Namibian National Biodiversity Programme, Directorate of Environmental .... Conservation initiatives in Namibia have a surprisingly long history, however, given ...
Biodiversity and Conservation 7, 531±547 (1998)
Extending the Namibian protected area network to safeguard hotspots of endemism and diversity PHOEBE BARNARD*, CHRISTOPHER J. BROWN, ALICE M. JARVIS and ANTONY ROBERTSON Namibian National Biodiversity Programme, Directorate of Environmental Aairs, Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Private Bag 13306, Windhoek, Namibia
LEON VAN ROOYEN Directorate of Resource Management, Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Private Bag 13306, Windhoek, Namibia
Namibia's state protected area network (PAN) covers 13.8% of the country's land area, but is seriously inadequate as a basis for eective biodiversity conservation. The early parks system was not designed with biological diversity in mind, and re¯ects instead a history of ideological, economic and veterinary considerations. Currently, parks in the Namib Desert biome make up 69% of the PAN, while savanna and woodland biomes are somewhat underrepresented (7.5 and 8.4% of their respective land areas), and the Karoo biome is badly underrepresented (1.6%). Four of 14 desert vegetation types are comprehensively protected, with 67 to 94% representation in the PAN, yet six savanna types have 0 to 2% representation by area. Mountain Savanna, a vegetation type unique to Namibia, is wholly unprotected. The status of two marine reserves, which in theory protect only 0.01% of Namibia's marine environment, needs clari®cation and augmentation with new reserves. Nearly 85% of Namibia's land is zoned for agriculture, so eective biodiversity protection means working outside the PAN to improve the sustainability and diversity of farming practices. Wildlife conservancies on commercial and communal farmlands show excellent potential to mitigate the ecological skew in the state PAN, with the ecological management of large areas being decentralized to rural communities in habitats otherwise neglected for conservation. Two important endemism zones, the Kaoko escarpment and coastal plain and the Sperrgebiet succulent steppe, plus the species-rich Caprivi area, oer three valuable opportunities for regional consolidation of protected areas into transboundary `peace parks' or biosphere reserves. Keywords: protected area network; conservation history; endemism; conservancy; biosphere reserve.
Introduction This paper has four aims. First, we sketch a brief history of the protected area network in Namibia, showing how it was shaped by sociopolitical factors which were unrelated to the conservation of biological diversity in a broad sense. Second, we compare the current state PAN to two broad levels of ecological classi®cation (biomes and vegetation types) to give a simple quantitative index of its adequacy in protecting Namibian biodiversity. Third, we look qualitatively at the emerging alternatives to formal protected areas (jointly managed conservancies on commercial and communal agricultural lands, private nature reserves and game farms) to assess the extent to which they can potentially balance the ecological skew in the state PAN. Finally, we identify priority areas and types of Namibian *To whom correspondence should be addressed. 0960-3115 Ó 1998 Chapman & Hall
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vegetation which need additional conservation attention to safeguard biodiversity. We see this paper as a platform on which to build an area-selection analysis in the future.
Namibia's protected area network and its history At ®rst glance, Namibia has an impressively high percentage of its land area under state conservation protection, one of the highest of any country in Africa (World Resources Institute, 1996). Twenty-one parks and other protected areas under state control (Appendix 1) account for 114 080 km2, or 13.8% of the land surface, with an increasing amount additionally protected by private reserves and jointly-managed wildlife conservancies. Within Africa, only Botswana and Tanzania, also semi-arid to arid countries, have proportionately more land committed to conservation as judged by IUCN categories I-V (World Resources Institute, 1996). Marine habitats in Namibia are unprotected in practice, although in theory about 49 km (about 3%) of the subtidal near-shore marine environment and 0.01% of the overall marine environment is covered by two presently unenforced marine reserves. Three coastal and one inland wetland totalling 6296 km2 (
