Land is Life, Conservancy is Life

Community-based natural resource management or
CBNRM, with its attention to community participation, its call for
de-centralization of rights to local resource users through democratic
and equitable structures, and its potential to deliver benefits to local
livelihoods and national conservation interests now forms the
predominant strategy for rural development in the communal areas of
Namibia. This framework is presumed by the Namibian government and
international bodies concerned with conservation and development to
deliver measurable and positive economic, environmental, and political
results for the State and all of its citizens. For residents of many of
the communal areas of Namibia the “Conservancy” has become the primary
avenue through which rural residents engage with development and
conservation in various efforts to improve local livelihoods and to
conserve natural resources. CBNRM has taken on particular form and
significance for the San in Namibia.

This book examines the
current position of the San as marginalized indigenous peoples in
Namibia. In doing so, it explores how CBNRM has become a nexus through
which questions of indigeneity, conservation and development have come
to bear on San communities. Focusing on the experiences of a group of
predominantly San communities in the North-East of Namibia, the
historical and contemporary situations of the San of the N‡a Jaqna
Conservancy and their engagement with CBNRM are examined. In looking to
the future, this work seeks to understand what mechanisms and
institutions give indigenous groups, such as the San, a foothold in the
State and an avenue though which to navigate and shape their own
modernity(ies). This work explores the modalities through which
conservation comes together with interests of indigenous groups and how
these groups deploy leverage gained through invoking conservation as
discourse and practice. In examining San engagements with the
Conservancy structures in N‡a Jaqna, this study seeks answers not only
to the question of what San engagements with CBNRM can tell us about the
potential of the CBNRM framework itself for facilitating rural
development and conservation, but also the question of what engagement
with CBNRM can tell us about how the San of Namibia actively engage in
rural development. The following work focuses not solely on how policies
and governmental or non-governmental interventions have impacted San
realities and life ways, but also the ways in which the San of N‡a Jaqna
have negotiated, impacted, and shaped these processes.