We outline Indigenous cultural heritage and histories associated with the Northern Namib desert, designated since 1971 as the Skeleton Coast National Park. We draw on two main sources of information: 1) historical documents stretching back to the late 1800s; and 2) oral history research with now elderly people who have direct and familial memories of using and living in areas now within the Park boundary. This material affirms that localities and resources now included within the Park were used by local people in historical times, their access linked with the availability of valued foods, especially !nara melons (Acanthosicyos horridus) and marine foods such as mussels. Memories about these localities, resources and heritage concerns, including graves of family members, remain lively for some individuals and their families today. We argue for the importance of understanding of the Northern Namib as a remembered cultural landscape, as well as an area of high conservation value. In doing so, protecting and perhaps restoring access to sites with significant contemporary cultural heritage value would be appropriate. Such sites include locations of culturally important foods such as !nara, graves of known ancestors, and named and remembered former dwelling places. We hope that the material shared here will contribute to a diversified recognition of values for the Skeleton Coast National Park, and shape ecological and heritage conservation practice and visitor experiences into the future.

We outline “pre-colonial” and German colonial structuring of “Etosha-Kunene”, leading in the early 1900s to the institution of formal game laws and game reserves as key elements of colonial spatial organisation and administration. We review the complex factors shaping histories and dynamics prior to formal annexation of the territory by Germany in 1884. We summarise key Indigenous-colonial alliances entered into in the 1800s, and their breakdown as the rinderpest epidemic of 1897 decimated indigenous livestock herds and precipitated enhanced colonial control via veterinary measures and a north-west expansion of military personnel. A critical and collaborative Indigenous “uprising” in the north-west in 1897/98––known variously as the Swartbooi or Grootberg Uprising––was met by significant military force, disrupting local settlement and use of the area stretching from south of Etosha Pan towards the Kunene River. It resulted in the large-scale deportation of inhabitants of the area, who were brought to Windhoek for mobilisation as forced labour for the consolidating colony. An intended outcome was the clearance of land for appropriation by German and Boer settler farmers, a process that also contributed to establishing a massive game reserve in Etosha-Kunene in subsequent years. Proclamation of Game Reserve No. 2 in 1907 can be seen as the beginning of a long and varied history of formal colonial nature conservation in Etosha-Kunene, whose shifting objectives, policies and practices had tremendous influence on its human and beyond-human inhabitants.

This chapter considers the implications of being park-adjacent for ovaHerero pastoralists now living in Ehi-Rovipuka Conservancy. Using PhD research conducted in 2006 and 2007 as a baseline, the chapter focuses on three dimensions. First, some aspects of the complex and remembered histories of association with the western part of what is now Etosha National Park (ENP) are traced via a “memory mapping” methodology with ovaHerero elders. Second, experiences of living next to the park boundary are recounted and analysed, drawing on a structured survey with forty respondents. Most interviewees indicated that no benefits were received at the time from the national park. They also expressed desires for grazing rights––especially for emergency grazing during dry periods, as well as access to ancestral birthplaces, graves and traditional resource use areas, and involvement in joint tourism development ventures inside the park. Finally, different dimensions of local knowledge are recounted, including of wildlife presence and mobilities through the wider region, “veld-foods”, and school-children’s perceptions of ENP and the conservancy. Although the research reported here was carried out some years ago, circumstances in Ehi-Rovipuka have changed rather little. The conservancy remains along the border of a national park, and peoples’ histories of utilising, moving through, and being born and desiring to be buried in the western reaches of the park remain. The chapter argues that more awareness of how social, ecological and historical dimensions of the broader Etosha landscape are connected is essential for achieving biodiversity conservation outcomes.

We report on a study that researched the impacts of browsing giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis angolensis) on trees important for pollinators––namely, Maerua schinzii (ringwood tree) and Boscia albitrunca (shepherd’s tree)––within the Etendeka Tourism Concession area to the west of Etosha National Park. Giraffe are selective browsers, and the tallest land animal. Historically, giraffe populations have been amplified here through translocations designed to enhance the tourism product of the concession, which is situated in mopane (Colophospermum mopane) savanna, semi-desert and savanna transition vegetation zones. Due to browsing by giraffe, M. schinzii and B. albitrunca trees develop a distinctive shape with only a small, round, high-up canopy of leaves above a very high browse line, with some trees dying as a result. The study also explored five different techniques to protect these trees from further browse damage by giraffes.

We review how national post-Independence policy supporting Community-Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) has played out in Etosha-Kunene, highlighting a new impetus towards a “landscape approach” for conservation in communal areas. Communal land immediately to the west of Etosha National Park is currently divided into a series of communal area conservancies, inhabited by pastoralist populations relying additionally on varying combinations of horticulture, gathering and hunting. A new donor-funding trend is now noticeable towards recognising how landscapes with conservation and livelihood value overlap these areas. In the 2000s a Kunene People’s Park was proposed to connect the Hobatere, Etendeka and Palmwag Tourism Concessions between Etosha Pan and the Skeleton Coast, although this was never formalised. In 2018 proposals for a ‘People’s Park’ were reignited with international support by conservation donors and the British royal family. Present proposals for an Ombonde People’s Park/Landscape currently comprised primarily of two conservancies on the western boundary of Etosha National Park are being implemented by the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism with support by multiple donors. We provide an overview of conservation changes in Etosha-Kunene for the three decades since Namibia’s Independence in 1990.

This introductory chapter describes how the Etosha- Kunene Histories research project, for which this edited volume forms a key contribution, addresses the challenge of conserving biodiversity-rich landscapes in Namibia’s north-central and north-west regions, while reconciling historical contexts of social exclusion and marginalisation. This edited volume, originating from an international workshop held in July 2022, explores the intricate interplay between local and global events shaping the “Etosha Kunene” conservation landscape. The workshop featured diverse participants from Namibian institutions, international universities, and various conservation organisations. Our discussions emphasised the complex histories and contemporary dynamics of conservation policies, highlighting the tension between biodiversity protection and social equity. The volume is organised into five parts: historical policy analysis, post-independence conservation approaches, ecological management issues, the impact of historical contexts on contemporary landscapes and communities, and lion conservation within Community-Based Natural Resource Management frameworks. This work aims to contribute to sustainable and inclusive conservation practices that honour both the region’s natural and cultural heritage.

This final chapter sums up the Etosha- Kunene Histories project’s exploration of colonialism, indigeneity and natural history in Namibia, through a wide-ranging analysis that aims to initiate and inform discussions on conservation policies in the region and beyond. Contributions in the volume from diverse scholars and practitioners have highlighted the complex and often conflicting narratives in conservation efforts, for which Namibia’s northern regions offers a case in point. The history of conservation in Etosha- Kunene spans pre-colonial to post-Independence periods, reflecting shifts from unregulated exploitation to formal conservation policies under German and South African rule, and finally to more inclusive approaches post-Independence. These transitions illustrate the political economy and socio ecological dynamics of conservation, emphasising the interplay between local communities, colonial legacies, and global environmental trends. The volume addresses themes of belonging, co-existence, inclusion, and exclusion, underscoring the ongoing negotiations and conflicts over land use, wildlife management, and human rights in the region. Through its comprehensive historical and political ecology lens, this book hopes to contribute to understanding the intricate relations between nature, culture and economy in conservation practices.

We review conservation policy and legislation and its impacts under the territory’s post World War 1 administration from Pretoria, prior to the formalisation of an Independent Namibia in 1990. We trace the history of nature conservation in Etosha-Kunene during the times of South African government. In the initial phase ‘game preservation’ was not high on the agenda of the South African administration, which focused instead on white settlement of the territory, requiring a continuous re-organisation of space. After World War 2 the potential of tourism and the role of ‘nature conservation’ for the economy was given more attention. Fortress conservation was the dominant paradigm, leading to the removal of local inhabitants from their land. Shifting boundaries of Game Reserve No. 2 characterised the 1950s up to the 1970s: part of Game Reserve No.2 became Etosha Game Park in 1958 and finally Etosha National Park in 1967, which in its current size was completely fenced in 1973. The arid area along the coast was proclaimed the Skeleton Coast National Park in 1971. Alongside these changes new allocations of land following the ideal of apartheid or ‘separate development’ were made, ‘perfecting’ spatial-functional organisation with neat boundaries between ‘Homelands’ for local inhabitants, the (white) settlement area and game/nature. Land, flora and fauna, and people of various backgrounds were treated as separable categories to be sorted and arranged according to colonial needs and visions. A new impetus towards participatory approaches to conservation began to be initiated in north-west Namibia in the 1980s, prefiguring Namibia’s post-Independence move towards community-based conservation.

The Palmwag Tourism Concession comprises more than 550,000 hectares of the Damaraland Communal Land Area in Kunene Region. To the west lies the Skeleton Coast National Park. Otherwise, the Concession is situated within a mosaic of differently designated communal lands to which diverse qualifying Namibians have access, habitation and use rights: namely, Sesfontein, Anabeb and Torra communal area conservancies on the Concession’s north, north-east and southern boundaries, with Etendeka Tourism Concession to the east. Established under the pre-Independence Damaraland Regional Authority led by Justus ǁGaroëb, Palmwag Concession lies fully north of the vet fence/“Red Line” that marches east to west across Namibia. In the 1950s, however, the Red Line was positioned further north with part of the current concession comprised of a former commercial farming area for white settler farmers, the expansion of which was associated with evictions of peoples Indigenous to this area. The iterative clearance of people from this area also helped make possible the 1962 western expansion of Etosha Game Park, and followed by the establishment of a large trophy hunting concession between the Hoanib and Ugab rivers in the 1970s. Drawing on archive research, interviews with key actors linked with the Concession’s history, and on-site oral history with local elders through much of the Concession’s terrain, this chapter places the Concession more fully within the historical circumstances and effects of its making. In doing so, competing and overlapping colonial, Indigenous and conservation visions of the landscape are explored for their roles in empowering different types of access and exclusion.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the formation of children’s subjectivities, related to the metaphysical conditions of being and becoming a subject, within outdoor early childhood provision in Scotland. It applies a sociomaterial metaphysical framework to propose an alternative way of understanding how subjectivities come to form in early childhood environments, bringing together Spinozist monism in relation to Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of assemblage and affect. Methodologically, an ethnographic approach inspired partly by the postqualitative field of scholarship is employed to gather data on children’s subjectivities at Wood Fire, a primarily outdoor early childhood setting. The data produced in this study affords an opportunity to understand the materiality and relationality of primarily outdoor early childhood provision through which subjectivities are in-formed. Thus, they demonstrate a more expanded understanding of how we, humans, are produced as individuals in specific encounters through processes of ‘affective sociomaterialisation’. Practically, this carries implications for how researchers might attune to the child’s sense of self on more expansive terms through processes of affective sociomaterialisation.