Namibia

Namibia's communal conservancies

Namibia's communal conservancies give registered communities conditional rights to manage wildlife, negotiate tourism and hunting agreements, elect committees, and distribute benefits on communal land. The model reversed part of a colonial rights asymmetry and helped make wildlife locally valuable, while leaving land tenure, state oversight, uneven revenue, internal representation, and the daily costs of living with animals unresolved.

What changes when people living with wildlife gain collective rights to benefit from and govern it rather than bearing costs under rules made elsewhere?