Conservation, local well-being and ecosystem services inside the Bwabwata National Park

Abstract

On a global scale, high biodiversity areas show a large overlap with the indigenous people's traditional territories, hence approaches in biodiversity conservation shifted from exclusion to involvement of local people into conservation management.

The hunter-gatherer Khwe San people, living inside the Bwabwata National Park (BNP) in Namibia, are involved in the national Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programme. For the sake of nature conservation, own-use hunting is banned, and gathering activities are restricted, depriving the Khwe to benefit directly from ecosystem services and to utilise their Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and practices. Meanwhile, the community earns CBNRM-generated income from trophy hunting and tourism concessions, however, whether the monetary benefits outweigh the loss of provisional and cultural ecosystem services is still in question.

Our research aims to reveal (1) the main constituents of local well-being (2) and the importance of provisional and cultural ecosystem services among those constituents by utilising the Photovoice method. Photovoice is a participatory photography method consisting of multiple processes by which participants can identify, capture and reflect on specific topics within their community (Wang & Burris 1997). We have conducted Photovoice sessions in three villages involving 24 local participants. A photovoice session consisted of a full-day basic photography training, four days of photo capturing on the research topic, followed by individual semi-structured interviews with the photographers and a focus group discussion with the wider community. The visual data and the transcribed interviews were thematically analysed following the structure of ecosystem services and well-being constituents in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Framework (MEA 2005).

The photos and related narratives highlighted the importance of the provisional and cultural ecosystem services in the local well-being of the Khwe. Food, medicine, traditional crafts and traditional practices were most commonly represented on the photos. Participants stressed the insecurity of resources and the impaired freedom to access and use natural resources as negatively influencing their well-being.

Our results showed that monetary benefits of CBNRM are not able to redeem the restricted access to provisional and cultural ecosystem services. Furthermore, it comes with a cost in local well-being. For CBNRM to stand up to its label, the approach needs to incorporate local well-being measures.

References:

MEA, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). Ecosystems and Human Wellbeing: A Framework for Assessment. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Wang, C., & Burris, M. A. (1997). Photovoice: Concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment. Health education & behavior, 24(3), 369-387.