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Foreword by the Executive Director ...................................................................................................... viii 1 Introduction
The NNF team boasts financial, operational and project management expertise held by individuals who are passionate about conservation and sustainable development. These team members are committed to excellence in their work and strive to make a difference in Namibia and the world. The many different personalities and cultural backgrounds of the NNF staff contribute to a diverse and supportive work environment.
Ailla-Tessa Iiyambula Aina Andreas Alice Limani Poniso Allan Jiji
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Benitto Ndana Bia Kotze Britta Hackenberg Carol Murphy
Carolin Mutorwa Christa Katjiruru Clemens Naomab
Disney Andreas Frans Elias Friedrich Kambonde Cydni-Rae Stuart
Hayle Brand
Ingrid Hakalume Jafet Barney Tjiramba Jasmine Kapuuo Jessica Nowotes Kaino Temapo
Nabot Mbeeli Mareike Voigts
Peter Erb Markfaren Mushabati
Petrina Aitembu
Popyeni Haikali
Samantha Matjila Priskilla Nghaangulwa Rachel du Raan
Sarlotte Kalenga Shirley Zamuee
Sunnypo Imalwa Tanaka Muradzikwa Thomas Neema
Titus Shanika Ulrica Abrahams Usman Khan Mirja Stoldt
Penoshali Nanyala
Rakel Johannes
Silvanus Nuuyuni
Tina Siririka
Vasco Samkwana
03
Projects
We believe that the concept of nature is a human construct and that all society depends on the environment. We therefore take an anthropocentric approach to conservation, whereby conserving biodiversity is viewed as an integral part of human lifestyles in both rural and urban areas. These social ecosystems are underpinned by strong and vibrant natural ecosystems and biodiversity that in turn create productive land and seascapes. All aspects of our work are related to and affected by global environmental issues and policies.
Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is a people-centred conservation approach that empowers local communities to manage plants, animals and their associated ecosystems to generate local benefits and drive sustainable development. Local communities are therefore recognised as the custodians of biodiversity and thus exercise their rights and take responsibility for managing these resources alongside government ministries and with the support of non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
The Namibian CBNRM programme operates under the auspices of the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT) and with support from several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working together under the umbrella of the Namibian Association of CBNRM Support Organisations (NACSO). The NNF hosts the NACSO secretariat and provides direct technical support to 20 conservancies in Kunene, Erongo, Omaheke, Kavango East and Kavango West of Namibia. Our support covers the three pillars of the CBNRM programme: governance, livelihoods, and natural resource management. Furthermore, NNF provides technical support by developing Human Wildlife Conflict Management and Action Plans (HWCMAP) and Game Management and Utilisation Plans (GMUP) both within and beyond our focal conservancies.
Governance support involves strengthening the institutional capacity of conservancies, especially by increasing the accountability of conservancy management committees to conservancy members. Improving livelihoods entails assisting conservancies to set up and manage business enterprises that involve conservancy members. Natural resource management activities include quota setting, anti-poaching patrols, annual game counts, attending to humanwildlife conflict and other incidences as part of implementing the Event Book System. The Community Conservation Fund of Namibia (CCFN) administered the Community Relief, Recovery and Resilience Fund (CRRRF) to buffer the CBNRM programme from the impacts of COVID-19 by providing conservancies with enough funding to retain their staff during this crisis. The NNF and partner organisations in NACSO supported conservancies to accurately report on the funds received through CRRRF and apply for small project grants directly from the CCFN. The increased financial reporting requirements on conservancies created an opportunity to improve financial management systems, benefit distribution mechanisms and community management structures. The NACSO Institutional Development Working Group (IDWG) – comprising the NNF, Namibia Development Trust (NDT) and Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) – therefore implemented a project funded by the European Union aimed at improving governance in the CBNRM programme. The project supports 21 target conservancies in the Kavango East, Kunene, Erongo and North-Central Regions. By the second year of project implementation, 90% of target conservancies had conducted their Annual General Meetings (AGMs) for the 2021 financial year, whilst financial accountability improved in all target conservancies due to the extra support provided. Village-level engagements enhanced inclusivity and active participation of community members, through focused discussions that highlighted the challenges and needs of specific communities or villages. At these meetings, diverse groups of
people, including women, youth, and marginalised communities like the San and Himba were well repOur support covers the three pillars of the CBNRM programme: governance, livelihoods, and natural resource management “ “ resented, some of whom expressed that it was easier to communicate in these smaller meetings than at large community AGMs. Conservancy members need to have ways to engage not only with their local conservancy leadership structures, but also with various levels of government. In some cases, issues that affect the lives of conservancy members need to be brought up to the national level and discussed in parliament. Through a project funded by the US Embassy aimed at strengthening democracy within the CBNRM programme, the NNF has provided advocacy and communications training to community champions, leaders, women, youth and marginalised groups. With support from the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (MICT), two community champions from the Kavango Regional Council presented their concerns regarding oil drilling in their region to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Natural Resources. In a livelihoods project funded by the Social Security Commission of Namibia, the NNF supported two conservancies in Omaheke Region with the contin-
ued operations of their Devils Claw Buying Points. The buying points were set up when the project commenced in 2019 to assist self-employed Devils Claw harvesters to generate income with improved access to markets for their product. The NNF facilitated signing of agreements between the buyer, Eiseb Conservancy and Omuramba ua Mbinda Conservancy. Consequently, 200 self-employed seasonal jobs were created, generating income of close to N$ 1 million to harvesters and their conservancies.
The NNF has assisted seven conservancies to access funding for livelihoods projects through the Climate Change and Inclusive Use of Natural Resources (CCIU) project funded by German development agency, GIZ. Each conservancy identifies possible projects that will provide their members with alternative livelihoods, such as the sale of Manketti, gardens and horticulture, and solar energy production. By the end of 2022, two of the proposals were accepted and the remaining five are undergoing review or feasibility studies.
As part of our natural resource management support, NNF assisted conservancies in southern Kunene to draft their Game Management and Utilisation Plans and monitor wildlife during the annual game counts. These plans help to improve conservancy wildlife management and provide information on wildlife trends ahead of the quota setting process for the programme that takes place every few years. The NNF provides on-going support and training for game guards who implement the Event Book in our target conservancies, and assist with annual Event Book audits.
In March 2022, the NNF was contracted by CCFN to develop Human-Wildlife Conflict Management Action Plans in three landscapes: Khaudum, Otjozondjupa and Kunene South. In a separate project in Otjozondjupa, the NNF completed a preliminary investigation for establishing a Wildlife Credits Scheme for African wild dog dens in partnership with the Cheetah Conservation Fund and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Namibia. Livestock farmers target dens for destruction as a preventative measure or in response to livestock losses caused by wild dogs in the areas around their dens. If established, Wildlife Credits would pay conservancies based on the number of active dens on their land that are not destroyed, thus protecting this Endangered species (considered Critically Endangered in Namibia). Wildlife Credits Schemes are already being implemented in the Kunene Region for several species (e.g. rhino, elephant) with support from NNF, and negotiations are underway to extend Wildlife Credits to other elephant range conservancies in the Kunene and Erongo Regions. These and other activities reduce human-wildlife conflict and increase community support for conservation of potentially damagecausing species.
The NNF has continued to provide secretarial support for NACSO, with funding from the EU. This role includes producing an annual State of Community Conservation Report that covers all aspects of the CBNRM programme in Namibia. During 2021 and 2022, a thorough consultative process was held among NACSO members to draft a strategy document to guide the association through the next four years of operation. We look forward to being part of NACSO’s continued development and growth. During this period, the NNF prepared to participate in a stocktaking process for the whole CBNRM Programme led by MEFT, which may result in the establishment of a national CBNRM Forum. These processes, funded through the GIZ CCIU project, will allow stakeholders to reflect on the current state of CBNRM in Namibia and work together on aspects of the programme that need strengthening.
3.2 Combatting Wildlife Crime
Wildlife crime that involves high value products that are trafficked internationally is a major threat to Namibia’s biodiversity. High value wildlife products include rhino horn, elephant ivory and pangolin scales and meat, while high value plant products include rosewood timber products and succulent plants (sold as whole specimens). Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is now considered to be the world’s fourth largest internationally organised crime, generating between USD $7 and $23 billion every year. As a response to this surge in wildlife crime, a diverse range of public and private actors have ramped up their efforts to curb IWT nationally and across borders.
Our combatting wildlife crime projects thus focus on preventing poaching or illegal harvesting and tightening security border posts to stop IWT. Support for these activities is through five projects: two supported by the United States Department of State, two by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and one by the B2Gold Rhino Bar Fund.
The NNF focuses mainly on facilitating anti-poaching activities and supporting customs officials for intercepting traffickers, while WWF-Namibia and Rooikat Trust focus on supporting the investigating and prosecuting of wildlife crime. A long-term partner, Save the Rhino Trust (SRT), continues monitoring rhino and conducting anti-poaching patrols in the Kunene Region.
With funding from the US Department of State and USAID, NNF supports MEFT in Etosha National Park to cover running costs for some vehicles used for patrolling or specific rhino management work, flying time for the helicopter and fixed wing airplane to help with translocations and dehorning of rhino, as well as vital aerial patrols to support anti-poaching efforts. Equipment for Etosha field rangers and maintenance of the park radio system was also included in this support package. Our support extended to establishing a MEFT canine (K9) unit by covering the costs for importing the dogs, training for dogs and handlers, and K9 vehicle running costs. The canine units have been highly successful – for example, by June 2022, they had detected 299 concealed weapons at roadblocks including 31 unlicensed weapons. The Namibian Revenue Agency, NamRA, previously the Department of Customs and Excise in Namibia has been assisted through focussed capacity development at the border posts and airports and the procurement of smaller pieces of equipment. Additional direct support went to Rooikat Trust and SRT for their respective activities. Rooikat provides critical support for the highly successful Blue Rhino Task Team, consisting of officers from the Protected Resources Division of the Namibian Police Force (NamPol) and the MEFT Intelligence Investigation Unit, amongst other LE agencies, which focuses on investigating wildlife crime incidents. Among the noted success of the Blue Rhino Task Team are pre-emptive arrests, whereby the team acts on intelligence to arrest people who are in possession of poaching equipment (e.g. guns, axes) and are clearly planning a poaching attempt, but before a rhino is actually killed.
While the government and many international donors and other stakeholders have invested heavily in stopping IWT, we lack information on the costs of IWT and the benefits being generated by curbing it. This type of economic information is important to help justify the investments being made, to ensure that the benefits generated are greater than the costs, and our solutions are economically viable. Supported by USAID’s VukaNow Activity, the NNF and the Conservation Strategy Fund assessed the economic impact of IWT in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, with a focus on Namibia. This environmental economics study included assessing the state
3.3 Sustainable Forestry
Sustainable forestry is an emerging programmatic area at the NNF, with a focus on “Beyond timber”, which recognises the value of Namibia’s forests and woodlands as a whole resource and not just for timber. Until recently, the emphasis of forest management in Namibia has been on timber extraction. Hardwoods from the Kavango and Zambezi Regions of Namibia including Pterocarpus angolensis (Kiaat), Guibourtia coleosperma (Rosewood), and Baikiaea plurijuga (Zambezi teak) have been extracted as the principal form of income for community forests within Namibia. In addition, Namibia’s forests and woodlands are being degraded through land clearing for agriculture and frequent burning. Diversifying the forestry activities to include non-timber forest products such as honey, Manketti and Devil’s claw improves livelihood resilience and relieves some of the pressure on woodlands for timber and agricultural land.
of knowledge on the economic impact of IWT (especially ivory, rhino horn, lion bone and pangolin scales) on national and regional economies in Southern Africa and providing a detailed assessment of the impact of poaching and IWT on the Namibian economy.
A uniquely Namibian approach to protecting high value species, particularly rhino in the north-west, is to generate broad community support for antipoaching efforts. With funding from USAID, NNF supports “rhino pride” activities in Erongo and Southern Kunene that includes youth-focused activities throughout the year and annual celebrations on World Rhino Day held in Khorixas. The annual celebration, co-hosted with SRT and attended by local and regional councillors, attracts over 1000 spectators and 250 participants in various sporting events held over three days.
These awareness events have led to communities in this region becoming more protective of their rhino and, despite being entirely unfenced communal land, this area has experienced remarkably few poaching incidences over the last few years. This success can also be attributed to SRT and the conservancy ‘Rhino Rangers’ who are members of the community appointed by the conservancies to patrol the rhino range in their respective areas. With funding from the B2Gold Rhino Bar Fund, NNF has provided rhino sighting bonuses, field allowances and fuel for patrol vehicles to ensure that the Rhino Rangers actively patrolled four conservancies in the Kunene Region even during the midst of COVID-19. (Other partners support additional conservancies.)
Awareness and communication around wildlife crime should not be limited to communities living in the rhino range, however, as the general public of Namibia also has a stake in the conservation of these species and can play a role in reporting trafficking. In 2021, the NNF completed a successful project funded by GIZ to improve the public communications outputs of MEFT and other stakeholders involved in combatting wildlife crime. Using short video clips, images and text published under the Love Namibia, Love Nature banner, the NNF provided clear and accurate information to the general public on the current status of wildlife crime in Namibia.
Waterberg K9 Unit Patrol
Namibia now boasts a strong coalition between the different law enforcement agencies working together with great effect and supported by numerous donors. The situation has changed drastically since 2015/16 that marked a high point for Namibia’s rhino and elephant losses, while relatively few poachers or traffickers were arrested. Now, poaching numbers are down and poachers and trafficking kingpins are frequently arrested. The holistic approach backed by strong partnerships is paying-off. More information on this is published in the annual Wildlife Crime Report published by MEFT and NamPol. Our current projects focus on the Zambezi State Forest Reserve (ZSFR) and surrounding community forests. With funding from the COmON Foundation, we have worked closely with the Directorate of Forestry (DoF) to improve the status and management of the ZFSR and the adjacent Kwandu corridor. Legally, the ZSFR has yet to be formally gazetted as a reserve, which poses several problems from a management point of view. In practice, the Reserve is not clearly signed and DoF has limited capacity to prevent illegal harvesting activities or enforce the Reserve’s zonation plan.
The NNF and DoF have developed information boards for the DoF offices in the Zambezi Region to present the zonation map and rules for activities in each zone, road signs that indicate to people entering the ZSFR that they are entering a Reserve, and boundary markers to demarcate forest zones on the ground. Once the Reserve is gazetted, these signs will create awareness of the existence of the Reserve and its zones of use.
While gazetting the Reserve is still in progress, we have assisted DoF and the Namibian Police force to do joint patrols in the ZSFR to investigate signs of illegal timber harvesting and engage with Devil’s Claw harvesters to ensure that they have the necessary harvesting permits. Our support includes training for officials tasked with conducting patrols and the production of a Forest Protection Booklet that contains the same information.
The second phase of this project started in March 2022 continues the support provided to DoF in the first phase and exploring ways to restore degraded areas in the ZSFR. This is part of a larger project that aims to support a connected, resilient, economically viable conservation landscape for people and nature in the Zambezi Region. The NNF project focuses on supporting DoF in the management and patrolling of the ZSFR and supporting four community forests Our current projects focus on the Zambezi State Forest Reserve and surrounding community forests “ “
Poster identifying income-generating opportunities for local communities to evaluate and compare key development opportunities. adjacent to the ZSFR in updating management plans and livelihood diversification, with a focus on honey, Manketti, and Devils Claw, introducing the concept of herding for health and documenting the biodiversity through inventories within the ZSFR with students and researchers from Namibia and abroad.
The NNF African Botanical Innovation and Value Addition (ABRIVA) project is working in collaboration with KAZA oils, a Zimbabwean-based producer of African plant products, and BlueSky Botanics, a UKbased manufacturer of natural botanical extracts. The objective of the project is to discover new botanical resources for the food, beverage, and/or cosmetic industries that could be commercialised and thus support livelihoods by providing harvesting contracts and Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) arrangements.
We are working with four community forests within the Zambezi Region as part of the project and have identified four species that hold some potential: Diospyros chamaethamnus (Dwarf Jackal Berry), Berchemia discolor (Bird plum) both for flavouring and Terminalia sericea (Silver cluster leaf) for potential anti-aging properties. Samples of each of these species have been sent to the BlueSky Botanics for further analysis. If one or more of these species is found to have commercial potential, the project will work through Namibia’s newly established Access and Benefit Sharing legislation to ensure that the communities receive a fair deal that would contribute to income for the community forests and for individual harvesters.
In the Kavango, the Sustainable Forestry component of the larger OKACOM project, funded by the EU, focuses on reversing land degradation and livelihood diversification in the Kapinga Kamwalye and Maurus Nekaro conservancies. The team has mapped the natural resources within two conservancies and decided to focus on building value addition for Devil’s Claw and Manketti. A small area of intact riverine forest was identified in the mapping process, alongside a degraded piece of land, both of which are adjacent to the proposed fish reserve for Kapinga Kamwalye. The team has agreed with the conservancy to set up a joint venture nursery for indigenous trees that will generate income by selling some trees to Namib In Kavango West the NNF is the facilitator of the Namibia Integrated Landscape Approach for Enhancing Livelihoods and Environmental Governance to Eradicate Poverty (NILALEG) Project in the Nkulivere landscape. Nkulivere is an agroforestry landscape in the Mpungu Constituency with no formal conservation status, but some potential for sustainable forestry and conservation agriculture. The six-year NILALEG project with funding from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) takes an integrated landscape management approach that aims to reduce poverty through sustainable nature-based livelihoods, protect and restore forests and reduce land degradation.
The NNF has established a multi-stakeholder coordination structure for the project that involves various ministerial offices, NGOs, and representatives from churches, youth, people with disabilities and the Village Development Councils based in the Mpungu Constituency. We initiated a feasibility study to assess what kind of conservation platform would be most suited to this landscape, following indications from MEFT that it would not be suitable for a conservancy. Other feasibility studies looked at establishing a regional forest reserve in the landscape, using local timber for furniture production, and the possibility of Manketti production.
In the same period, we initiated activities and provided support to communities in the landscape. The NNF trained and supported 181 Devil’s Claw harvesters who signed an agreement with Ecoso Dynamics to buy their product. Ten local schools participated in a tree planting competition with the aim of teaching the pupils about the importance of trees and the broader environment, and how to plant and care for seedlings. Ten farmers in the landscape were provided with grass seeds to plant in their fields as a trial project to improve grazing availability outside the woodlands. A borehole was drilled and two earth dams dug to improve water provision for farms and villages. Finally, we assisted the informal community based organisations in the landscape to apply for funding from the Environmental Investment Fund of Namibia for five different projects.
