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By Pat Graham
July 14, 2009
The first lesson of conservation in Namibia isn’t about understanding the land. You must first understand the people.
Some 20 years ago, a powerful idea took shape here. The notion was to empower indigenous people like the Himba, Herero, Damara, and Sans, or Bushmen, who for years occupied communal lands, while farmers of European decent owned their own land called "free holds."
After independence from South Africa in 1990, the new government established a system to give the same rights to manage wildlife to indigenous people that were given to European farmers decades earlier.
To qualify, a group of people must voluntarily come together, charter what’s called a “conservancy” for a specific area, and develop a plan to sustainably manage wildlife. In turn, that conservancy receives the benefits – what we call “ecosystem capital” in the U.S. – from the wildlife and other natural resources under their management.
Ask the Locals What They Need
On my plane ride across the Atlantic, I sat next to a woman from Benin in West Africa. She is a consultant for large infrastructure projects – airports, highways, etc. – in Africa and around the world.
She shared with me that the mistake most outsiders make when they come to work in Africa is that they focus on what they think the local people want, and don’t ask the local people what they need. She admitted, “I sometimes forget and make the mistake myself.”
Her simple message captured The Nature Conservancy’s intended role here and in so many places across the globe: to understand what the local people need and how that connects to sustaining a healthy environment. Only then will our skills in science, conservation planning, and bringing people together make a difference.
Ultimately, it’s the local people in these conservancies who will decide the future of this region, for the best interests of people and nature.
This was my first of many lessons.
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Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Sanjayan/TNC (black rhino); Photo © Sanjayan/TNC (Himba girl photographed in the Namib Desert); Photo © Yabanex Batista/TNC (Namibia family).
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