How much remains? Local value capture from tourism in Zambezi, Namibia

Abstract

High hopes are pinned on tourism and its catalytic potential to foster growth in remote rural areas. In the Zambezi region of northeastern Namibia, tourism plays a key role in the design of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programmes for nature conservation. Local communities form conservancies, small village-based entities of bottom-up nature conservation activities. These conservancies are granted rights for the use of natural resources, which are then transferred to tourism investors and trophy-hunting companies. Thus, conservancies partly determine tourism's developmental outcomes on a local level. By applying a global production network (GPN) approach, the objective is, first, to assess how much of the turnover generated in the Zambezi region remains in the region and, second, to examine the extent to which conservancies, as newly formed local institutions, enable communities to capture value from tourism. A mixed-methods approach is applied, using a business survey, qualitative interview data and financial reports which allow a calculation of value capture. Roughly 20% of the value generated by the tourism industry in the Zambezi region is captured locally. In addition, conservancies play a key role in the GPN, acting as hinges between the local and the global: conservancies are involved in the production of the resource, mediate in strategic coupling processes and use regulatory and bargaining power to capture value. Conservancies therefore have the potential to increase local gains from tourism. On the one hand, these results underline the importance of local institutions for value capture in GPN analysis. On the other hand, as local linkages are limited and the level of local ownership is low, policies are needed that ensure the participation of local residents beyond direct transfer payments from private enterprises to communities.

Development visions, livelihood realities – how conservation shapes agricultural value chains in the Zambezi region, Namibia

“…However, a recent study by Kalvelage et al (2020), estimates the employment of tourism in Zambezi conservancies at 566 jobs. This represents a marginal share of 1.4% of the total labour force of 41 600 people in the region (NSA 2019).…”

“…These conservation endeavours go back to the 1990s, following Namibia's independence from South Africa. On the one hand, safari and hunting tourism has heavily benefitted from the growing number of conservancies and has managed to capture a substantial share of international value (Kalvelage et al 2020). On the other hand, the change of land-use gradually caused a 'crowding out' of agricultural activities within conservancies (Gargallo 2020).…”

“…Anyolo 2012;Naidoo et al 2019), the commodification of nature (e.g. Lenggenhager 2018; Koot 2019; Lubilo & Hebinck 2019; Kalvelage et al 2020), and distribution of benefits within local communities (e.g. Bandyopadhyay et al 2009;Silva & Mosimane 2014;Mosimane & Silva 2015;Schnegg & Kiaka 2018).…”

The making of a conservation landscape: the emergence of a conservationist environmental infrastructure along the Kwando River in Namibia's Zambezi region

“…Here, we want to counter the much publicized perception that these conservation areas are pristine landscapes, lands where the precolonial wealth of fauna miraculously continued to survive into the twenty-first century. These landscapes are neo-wildernesses that are meant to serve the needs of global agendas for the maintenance of biodiversity and species survival, national visions of economically productive conservation measures, and local hopes to benefit from conservation through tourism and other conservation-based value chains (as exemplified by Kalvelage et al 2020).…”

Introduction: Nodes in global networks

“…(2002), as well as more recent research by Coe and Yeung (2015). Empirical studies that contribute to our understanding of GPN territoriality on the micro‐level are numerous, covering business sectors and regions as diverse as the offshore service industry in the Philippines (Kleibert, 2014) and tourism in Namibia (Kalvelage et al., 2020), to name just two examples.…”