Integrating social-ecological systems and global production networks: local effects of trophy hunting in Namibian conservancies

ABSTRACT

In addition to wildlife conservation, Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programmes aim to foster regional development. To achieve this, communal areas couple to tourism Global Production Networks (GPN). In this paper, we conceptualise Namibian communal Conservancies as Social-Ecological Systems (SES) and combine the SES and GPN approaches to benefit from the SESF's explanatory power for ecological and social relationships at a local level as well as from the GPN grasp of global linkages. We analyse the impact of trophy hunting on three communal conservancies in Namibia: King Nehale, Nyae Nyae, and Ehi-Rovipuka. Although wildlife numbers in these conservancies have increased, positive economic impacts are often insufficient, unevenly distributed across regions, and parts of the population are excluded. At the same time, findings indicate that in some areas, where revenues are larger and population is smaller, benefits from hunting can be significant and can contribute to SES sustainability.

KEYWORDS:

• Conservation
• Namibia
• conservancies
• trophy hunting
• global production network
• community-based natural resource management
• social-ecological system

Acknowledgements

Research for this paper was possible thanks to a research grant awarded to Eduard Gargallo by the Portuguese Fundaçao para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (SFRH/BPD/68733/2010), and to the financial support of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG TRR228/1) to Linus Kalvelage. The authors would like to thank all institutions and individuals who acceded to be interviewed for this study. They also gratefully acknowledge Javier Revilla Diez, Sören Scholvin and two anonymous reviewers for their very useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks to Susanne Weber and Mascha Aring for proofreading. Open Access funding was generously enabled by the German Research Foundation through the Collaborative Research Centre 228/1 “Future Rural Africa”. None of these institutions or individuals is responsible for the opinions expressed in the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 I would like to thank Jona Heita for sharing his information on KNC with me.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [grant number SFRH/BPD/68733/2010].