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In addition to wildlife conservation, Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programmes aim to foster regional development. To achieve this, communal areas couple to tourism Global Production Networks (GPN). In this paper, we conceptualise Namibian communal Conservancies as Social-Ecological Systems (SES) and combine the SES and GPN approaches to benefit from the SESF's explanatory power for ecological and social relationships at a local level as well as from the GPN grasp of global linkages. We analyse the impact of trophy hunting on three communal conservancies in Namibia: King Nehale, Nyae Nyae, and Ehi-Rovipuka. Although wildlife numbers in these conservancies have increased, positive economic impacts are often insufficient, unevenly distributed across regions, and parts of the population are excluded. At the same time, findings indicate that in some areas, where revenues are larger and population is smaller, benefits from hunting can be significant and can contribute to SES sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Destructive agricultural practices are some of the leading causes of environmental degradation. The adoption of voluntary landscape scale conservation initiatives, such as the South African conservancy model, offers a possible solution. This article uses the Grootvadersbosch Conservancy as an example of how the gap between agricultural productivity and landscape conservation can be bridged. The objectives were to: investigate the conservancy's historical context; discover the stakeholders' motivations for joining the conservancy; identify the successes of the conservancy's projects; and determine the effects of these on the landscape. Three methods were used: a literature study; semi-structured interviews with seven of the conservancy's management staff who were identified using the snowball sampling technique; and a questionnaire survey distributed to the 21 members of the conservancy, of which 16 replied. The results showed the study area has a long history of environmental exploitation, which led to the establishment of the conservancy. The main reason why conservancy members joined was because of their conservation values. Their four successful landscape scale projects delivered several environmental, social and economic outcomes that positively affected the landscape. It is therefore recommended that farmers create conservancies using a similar model to reconcile the environmental demands of agriculture with the need to improve affected environmental assets and natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservancies provide the opportunity for land-occupiers to manage natural resources in a collaborative, sustainable, and profitable manner. Human–wildlife conflict, however, has limited their success due to the financial loss of crops, livestock and game by certain wildlife species. Questionnaires (n = 147) were conducted in five conservancies and four resettled farms in Namibia to determine the attitudes toward predators and conservancy membership. Attitudes were significantly affected by perceived depredation and when respondents asked for help to reduce predation. Attitudes toward predators and conservancies were more positive when individuals perceived they received benefits from both. Improving livestock husbandry practices in conjunction with increasing tangible benefits of predators and conservancies may improve the attitudes of rural communities, leading to an increase in the viability of integrated carnivore conservation and rural development in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In southern Africa, legislative changes that devolved wildlife management authority on private land to landowners and growth in the commercial value of wildlife resulted in a substantial increase in private land dedicated to wildlife. In addition, groups of landowners within the bounds of the Great Limpopo Conservation Area have incorporated their properties into private nature reserves, thereby expanding the management scale of common-pool wildlife resources. Secondary data and experience with the reserves form the basis of our exploration of the contribution of private landholdings to wildlife conservation and the extent to which three private nature reserves appear to exhibit characteristics that promote effective community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). The combined area of private land with wildlife-based enterprises in South Africa is more than double that of formal protected areas, and the three private nature reserves exhibit, to varying degrees, characteristics that enhance CBNRM and coordinated decision making for wildlife conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates the benefits of community-based activities in wildlife conservancies in Namibia by asking three questions: Do community conservancies contribute to an increase in household welfare? Are such programmes pro-poor; that is, do they improve welfare more for poorer households than for the less poor? Does participation in conservancy increase household welfare more for participants than non-participants? This study bases the analyses on a 2002 survey covering seven conservancies and 1192 households. The results suggest that community conservancies have a positive impact on household welfare. The authors also conclude that this impact is poverty-neutral in some regions and pro-poor in others. Further, welfare benefits from conservancies appear to be fairly evenly distributed between participant and non-participant households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]