Community Conservation and Land Use in Namibia: Visions, Expectations and Realities

Since independence in 1990, a growing number of institutions and social groups have advanced diverse and often conflicting visions and expectations regarding the use of land in Namibia’s Communal Areas. The importance attributed to agriculture, livestock, conservation or tourism is intensely debated. This article will analyse these views and the policies being implemented, with a special focus on a relatively new actor: nature conservation, under the guise of Communal Conservancies, which grant the management of natural resources to local communities. Official policies and events on the ground are leading towards a growing privatisation or individualisation of land tenure and exploitation of resources, to commercialisation and to increasing difficulties for communal agriculture and livestock husbandry. Conservation is sometimes contributing to this process, as it is to an incipient view that minimises the importance of agricultural livelihoods at the expense of conservation-related incomes. The fact that Namibia’s land is mostly arid or semi-arid only adds to the perception of agricultural fragility. But this is far from a clear and linear path: official interventions regarding land use are not univocal, while local actors’ actions may work against the expected line. Conservation itself is not homogeneous in its discourse, programmes and effects, and it is also assisting communal resilience in some ways. Namibia provides an example of the difficulties in achieving a successful combination of conservation and agriculture but also of the implementation of policies that differ from those promoting large-scale farming and exclusionary conservation in many African countries.