Landscape conservation vital for Namibia

While conservation efforts at the local level are important for livelihoods and wildlife, landscape-level conservation approaches increase impacts across much larger areas.

Landscape-scale conservation is a holistic approach to landscape management, aiming to reconcile the competing objectives of nature conservation and economic activities across a given landscape.

This helps to secure wildlife movements, implement conservation measures, encourage socioeconomic development and manage wildlife conflict.

This is according to the 2022 State of Community Conservation in Namibia report, which highlights the importance of landscape-level conservation in Namibia.

“With the country mainly arid to semi-arid, wildlife requires a much larger area in which to migrate in response to rainfall patterns and access grazing.”

Mutually beneficial

It said Namibia’s national protected area covers 16.9% of the country, with communal conservancies and community forests covering an additional 22.2%.

Together, parks and community conservation areas greatly expand the area under sustainable management, with a total of 40% of Namibia under some form of natural resource management.

The report said that these two systems of land management can operate side by side and be mutually beneficial.

“Community lands can secure wildlife corridors and link national parks, while neighbouring communities can benefit from their association with parks through benefits like tourism concessions and better managed wildlife populations.”

Better working relationships

According to the report, both parks and conservancies were established with goals such as conserving nature and generating income, with constraints in mind that their boundaries frequently cut across natural ecosystems and animal migration routes.

Ecosystem management therefore requires a larger landscape-scale approach that goes beyond park and conservancy boundaries.

“This includes fostering better working relationships among conservancies at regional and sub-regional levels and between conservancies and neighbouring national parks.”

It said that aligning conservancy land-use zones with each other and using data on animal movements to identify wildlife corridors between parks are therefore priorities for landscape conservation in Namibia.

“Coordinating conservation efforts is important at a national level, but also at an international level.”