for a programme investment.
Estimates of the yearly national economic returns from the CBNRM programme.
The contributions are made up mainly from Donors, MEFT and NGOs.
*Figures have been adjusted for inflation to be equivalent to the value of Namibia dollars in 2022. This means they are not directly comparable with those used in the 2021 Community Conservation Report, which used figures equivalent to the value of Namibian dollars in that year.
The return on investment
The graph shows that in the first 12 years of the programme, costs exceeded economic returns, but since then rapidly growing returns have far exceeded costs.
The economic merits of programme spending can be seen by comparing the investment in community conservation against NNI returns and increasing annual stock asset values in a cost-benefit analysis. This provides an indication of the degree to which the investment made in the CBNRM programme has contributed overall to the national economy and whether this investment has been economically efficient.
The economic efficiency of CBNRM
Since 1990, the programme has had an economic internal rate of return of 18% and has earned an economic net present value of just over N$ 2 billion, in 2022. This is an exceptional economic return for a programme investment.
Positive economic returns for the programme (economic rate of return above the estimated real discount rate) have become evident during the latter years. The depicted economic return is very encouraging for a programme investment.
| Years of investment | Economic Rate of Return | Net Present Value N$ |
|---|---|---|
| 18 | 9% | 120,056,959 |
| 20 | 12% | 309,593,780 |
| 22 | 14% | 545,667,226 |
| 24 | 15% | 810,273,612 |
| 26 | 17% | 1,151,897,444 |
| 28 | 18% | 1,506,582,455 |
| 30 | 18% | 1,733,241,247 |
| 32 (2022) | 18% | 2,027,271,009 |
The value of wildlife
The additive value of wildlife to NNI could also be calculated through the accumulated capital value of wildlife stocks, to which conservancy management and conservation are making a significant contribution. Using this methodology, the value of animals would be taken as their monetary value ‘on the hoof’, in other words the value they would fetch if they were to be sold or harvested commercially. The annual increase (or decrease) in the capital value of wildlife is the value attributed to fluctuating numbers of wildlife in conservancy areas. However, this value is difficult to determine with current methodologies and is not included in the NNI contributions presented in this report – meaning that the total economic contributions to the NNI are very conservative.
The value of increased capacity
Further economic values could be counted if adequate measures were available, including the economic value of local management institutions and the increased capacity that results from training provided to people associated with conservancies.
CBNRM, Community Based Natural Resource Management, is recognised by the Namibian government for making an important contribution to national development.
The fifth National Development Plan goals include lifting people out of poverty, diversifying livelihood opportunities and providing long-term institutional structures that help to drive economic growth.
Namibia’s fifth National Development Plan consists of four pillars, to which community conservation makes a significant contribution.
ECONOMY
Economic Progression
COMMUNITY
Social Transformation
ENVIRONMENT
Environmental Sustainability
ENABLER
Good Governance
Economic Progression
COMMUNITY CONSERVATION:
- generates cash and in-kind benefits to conservancies and members
- promotes economic development and poverty reduction through diversification and private sector partnerships
- facilitates new jobs and income opportunities in rural areas, especially within the tourism, hunting, natural plant product and craft sectors
Social Transformation
COMMUNITY CONSERVATION:
- promotes gender equality and the empowerment of women through equal access to employment and governance, resources and economic opportunities
- increases household food security and reduces malnutrition through livelihood diversification and the provision of game meat
- promotes cultural pride and the conservation of cultural heritage through responsible tourism and the development of living museums and other cultural tourism activities
Environmental Sustainability
COMMUNITY CONSERVATION:
- makes significant contributions to environmental conservation, funded through tourism and conservation hunting income
- promotes equal access to natural resources through formal management structures and participatory processes
- encourages a sense of ownership over natural resources and responsibility for development
- facilitates the reduction and reversal of land degradation and deforestation through mandated, structured and sustainable natural resource management
- facilitates integrated land-use planning through formal management structures and collaboration with other community, government and private sector stakeholders
- promotes sustainable practices and increases agricultural productivity through land-use diversification, structured and sustainable management, and activities such as conservation agriculture and community rangeland management
Good Governance
COMMUNITY CONSERVATION:
- promotes democracy in rural areas through community participation and democratic election of office bearers
- emphasises accountability, transparency and good governance through performance monitoring and evaluation
- emphasises the equitable distribution of returns
- enables significant capacity enhancement through ongoing training in governance, natural resource management and business, as well as in-service training in the private sector
Learning and sharing
Namibia’s CBNRM partners have facilitated many exchange visits, with many conservation organisations vising Namibia to study our conservation model. Particular examples are exchanges with Nepal and a WWF workshop on scaling up of best conservation practices.
Technical support was provided in 2017 to WWF Kenya on the establishment and negotiation of joint venture lodges and WWF Tanzania on business plans and negotiations with private sector for community forests.
The Namibian community game count methodology was introduced to the Silowana Complex – including Sioma Ngwezi National Park and the adjacent Game Management Area, which is also utilised by farmers – in Zambia in September 2017, during which the first community game count in the area was undertaken.
Two studies on CBNRM were commissioned: to identify best practices and review lessons learned through 30 years of the Namibia CBNRM Programme; and a global study to document the enabling conditions for common property management. As part of this latter study, some of the most successful community conservation initiatives around the world were identified and analysed for commonalities of success.
Towards a healthier planet
Community conservation provides an important service to the world by maintaining healthy ecosystems and globally important biodiversity assets, while delivering a variety of immediate and tangible returns.
Finding payment mechanisms
Payment for ecosystem services is a concept gaining ground internationally. As ecosystems come under ever-greater pressure from industry and development, ways need to be found to ensure that services such as clean water are sustainably delivered, and that productive soils and healthy plant and animal communities are sustained. The value of eco-system services can be calculated in monetary terms, and options for creating payments to the entities that safeguard the services, such as credits for protecting wildlife, are being explored internationally. Conservancies and community forests could in future become the beneficiaries of such payments and would thereby be able to carry out their functions more effectively and sustainably.
A novel payment system for conservation performance called Wildlife Credits is being developed in Namibia, which may become a model for other countries in the region and globally.
Biodiversity offsets represent a related concept, developed to mitigate the impacts of destructive activities such as mining. The pressure on mining companies to offset the biodiversity impacts of their activities will increase as global environmental concerns such as loss of biodiversity and climate change become more acute. Conservancies should benefit from these biodiversity offsets, because they are safeguarding national and global biodiversity.
