Benefits to Local Communities from Community Conservancies in Namibia: An Assessment

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bandyopadhyay, Sushenjit, Humavindu, Michael, Shyamsundar, Priya, Wang, Limin
Format: Journal Article
Language:EN
Published: 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4977
Description
Summary: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.