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| State of Conservancy update booklet 2006 |
Namibia's communal conservancies: a review of progress in 2006
Chapter 1
Current Status
By the end of 2006, a total of 50 communal conservancies had been registered. Together these conservancies manage more than 118,704 km2 of communal land. About 220,620 people live within the conservancies. A steadily increasing area of all communal land in Namibia falls within registered conservancies (39.8%) and these conservancies now cover 14.4% of the total land area of Namibia. An additional 20 conservancies are in the process of fulfilling the requirements to apply for legal status.
One of the main lessons from the Namibian conservancy programme is that devolving authority over wildlife and tourism to local communities can work in practice. As a result, wildlife has increased and economic benefits to local people have grown. For example, total income from conservancies increased from about N$600,000 in 1998 to over N$26 million in 2006.
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| Figure 2. The area covered by registered communal conservancies has grown rapidly, as has the number of people that live in conservancies. |
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| Figure 3. Communal conservancies have added substantially to the network of conservation areas in Namibia. At the end of 2006, they covered 14.4% of Namibia. This area, together with 16.5% of Namibia's surface area within national parks and game reserves (inclusive of the Sperrgebiet National Park), 6% in freehold conservancies and a further 1.3% under concessions and community forests, brought the total land surface under conservation management to 37%. |
| Table 1. The 50 conservancies that had been registered by the end of 2006, the year on which this book focuses. |
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