Abstract
AbstractThe Kwando Basin of north-eastern Namibia is firmly embedded in current national and international conservation agendas. It is a key part of the world's largest transboundary conservation area, the Kavango–Zambezi (KAZA) Transfrontier Conservation Area, and the home of seven community-based conservation areas (conservancies) and three smaller national parks (Mudumu, Nkasa Rupara and Bwabwata). While conservation agendas often start from the assumption that an authentic part of African nature is conserved as an assemblage of biota that has not been gravely impacted by subsistence agriculture, colonialism and global value chains, we show that environmental infrastructure along the Namibian side of the Kwando Valley has been shaped by the impact of administrative measures and the gradual decoupling of humans and wildlife in a vast wetland. The way towards today's conservation landscape was marked and marred by the enforced reordering of human–environment relations; clearing the riverine core wetlands of human habitation and concentrating communities in narrowly defined settlement zones; the suppression of specific, wetland-adapted subsistence practices; and the elimination of unwanted microbes with the help of insecticides. The interventions in the ecosystem and the construction of an environmental infrastructure have created a unique conservation landscape in the Namibian Zambezi region, which provides the foundation for its popularity and success.
Highlights
The giant Kavango–Zambezi (KAZA) Transfrontier Conservation Area constitutes a major part of Southern Africa’s vast expanses of protected landscapes
Whereas for the Barotse and Tawana the activities of leaders and elites have been reported in many publications,6 we found oral evidence only sparsely highlighting the political agency of people living along the Kwando River for the early part of the twentieth century
The colonial government established an environmental infrastructure upon which today’s conservation measures can and must build. It filled the eastern banks of the Kwando River with people and emptied its western banks and the extensive wetlands along the Kwando of inhabitants
Summary
The giant Kavango–Zambezi (KAZA) Transfrontier Conservation Area constitutes a major part of Southern Africa’s vast expanses of protected landscapes. This contribution centres on research in the Namibia National Archives in Windhoek and the analysis of published data from colonial travellers, administrators and subcontracted experts It is based on the scrutiny of oral historical accounts from informants living along the Kwando River and anthropological fieldwork in the region since 2018. Whereas for the Barotse and Tawana the activities of leaders and elites have been reported in many publications, we found oral evidence only sparsely highlighting the political agency of people living along the Kwando River for the early part of the twentieth century If they are mentioned, it is as victims of oppression and as small-scale agropastoralists, fishermen and foragers using the riverine wetlands intensively. We delineate the establishment of national parks and protected forests in the 1970s and 1980s and the continued fight against unwanted microbes and invaders
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