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Conservation Solutions Where People and Wildlife Meet: Creating the Incentive to Conserve in Namibia
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WWF helps Namibian communities set up conservancies allowing them to earn income through wildlife management. This game guard inspects an elephant footprint.
photo: WWF-Canon / Edward Parker |
Since winning independence from South Africa in 1990, Namibia has been struggling to overcome a legacy of apartheid and colonial rule as devastating for wildlife as it was for the people. Long denied the right to utilize their wildlife resources, people had no incentive to conserve them. Poaching was rife. Habitat loss, due to forest and bush clearance for agriculture, had pushed wildlife numbers to historic lows.
But this is changing now, thanks to a program called LIFE (Living in a Finite Environment), which WWF administers on behalf of the Namibian government, and with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development. With WWF's help, villages in northwestern Namibia are organizing conservancies to sustainably manage their resources. Proceeds from activities like ecotourism and closely regulated sport hunting are going back to the communities as wages and investments in health care and schooling, while wildlife populations are recovering dramatically.
In the 1980s, herds of springbok, zebra, and gemsbok had all plummeted to less than 1,000 animals each. Today, springbok exceed 100,000, zebras have witnessed a twelvefold increase, and gemsbok numbers exceed 34,000. Wildlife is thriving and human welfare is improving, thanks to nearly $2 million in annual tourism and hunting fees the conservancies generate for the communities.
"These programs work because they give people an incentive to protect wildlife rather than poach it," says Chris Weaver, WWF field director for the LIFE program. "When communities can earn as much, or more, by conserving wild land as they can by burning and planting it, potential conflicts can be turned into win-win situations for both
people and wildlife."
Conservation that ignores the interests of local stakeholders, or the rights of indigenous peoples, inevitably leads to conflicts that undermine wildlife protection. WWF is committed to conservation that takes into account the interests of both wildlife and the people who live alongside them--conservation that works.
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