Our approach

Collaborative management for multiple benefits

Landscape management by landscape members

The Windhoek Green Belt Landscape is a large area - 760 km² - that's bigger than some countries e.g. Singapore, Dominica and Tonga, and about the same size as the state of Hamburg in Germany. Under traditional approaches, land is managed as small farm-sized units with little thought given to the 'bigger picture'. This is now changing. The Windhoek Green Belt Landscape is being managed under an innovative co-operative management approach where many landowners are coming together to manage the area at landscape level. Working together and working at landscape-level brings multiple benefits when compared to managing only at farm level.

Through collaborative managment we can put measures in place to address threats to habitat and species loss at a landscape level, thereby ensuring greater responsiveness to variability and seasonality aspects that are inevitable due to climate change. Through managing wildlife and associated ecological systems at a landscape level we can conserve biodiversity at a larger scale, rather than individual patches of land units.

» See information about the landscape members here

Management framework

Our approach is outlined in the Constitution of the Windhoek Green Belt Landscape Association and the Landscape Development Plan.

How does this fit into the national context?

State owned protected areas

Namibia has over the years become a world leader in pursuing conservation initiatives. Remarkable achievements have taken place in the conservation of Namibia’s biodiversity and safeguarding ecological integrity of our ecosystems. To date, our country boasts 20 state-run protected areas that represent nearly 17% of the total land area. Most of these parks are world renowned for their uniqueness as tourism destinations and for their species richness.

• 20 state-run protected areas
• nearly 17% of the total land area

Communal Conservancies

Complementing the network of protected areas are communal conservancies and private land used for conservation. To date, Namibia has 86 registered conservancies covering almost 20% of the country while the private land used for conservation represents slightly over 6% of the country land surface. A growing demand to create more conservancies across the country is an indication of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism's Community-Based Natural Resource Management programme’s successes.

• 86 registered communal conservancies
• over 19% of the total land area

Therefore Government, communities and private sector, in total have close to half of the country, an astonishing 42% earmarked for conservation. This is a remarkable achievement. However, setting land aside for conservation without putting appropriate measures to manage effectively will not safeguard our biodiversity. It is against this background that the Ministry is consciously and continuously exploring new ways to improve management effectiveness through new initiatives especially those that provide positive incentives to conserve biodiversity.

Landscapes

Under the Nam-Place Project five landscape initiatives are underway to ensure that: protected landscape conservation areas are established, land uses in areas adjacent to existing Protected Areas is compatible with biodiversity conservation objectives; corridors are established to sustain the viability of wildlife populations. The landscapes are:

1. Mudumu Landscape
2. Greater Waterberg Landscape
3. Windhoek Green Belt Landscape
4. Greater Sossusvlei-Namib Landscape
5. Greater Fish River Canyon Landscape

This brings an additional 15,550 km² of land under protected landscapes management arrangements