Place-power-prognosis: Community-based conservation, partnerships, and ecotourism enterprises in Namibia

Arthur Frederick Hoole

doi:10.18352/bmgn-lchr.112

Abstract

Namibia’s community-based natural resource management program (CBRNM) and communal conservancies have gained international acclaim for rural poverty alleviation and wildlife conservation on the commons. Community-based ecotourism enterprise development has played a central role in the generation of community revenues, employment and additional benefits. The place of community-based ecotourism enterprises in the evolution of Namibia’s conservancies is examined. A participatory rural appraisal (PRA) approach was conducted in Namibia as part of recent doctoral research in 2006 and 2007, featuring participant observation, semi-structured key informant interviews and structured communal villager interviews. Findings demonstrate some tangible successes of community-based ecotourism enterprise development, as well as emerging issues in related benefits distribution and power brokering. The case of the Torra Conservancy is profiled as a leading model for success in partnerships between conservancies, as community-based conservation institutions, and tourism enterprises. The experience of Ehi-rovipuka Conservancy is also detailed, to illuminate challenges and prospects for replicating the Torra model. Power relationships between and among private enterprise, community, and the state are elucidated. Ecotourism enterprise development can contribute successfully to community-based conservation. But, issues of power sharing, governance and competition necessitate the further evolution of commons institutions to capture future, sustainable benefits from community-based conservation premised on wildlife and related ecotourism development.

Highlights

Private ecotourism enterprises, partnered with communal conservancies, are purported to be central to the success of Namibia’s conservancies in achieving biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation (World Resources Institute et al 2005; Namibian Association of CBNRM Support Organizations (NACSO) 2006)
My purpose in this paper is to show the place of ecotourism enterprise partnerships with communal conservancies in community-based conservation, revealing features and implications of power in such partnerships
I focus on the place of partnerships between local conservancies and international tourism enterprises and discuss examples from the Torra Conservancy and Ehi-rovipuka Conservancy

Summary

Introduction

Private ecotourism enterprises, partnered with communal conservancies, are purported to be central to the success of Namibia’s conservancies in achieving biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation (World Resources Institute et al 2005; NACSO 2006). Ecotourism, premised on stunning wildlife and scenery, has attracted an international, ‘up market’ clientele to Namibia and generated revenues, employment and additional benefits for participating conservancy communities. I argue that while ecotourism enterprise partnerships have generated community benefits from wildlife-based ecotourism, such partnerships have entrenched power asymmetries between and among partners. I examine the Torra Conservancy and the Ehi-rovipuka Conservancy cases in northern Namibia (Figure 1) Torra is lauded as the ‘flagship’ of the conservancy system (UNDP and Equator Initiative 2004; World Resources Institute et al 2005) premised mainly on a partnership with an international ecotourism enterprise. The Ehi-rovipuka Conservancy, established three years after Torra, has attempted to attract tourism investment partners and replicate the ecotourism partnership model, but has yet to achieve this for reasons that will be discussed

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Conclusion