Subsidized elephants: Community-based resource governance and environmental (in)justice in Namibia

After independence, and in accordance with global environmental policies, the government of Namibia partly transferred the responsibility for managing wildlife and water to local communities. In this article, we use the concept of environmental justice as a theoretical guide to explore the combined effects that these new policies have had for pastoralists in arid, rural Namibia. We find, firstly, that partly due to conservation efforts, the elephant population has increased significantly. While a healthy elephant population supports exclusive, international tourism, the elephants are causing ever-increasing destruction at communal water points thus leading to increasing local financial costs. Only a small fraction of the revenues from community-based tourism, however, remains in the communities, and relatively few people profit from these revenues directly. Secondly, as new community-level sharing institutions for water emerge, pastoralists who are economically marginalized are subsidizing the financial costs of water for both their wealthy neighbours and the tourism industry. Looking at the combined effects of CBNRM policies for water and wildlife management, these policies are likely to lead to better resource management but greater economic inequality. To interpret these findings, we consider how CBNRM transforms landscapes and wildlife into global commodities. This process pulls communities into new common property regimes as well as towards privatization at the same time and helps to explain the social-ecological changes we observe.