- Conservation and Sustainable use of Natural Resources
Community-oriented conservation gained ground in the 1980s and 1990s in response to increasing local and international resistance to strict protected area programmes, and as a result of greater awareness of the difficulties of implementing state-run conservation. Communities in many parts of the developing world have engaged in natural resource management. This article evaluates the benefits of community-based activities in wildlife conservancies in Namibia by asking three questions: Do community conservancies contribute to an increase in household welfare? Are such programmes pro-poor; that is, do they improve welfare more for poorer households than for the less poor? Does participation in conservancy increase household welfare more for participants than non-participants? This study bases the analyses on a 2002 survey covering seven conservancies and 1192 households. The results suggest that community conservancies have a positive impact on household welfare. The authors also conclude that this impact is poverty-neutral in some regions and pro-poor in others. Further, welfare benefits from conservancies appear to be fairly evenly distributed between participant and non-participant households.