When Communities Have Chosen Conservation as Development

Imagine tourists watching wildlife at the Okaukuejo waterhole in Etosha. Meanwhile, dynamite is blasting a mere few kilometres away, trembling the earth and creating mushrooms of dust across the sunset, frightening wildlife and resulting in a constant flow of heavy trucks driving out the excavated gravel on a popular tourist route.

If only this was mere imagination.

Unfortunately, this scenario has played out in sensitive ecological tourism areas in Namibia’s world renowned and successful communal conservation areas.

One of these clashes of developmental perspectives has reached a critical stage to the point of being addressed in the High Court, and the public domain, including the mass media.

On 26 June, an editorial titled Conservation and development must not become enemies, published in the Windhoek Observer, raises an important question for Namibia. It correctly argues that conservation and development should coexist and that neither should come at the unnecessary expense of the other. Where we respectfully disagree is the premise upon which the editorial is built. After all, conservation is a mode of development, sustainable development.

The editorial presents the dispute presently before the High Court, involving mining entrepreneurs versus communal conservancies and their joint venture partners in Kunene, as a defining moment in Namibia’s attempt to balance mining and conservation. It suggests this is a watershed case in which the country must decide how to reconcile competing economic and environmental interests.