Legal Assistance Centre-Namibia

CONSERVANCIES
LAND, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT (LEAD) PROJECT

The LAC works with conservancies across Namibia, including Nye Nye Conservancy, Namibia's first conservancy project.

Currently, there are 50 registered conservancies throughout Namibia which manage more than 11.8 million hectares of communal land.

Over a third of all communal land in Namibia now falls within registered conservancies, and several other communities are at various stages of forming conservancies.

Background: In 1996, the Ministry of Environment and Tourism introduced legislation that gave conditional use rights over wildlife to communities in communal areas that formed a management unit call a conservancy.

Since then many local communities have embraced this opportunity to manage their own wildlife and tourism activities and communal area conservancies are now found in nearly all regions of the country. The conservancy approach has proven effective as a conservation strategy as can be seen by the increase in wildlife in many of Namibia's communal areas. It has also proven effective as a rural development strategy, generating income for local communities, bringing new jobs and providing new skills and expertise.

By the end of 2006, a total of 50 communal conservancies had been registered. Together these conservancies manage more than 118,704 km² of communal land and about 220,620 people live within the boundaries. Within the first eight years, total income from conservancies increased from N$600,000 in 1998 to more than N$26 million in 2006.

LAC Activities: To develop and improve communal conservancies, LEAD offers a number of support activities :

The drafting of constitutions for emerging conservancies and the review of existing conservancies' constitutions.

Training for conservancies on constitutions and other legal documents.

Legal support to conservancies in entering Joint Venture Agreements (JVA) for lodges, campsites, hunting agreements, etc.

Conducting an investigative study on mining and environmental issues in Namibia.

Investigating complaints

For more information about Namibia Communal Conservancies, visit the Namibia Association of Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) Support Organisations web site, which the LAC is a partner member.