Enactment of ‘community’ in community based natural resources management in Zambezi Region, Namibia

Abstract

This thesis is about community based natural resource management. This form of resource management is well known globally and locally through its acronym: CBNRM. It stands for the devolution from the state to local communities of rights to manage and reap the benefits from natural resources. One of CBNRM's objectives is to empower rural communities through providing material and non-material incentives for assuming management responsibility over natural and wildlife resources. CBNRM initiatives have been triggered globally by substantial losses in biodiversity and marginalisation of rural communities. Enduring poverty in communities residing in areas bordering protected areas and non-involvement in management, decision-making and access to benefits by these communities are often seen as causing biodiversity losses to occur (Agrawal and Gibson, 2001a; Agrawal, 2001a; Agrawal, 2002; Sachs et al., 2009). For many-e.g., academics, NGOpractitioners, rural people, as well as national and regional policymakers-CBNRM has evolved to become an important model for conservation and rural development (

‘Local hunting’ and community-based natural resource management in Namibia: Contestations and livelihoods

“…Data collection began in 2009 when hired by the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) to assist the three conservancies to be gazetted as a legal entity. This gradually evolved into a PhDstudy about conservancy formation processes, impact on livelihoods and benefit sharing (Lubilo, 2018).…”

“…Conservation becomes, what Long (2001) has conceptualised as an arena: a space where issues, resources, values and representations are contested and battles over meanings are fought out (Long, 2001:40,59; see also Olivier de Sardan, 2006). Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) is or has evolved as such an arena (Lubilo, 2018;Bollig, 2016;Nuulimba and Taylor, 2015). CBNRM has specifically been promoted as a model for conservation in the communal areas in Africa to turn rural dwellers into stakeholders of conservation and t0 become the ideal environmental subjects (ref.…”

“…This is not just limited to community-based conservation; also national parks and private game farms seek links with neighbouring communities in an effort to make rural dwellers stakeholders of conservation. Nor are the emerging realities in community-based conservation projects and programmes and their relative achievements and little impact on local wellbeing taken into account when 'hunting' is debated (Lubilo, 2018;Nuulimba and Taylor, 2015;Kellert et al, 2000). The conservation debate loses in this way sight of hunting by local people as contesting how conservation, including community-based, is modelled and practised.…”

Abundant herds: Accumulation, herd management, and land-use patterns in a conservation area

“…Social scientists and historians have displayed the colonial roots of conservation; highlighted the relation between colonial violence and conservation (Lenggenhager 2018) (Bollig & Vehrs (n.d.): The making of a conservation landscape: The emergence of a conservationist environmental infrastructure along the Kwando River in Namibia's Zambezi Region, Africa. forthcoming); analysed the effects of community-based conservation on social institutions (Silva and Mosimane 2014), and critiqued elite capture of gains from conservation (Lubilo 2018), the marginalization of e.g. forager communities (Taylor 2012), and the discursive formation of conservation (Moore 2010).…”

“…The profits accruing from such public-private partnerships belong to the conservancy, and a conservancy committee may decide how to disburse such funds. While conservancies establish a new form of land governance, the three conservancies of Mudumu South are part of the territory of the Mayeyi chiefdom, with the chief and the main traditional court (khuta) residing in Sangwali, the only larger settlement in the area, and sub-khutas in neighbouring villages (Lubilo 2018). Today, about 5000 cattle are kept in Mudumu South.…”