#1405 1998 · Torra Conservancy (Kunene, Namibia) · Community conservation / tourism
Namibia gave poor communities ownership of their wildlife — poaching became theft
the problem
Wildlife on communal land belonged to the state: locals poached it, and saw no reason not to
background
Under South African-era law, rights over wildlife belonged to the state and, after the 1970s amendments, to white commercial landowners — never to the people living alongside the animals on communal land. For a Damaraland herder, an elephant was a crop-destroying pest and an antelope was meat: conservation was someone else's law, enforced by someone else's rangers. By independence, wildlife in Namibia's communal areas was severely depleted.
The 1996 Nature Conservation Amendment Act, extended rights over wildlife to registered communal conservancies — self-defined community bodies with boundaries, membership and a constitution. Torra Conservancy, in the desert country of Kunene, was one of the first four gazetted, in June 1998, with 450 registered members; it reached operational self-sufficiency in 2002, and the model spread from those four conservancies to more than fifty by 2007.
what everyone would do
More rangers and anti-poaching patrols — enforcement against the community, which protects the asset while leaving every local incentive to defeat it intact.
what they saw
The animals were being poached because they belonged to nobody who lived there. Transfer ownership to the community and the same hunt becomes theft from one's neighbors — enforcement becomes self-interest.
the move
Once the community owns the game, the economics of a live animal flip: a black rhino or desert elephant becomes an asset whose tourism value accrues to the conservancy. Torra contracted a joint venture with the operator Wilderness Safaris, which built and financed the upmarket Damaraland Camp entirely at its own risk (rates around US$560-670 a night) and pays the conservancy lease and bed-night fees; community game guards, begun in the 1980s, became the ownership's enforcement arm. Income rose from roughly N$50,000 in 1997 to over N$300,000 in 2005, with cumulative earnings past two million Namibian dollars and 20-plus members in full-time lodge jobs.
why it works
Ownership changes the payoff matrix: a live animal generating bed-night fees outearns a dead one yielding meat, so guarding wildlife becomes profitable. The joint venture splits the problem cleanly — the conservancy contributes land, labor and legitimacy while the operator takes financing, marketing and operational risk (building Damaraland Camp entirely at its own cost), so the community bears no debt while learning the business. Community game guards supply enforcement no distant ministry can, because they are neighbors with local knowledge and standing. And the framework law, by requiring boundaries, membership and constitutions, gave traditional communities a legal body that could sign contracts.
the payoff
Torra's income grew from ~N$50,000 (1997) to N$300,000+ (2005); the model spread from 4 conservancies to 50+ by 2007
where it breaks
The research on Torra is blunt: most member households stayed highly impoverished, jobs and benefits were captured by local elites, and decision-making lacked transparency — ownership at community level does not guarantee distribution within the community. Power stayed asymmetric, with the operator controlling capital, marketing and information; the intended handover of full lodge ownership never progressed. Conservancies without an attractive tourism asset fail to attract any partner at all, and benefits large enough to change conservation behavior at scale remain hard to reach.
what came after
Community conservancies now cover a large share of Namibia's communal land, and the joint-venture lodge model — community land and labor, private capital and risk — became the template for community-based conservation across southern Africa; Torra's Damaraland Camp won international awards.
references
- [1]Place–power–prognosis: Community-based conservation reconsidered, Torra Conservancy, Namibia (International Journal of the Commons 4(1))International Journal of the Commons, 2010thecommonsjournal.org
- [2]Namibia for Life: Securing Community ConservationWorld Wildlife Fund, 2019worldwildlife.org