ABSTRACT
In this chapter the economic characteristics of Namibian community initiatives in tourism and natural resource management are described. Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in Namibia has been developing since before 1990. Legislative change in 1994 made it possible for communities in Namibia’s communal lands to acquire limited common property rights to manage and use their wildlife resources. These changes extended similar rights already available to private landholders in Namibia to communal lands, where residents practising traditional agro-pastoral and livestock-based land uses, had had no rights to use wildlife.Thus communities were enabled to register conservancies, through which they could take on rights, and manage and use wildlife resources with the assistance of NGOs and government. The primary motivation for CBNRM, as described elsewhere in this book, has been to give landholders incentives to invest in their natural resources. With support from donors and government, communities have established some 50 conservancies on large portions of the communal lands. Details on Namibia’s CBNRM programme are given by the Namibian Association of CBNRM Support Organizations (NACSO, 2004, 2006), and Libanda and Blignaut (2007).
