Biocultural Community Protocols and the Future of Conservation

On 17 July 2014, the Namibian, a local daily in Namibia, reported a rather momentous event: the development of a biocultural community protocol of the Kxoe community of the Bwabwata National Park — the first of its kind in Namibia.

Around 6,700 Kxoe people reside in Bwabwata National Park in Namibia’s West, and in the Kavango and Zambezi regions; they survive mainly as hunters and gatherers. The Kxoe developed the protocol with assistance from the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism and Natural Justice. The protocol sought to articulate the Kxoe’s values, priorities, and procedures for decision-making around their resources, as well as set out their rights and responsibilities under customary, state, and international law. The protocol would be used as the basis for engaging with external actors such as the government, companies, academics, and non-governmental organizations, who seek access to the Kxoe lands, and traditional and genetic resources for research and development, commercialization, conservation, and other legal and policy frameworks. Read the full blog post by Kabir Sanjay Bavikatte here.

Namibia Accedes to the Nagoya Protocol

Namibia has become the 35th country to accede to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

With this accession, Namibia is now officially a Party to the NP under the Convention of Biological Resources (CBD). 

Natural Justice takes this opportunity to congratulate Namibia on the superlative work done towards this accession, and commits to supporting their ongoing work in meeting its obligations under the Protocol.

"Scraping the Pot": New Report on the Situation of Namibia's San Population

The Land, Environment and Development Project of the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) have launched what is arguably the most comprehensive report ever on the situation of the San in Namibia. Since Independence in 1990, the country has made tremendous progress in entrenching its citizens’ social, economic and human rights. However, significant challenges remain, not least that Namibia has one of the highest income-distribution disparities in the world.

From 2010 to 2013, the Land, Environment and Development Project, in cooperation with the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia (DRFN), conducted a comprehensive study focusing on the living conditions of the San communities in Namibia. The resulting report  - entitled Scraping the Pot: San in Namibia Two Decades after Independence - highlights the challenges and barriers faced by the San, being some of the country’s citizens who are disenfranchised by this extreme disparity.

“Scraping The Pot” is designed to be a tool for policymakers, multilateral partners and NGOs to enhance the quality of their programmes’ design and implementation, and to provide them with a sound and comprehensive empirical basis for policymaking.

The writing of this report was made possible through funding from the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), as well as other donors.

Namibian Press Conference at COP-11

On 16 October, 2012, Natural Justice’s Laureen Manuel attended a press conference held by the Namibian Ministry of Environmental Affairs and Tourism at the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP-11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Hyderabad, India. In addressing international media and other COP-11 delegates, the Honourable Minister of Environment and Tourism, Ms Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, shared the country’s experiences, challenges and successes in establishing and implementing its Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) Programme. 

She said that the CBNRM programme is a powerful symbol of the potential for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity to alleviate poverty. Through the devolution of rights over wildlife and forest resources, indigenous peoples and local communities are now driving the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity through communal conservancies and community forests. During COP-11, Namibia will be receiving an award for this community-based approach to conservation. 

The Minister also said that in the absence of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) legislation, Namibia was unable to ratify the Nagoya Protocol. However, Namibia's ABS Bill, which Natural Justice helped to draft, has recently been approved by Cabinet and is ready to be tabled before Parliament for enactment. She assured the gathering that Namibia will ratify the Nagoya Protocol once the ABS Bill becomes an Act of Parliament.

She concluded the press conference stating that biodiversity belongs to all and that all nations should work towards developing similar strategies to conserve the environment. After all, she said, we need the environment more than the environment needs us.

Anaya Statement on Namibia Trip

The United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, has released an end-of-mission statement on his visit to Namibia from 20-28 September, 2012. During Mr Anaya’s visit he met with representatives from indigenous communities including Natural Justice partners in Bwabata National Park, government officials and representatives from civil society. 

Mr Anaya noted that “indigenous groups that are in the minority in Namibia have suffered injustices in the past that leave them disadvantaged, to varying degrees, in the present…These groups have expressed to me a strong desire for greater inclusion in decision-making at all levels, to be able to genuinely set their own priorities for development, and to regain or strengthen rights over lands and natural resources, particularly lands to which they retain a cultural attachment." 

Find Mr Anaya’s full end-of-mission statement here. Find the press release on his visit here. Learn more about his work here. 

Khwe Indigenous Values Workshop in Bwabata National Park

More photos here

From 19-22 August, 2012, Natural Justice attended and helped to facilitate a Khwe Indigenous Values workshop held in Bwabwata National Park, West Caprivi, Namibia as the beginning of a bicultural community protocol (BCP) process. The workshop was hosted in partnership with the Open Society for Southern Africa's (OSISA) Indigenous Rights Programme, the Kyaramacan Association, and Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC). The workshop was attended by several community representatives from all 10 villages within the park, including elders, youth and Khwe conservation officers, a representative from the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism and youth of the San community from Botswana. 

For historical reasons, the Khwe community is slowly losing many of their values, some of which incorporate important knowledge around sustainable use and management of natural resources. Further, very little intergenerational transfer of traditional knowledge is taking place. This is leaving the Khwe community vulnerable on many levels. In the community's partnership to co-manage the park with the government, their knowledge and relationship with the resources in the park is essential. 

The workshop ran over three days and focused on the indigenous values of the community. Healing and respect were among some of the values the workshop emphasised. Participants were asked to bring any natural resource they hold knowledge of to share with the workshop. The women and men went in separate groups and collected plants and certain roots. They also demonstrated how they to harvest a root from a tree sustainably. On the final day, the participants selected a custodian committee comprised of elders, women and youth. 

This custodian committee will now take this values process to the 10 villages of Bwabwata National Park with an emphasis on consultation and participation. The BCP concept will be introduced at the end of each village meeting. The local partners agreed that the BCP will then be informed by the outcomes of this process. 

Find more photos from the workshop here. For more information on this process, find the OSISA report on allAfrica.com here.

OSISA Briefing on San Values Workshop

Via www.OSISA.org

The Open Society for Southern Africa, a partner and funder of Natural Justice, released a briefing this week on workshop held in Bwabata National Park on San Values and Biocultural Community Protocols (BCPs) run jointly by Natural Justice, Kyaramacan Association, Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation, and the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism. The workshop sought to “exploit the synergies between on-going work on San values and on Bio-cultural protocols to help empower poor and marginalised indigenous communities.” 

The OSISA briefing describes two reasons why the workshop was important. Firstly, “it will contribute to the establishment of a Khwe custodian committee for maintaining and promoting traditional knowledge, skills and values amongst the youth and residents.” Secondly, “it will serve as a planning session for the proposed bio-cultural community protocol (BCP) in Bwabwata National Park.”  

The briefing notes that the workshop is part of a broader effort by OSISA’s Indigenous Rights Programme and Natural Justice to support the development of BCPs by Indigenous communities in southern Africa. 

The briefing can be accessed directly here. Learn more about OSISA’s Indigenous Rights Programme here and find OSISA's Facebook page here and Twitter handle here. Read about Natural Justice’s previous work in Bwabata here.

Community Meeting in Bwabata Park, Namibia

Through its African Biocultural Community Protocol (BCP) Initiative, Natural Justice travelled to the Bwabwata National Park in West Kaprivi, Namibia during the week of 7th May to meet with residents. Proclaimed a national park in 2007, Bwabwata is the largest of the five protected areas in northeastern Namibia and is bordered to the north by Angola and the south by Botswana. Bwabwata consists of high number of large mammals that are both rare and of important economic value. The grasslands provide habitat for roan, sable and tsessebe along with an important bird habitat. Bwabwata has three core areas designated for special protection and controlled tourism. It also has a large multiple use area zoned for community-based tourism, trophy hunting, human settlement and development by the residents of the community. The Bwabawata resident community is 80% Kwhe. The Kwhe are generally allowed to live sustainably with the environment and natural resources within the park. 

In the absence of current legislation formally recognizing the rights of park residents, the Namibian government does recognize the Karamachan Association as the ‘appropriate representative body for the community of residents of the Bwabwata within the context of tourism development and natural resource management involving the community’. 

In collaboration with locally based NGO Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) and the Karamachan Association, Natural Justice held consultations over two days with community members in which representation in the park, loss of culture and traditional knowledge, possible livelihood projects including access and benefit sharing, and the community’s vision for the future were all discussed. Natural Justice will continue to work with the community, Karamachan Association and IRDNC to assist in the development of a Bwabwata National Park residents BCP, which they hope to use to address some of their concerns and support their vision for the future.