Sustainability of livestock farming in the communal lands of Southern Namibia

Abstract

The impacts of livestock farming in southern Namibia's communal areas are investigated. Small stock farming is ubiquitous in this semiarid region, and provides many people with their only source of wealth and income. It is traditionally thought that livestock grazing negatively impacts on the vegetation resource. Using both interviews and interpretation of sequential aerial photographs, veld (a South African word descriptive of the general vegetation and soils within an area) resilience and changes in vegetation composition and cover were analysed. Results provide contrasting evidence. Resilience is illustrated by good plant regeneration after the 1999–2000 rainy season, an observation that provides support for a disequilibrium interpretation of the landscape, suggesting that productivity here is primarily event driven and not unduly impacted by grazing pressure. Additional, contradictory, results show that vegetation composition has indeed changed in the communal lands, from predominantly palatable perennials to unpalatable annuals. Localized areas of degradation are also evident. Using sequential aerial photography, comparison of land units under commercial tenure (1970) with the situation subsequent to incorporation into Namaland (1998) indicates an increase in bare soil from 6.3 to 11 per cent over the time period in question. This increase is attributed to, among other factors, increased pressure form livestock grazing. Although separating anthropogenic factors from other biophysical ones is difficult, it is argued that appropriate management practices should be employed that take into account both the veld's resilience and the observed localized degradation and species composition changes. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.