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ABSTRACT
Community-based natural resource management and nature-based tourism often go hand in hand to drive conservation and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the complementarity of the two strategies is controversially discussed in the literature. Built on survey data from 200 households conducted in 2012 we analysed the trade-off between conservation and development objectives by means of a mathematical programming model representing the economy of a rural conservancy in Namibia. We found that in the scenario describing unrestricted resource extraction, local communities mainly benefit from fishing and utilising forest products. In comparison, the scenario representing the social optimum, implying sustainably managed fish stocks and appropriate diets for community inhabitants, shows that community households increase agricultural diversification and shift livelihoods towards tourism employment.
Acknowledgements
This article has been written in the context of the project ‘SASSCAL – Southern African Service Science Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management’ (http://www.sasscal.org/). First of all, the authors express thanks to the people living in Sikunga Conservancy for their continuous cooperation. They thank Huon Morton, who provided essential comments on the work in various stages. They also thank Tererai Msakwa and Dr Matthias Beyer for further comments and data.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 GAMS is designed for the construction and solution of large and complex mathematical programming models. Various kinds of economic models including linear and non-linear optimisation as well as equilibrium modelling can be solved using GAMS. Revealed marginal values (shadow prices) by programming runs are a special software feature (Brooke et al., Citation1992).
2 Growing cowpea is currently marginal in the Sikunga Conservancy.
