WHEN NAMIBIA GAINED INDEPENDENCE IN 1990, TEENAGER PASCOLENA FLORRY WAS herding goats in the country’s dry, desolate northern savannah. Her job, unpaid and dangerous, was to protect her parents’ livestock from preying jackals and leopards. She saw wildlife as the enemy, and many of the other indigenous inhabitants of Namibia’s rural communal lands shared her view. Wildlife poaching was commonplace. Fifteen years later, 31-year-old Pascolena’s life and outlook are very different. She has built a previously undreamed-of career in tourism and is the first black Namibian to be appointed manager of a guest lodge. Her village, and hundreds of others, have directly benefited from government efforts to devolve

wildlife management and tourism development on communal lands to conservancies run by indigenous peoples. “Now we see the wildlife as our way of creating jobs and opportunities as the tourism industry grows,” she says. “The future is better with wildlife around, not only for jobs, but also for the environment” (Florry 2004).

Namibia’s establishment of conservancies is among the most successful efforts by developing nations to decentralize natural resource management and simultaneously combat poverty. In fact, it is one of the largest-scale demonstrations of so-called “community-based natural resource management” (CBNRM) and the state-sanctioned empowerment of local communities. Most conservancies are run by elected committees of local people, to whom the government devolves user rights over wildlife within the conservancy boundaries. Technical assistance in managing the conservancy is provided by government officials and local and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In late 2004, 31 conservancies were operating on 7.8 million hectares of desert, savannah, and woodlands occupied by 98,000 people. Fifty more were in development (WWF and Rossing Foundation 2004:iv).

Still in their infancy, Namibia’s conservancies have their critics and remain to date imperfect vehicles of local democracy and poverty alleviation. Their active membership can be limited, for example, and wildlife user rights are vested in committees, not directly in village households. Yet they have already delivered clear benefits for both wildlife and people. Zebra, oryx, kudu, and springbok populations are rebounding in many locations, and cash, jobs, and game meat are flowing to communities. Less tangible but equally important gains include the strengthening of local institutions and governance, women’s empowerment, and greater community cohesion.