Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T00:38:04.442Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Namibia's community-based natural resource management programme: an unrecognized payments for ecosystem services scheme

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2011

ROBIN NAIDOO ,
L. CHRIS WEAVER ,
MARIE DE LONGCAMP  and
PIERRE DU PLESSIS
ROBIN NAIDOO*
Affiliation:
WWF-US, 1250 24th Street NW, Washington, DC 20037, USA
L. CHRIS WEAVER
Affiliation:
WWF In Namibia, 19 Lossen Straat Ausspannplatz, Windhoek, Namibia
MARIE DE LONGCAMP
Affiliation:
WWF-US, 1250 24th Street NW, Washington, DC 20037, USA
PIERRE DU PLESSIS
Affiliation:
CRIAA SA-DC, 22 Johann Albrecht Street, PO Box 23778, Windhoek, Namibia
*
*Correspondence: Dr Robin Naidoo e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programmes are widely recognized as novel and innovative mechanisms that seek to promote the conservation of biodiversity while simultaneously improving human livelihoods. A number of national-level PES programmes have made significant contributions to advancing knowledge of these mechanisms. Namibia's community-based natural resources management (CBNRM) programme effectively operates as one such large-scale PES programme, making it one of the world's longest-standing schemes. In this review, Namibia's CBNRM scheme is compared and contrasted with the formal definition of a PES programme, some of the outcomes that the programme has produced illustrated by examples, and the challenges that must still be faced identified. Most of the requirements for a PES programme are present in Namibia's CBNRM programme, and when it does not meet these criteria, it is not exceptional. Notwithstanding the increases in wildlife populations and financial benefits that have been associated with the programme, a major challenge going forward revolves around diversifying the number of services produced. Namibia's CBNRM programme has much to contribute to the design of large-scale PES schemes.

Keywords

Africabiodiversitycommunityconservationecosystem servicesfinancial benefitswildlife
Type
THEMATIC SECTION: Payments for Ecosystem Services in Conservation: Performance and Prospects
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 38 , Issue 4: Thematic section. Payments for Ecosystem Services in Conservation: Performance and Prospects , December 2011 , pp. 445 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aitana, E.S. (2003) The role of indigenous fruit trees in farming systems in North Central Region Namibia. Desert Research Foundation of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia.Google Scholar
Bandyopadhyay, S., Guzman, J.C. & Lendelvo, S. (2010) Communal conservancies and household welfare in Namibia. Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Windhoek, Namibia.Google Scholar
Bandyopadhyay, S., Humavindu, M.N., Shyamsundar, P. & Wang, L. (2004) Do households gain from community-based natural resource management? An evaluation of community conservancies in Namibia. World Bank, Washington, DC, USA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, J.I., MacGregor, J. & Weaver, L.C. (2002) Economic efficiency and incentives for change within Namibia's community wildlife use initiatives. World Development 30 (4): 667–681.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, J.I., MacGregor, J.J., Nhuleipo, O. & Muteyauli, P.I. (2010) The value of Namibia's forest resources: preliminary economic asset and flow accounts. Development Southern Africa 27 (2): 159–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, B. (2006) Foreign direct investment in South Africa: how big is southern Africa's natural product opportunity and what trade issues impede sectoral development? Regional Trade Facilitation Programme, Pretoria, South Africa.Google Scholar
Botelle, A. (2001) A history of marula use in North-Central Namibia. CRIAA SA-DC, Windhoek, Namibia.Google Scholar
Boyd, J. & Banzhaf, S. (2007) What are ecosystem services? The need for standardized environmental accounting units. Ecological Economics 63 (2–3): 616–626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brockington, D. & Duffy, R. (2010) Capitalism and conservation: the production and reproduction of biodiversity conservation. Antipode 42 (3): 469–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, T.C., Bergstrom, J.C. & Loomis, J.B. (2007) Defining, valuing, and providing ecosystem goods and services. Natural Resources Journal 47 (2): 329–376.Google Scholar
Campbell, B., Mandondo, A., Nemarundwe, N., Sithole, B., De Jong, W., Luckert, M. & Matose, F. (2001) Challenges to proponents of common property resource systems: despairing voices from the social forests of Zimbabwe. World Development 29 (4): 589–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chemonics International Inc. (2008) USAID support to the Community-Based Natural Resource Management Program in Namibia: Life Program Review. USAID, Washington, DC, USA.Google Scholar
Child, B. & Barnes, G. (2010) The conceptual evolution and practice of community-based natural resource management in southern Africa: past, present and future. Environmental Conservation 37 (3): 283–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Child, G. (2004) Growth of modern nature conservation in southern Africa. In: Parks in Transition: Biodiversity, Rural Development and the Bottom Line, ed. Child, B., pp. 7–28. London, UK: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Daily, G.C. (1997) Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems. Washington, DC, USA: Island Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, A. (2009) RTEA Namibia Sectoral Paper.- Ecotourism and the informal carbon market: is the climate right for change? IISD, Windhoek, Namibia.Google Scholar
Dressler, W., Buscher, B., Schoon, M., Brockington, D., Hayes, T., Kull, C.A., McCarthy, J. & Shrestha, K. (2010) From hope to crisis and back again? A critical history of the global CBNRM narrative. Environmental Conservation 37 (1): 5–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Plessis, P. (2007) Strategy and action plan: marketing CBNRM ecosystem services under the Community Conservation Namibia Brand. CRIAA SA-DC, Windhoek, Namibia.Google Scholar
Engel, S., Pagiola, S. & Wunder, S. (2008) Designing payments for environmental services in theory and practice: an overview of the issues. Ecological Economics 65: 663–674.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, B., Turner, R.K. & Morling, P. (2009) Defining and classifying ecosystem services for decision making. Ecological Economics 68: 643–653.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frost, P.G.H. & Bond, I. (2008) The Campfire Programme in Zimbabwe: payments for wildlife services. Ecological Economics 65 (4): 776–787.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, R.L., Tallis, H., Kareiva, P. & Daily, G.C. (2008) Field evidence that ecosystem service projects support biodiversity and diversify options. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 105 (27): 9445–9448.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grieg-Gran, M. & Bishop, J. (2004) How can markets for ecosystem services benefit the poor? In: The Millennium Development Goals and Conservation: Managing Nature's Wealth for Society's Health, ed. Roe, D., pp. 55–72. London, UK: IIED.Google Scholar
Holmes, T. (1992) Conservation activities in Kaokoveld (north-west Namibia). Biodiversity and Conservation 1: 211–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Igoe, J., Neves, K. & Brockington, D. (2010 a) A spectacular eco-tour around the historic bloc: theorising the convergence of biodiversity conservation and capitalist expansion. Antipode 42 (3): 486–512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Igoe, J., Sullivan, S. & Brockington, D. (2010 b) Problematising neoliberal biodiversity conservation: displaced and disobedient knowledge. Current Conservation 3 (3): 4–7.Google Scholar
Jones, B.T.B. & Murphree, M.W. (2004) Community-based natural resource management as a conservation mechanism: lessons and directions. In: Parks in Transition: Biodiversity, Rural Development and the Bottom Line, ed. Child, B., pp. 63–104. London, UK: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Kellert, S.R., Mehta, J.N., Ebbin, S.A. & Lichtenfeld, L.L. (2000) Community natural resource management: promise, rhetoric, and reality. Society and Natural Resources 13: 705–715.Google Scholar
Kramer, R.A. & Mercer, D.E. (1997) Valuing a global environmental good: US residents’ willingness to pay to protect tropical rain forests. Land Economics 73 (2): 196–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MA (2005) Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Synthesis. Washington, DC, USA: Island Press.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, J., Jarvis, A., Roberts, C. & Robertson, T. (2002) Atlas of Namibia: A Portrait of the Land and Its People. Cape Town, South Africa: David Philip Publishers.Google Scholar
Murombedzi, J.C. (1999) Devolution and stewardship in Zimbabwe's Campfire Program. Journal of International Development 11: 287–293.3.0.CO;2-M>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
NACSO (2008) Namibia's communal conservancies: a review of progress and challenges in 2007. NACSO, Windhoek, Namibia.Google Scholar
NACSO (2009) Namibia's communal conservancies: a review of progress 2008. NACSO, Windhoek, Namibia.Google Scholar
Nelson, F. & Agrawal, A. (2008) Patronage or participation? Community-based natural resource management reform in sub-Saharan Africa. Development and Change 39 (4): 557–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noss, R.F. & Daly, K.M. (2006) Incorporating connectivity into broad-scale conservation planning. In: Connectivity Conservation, ed. Crooks, K.R. & Sanjayan, M., pp. 587–619. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, D. (2007) Do we really care about biodiversity? Environmental and Resource Economics 37 (1): 313–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redford, K.H. & Adams, W.M. (2009) Payment for ecosystem services and the challenge of saving nature. Conservation Biology 23 (4): 785–787.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stuart-Hill, G., Diggle, R., Munali, B., Tagg, J. & Ward, D. (2005) The event book system: a community-based natural resource monitoring system from Namibia. Biodiversity and Conservation 14 (11): 2611–2631.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suich, H. (2010) The livelihood impacts of the Namibian community-based natural resource management programme: a meta-synthesis. Environmental Conservation 37 (1): 45–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, S. (2000) Gender, ethnographic myths and community-based conservation in a former Namibian ‘homeland’. In: Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa: Gender, Culture and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist, ed. Hodgson, D., pp. 142–164. Oxford, UK: James Currey.Google Scholar
Sullivan, S. (2002) How sustainable is the communalising discourse of ‘new’ conservation? The masking of difference, inequality and aspiration in the fledgling ‘conservancies’ of Namibia. In: Conservation and Mobile Indigenous People: Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development, ed. Chatty, D. & Colchester, M., pp. 158–187. Oxford, UK: Bergahn Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, S. (2003) Protest, conflict and litigation: dissent or libel in resistance to a conservancy in north-west Namibia. In: Ethnographies of Conservation: Environmentalism and the Distribution of Privilege, ed. Berglund, E. & Anderson, D., pp. 69–86. Oxford, UK: Bergahn Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swatuk, L.A. (2002) The new water architecture in southern Africa: reflections on current trends in the light of ‘Rio + 10’. International Affairs 78 (3): 507–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tallis, H., Goldman, R., Uhl, M. & Brosi, B. (2009) Integrating conservation and development in the field: implementing ecosystem service projects. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7 (1): 12–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallace, K.J. (2007) Classification of ecosystem services: problems and solutions. Biological Conservation 139: 235–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wunder, S. (2007) The efficiency of payments for environmental services in tropical conservation. Conservation Biology 21 (1): 48–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wunder, S., Engel, S. & Pagiola, S. (2008) Taking stock: a comparative analysis of payments for environmental services programs in developed and developing countries. Ecological Economics 65 (4): 834–852.CrossRefGoogle Scholar