The NACSO team wishes you a happy festive season
Dear NACSO partners and friends,
As part of this festive season, we wanted to share some highlights from Namibia’s community conservation programme in 2017. We should all be proud and celebrate what we’ve been able to achieve together. Thank you for a productive year and we wish you all the best in 2018.
- There are now 83 communal conservancies covering 162,030 km², which is 19.66% of Namibia
- The Community Conservation Fund of Namibia has been established, paving the way to secure the long-term sustainability of support to community conservation in Namibia
- Poaching remains a challenge, but in 2017 we saw a drastic reduction in rhino poaching in Namibia
- Five communal conservancy and community forest associations now function and are better able to work together to represent their constituents in a united voice, and manage their natural resources collectively. Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) and NACSO successfully hosted eight consultative and information-sharing regional conservancy chairperson’s forums where conservancies shared their achievements and presented their priorities for 2018
- NACSO has actively participated in reviewing MET’s Human Wildlife Conflict Policy which will further mitigate the increasing incidences of conflicts between people and wildlife
- In a step forward for the participation of rural communities in CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) processes, NACSO, in partnership with the Namibian Government and other interested countries, pioneered the establishment of a Working Group charged with considering how to effectively engage rural communities in CITES.
From our most recent State of Conservancy Report (2016):
- Community conservation generated over N$ 111 million in returns for local communities
- Community conservation facilitated 5,147 jobs
- 57 conservancies hosted a total of 164 natural resources-based enterprises
We look forward to seeing what 2018 brings!
With gratitude and thanks,
Maxi Louis
Executive Director, NACSO