Community fencing in open rangelands: self‐empowerment in Eastern Namibia

Abstract

This article examines the cross‐cutting debates of empowerment, vulnerability, sustainability and livelihoods within the local and global contexts relevant to the people of Okonyoka, a settlement of less than 150 people situated in the heart of Eastern Namibia's southern communal lands. Here, people are adapting their livelihoods flexibly in response to both environmental natural resource variability and to changes in social institutions and land use policies. Drought‐coping strategies, privatisation of the range through fencing and changes to social networks, all have both positive and negative impacts on people's everyday lives. Okonyoka is the first settlement to erect a community fence in Eastern Namibia's southern communal area, but surrounding settlements are impressed with the positive environmental and societal results and are planning to follow suit. Such fences can, however, inhibit neighbouring people's livihoods, particularly the poor or socially excluded, and can change long‐standing regional drought‐coping strategies. Though the policy context is dynamic and changing, such moves have the potential to radically change the landscape of communal areas.