Paper short abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on tourism in Namibia, which posed a threat to the previous successes of community-based conservation. This analysis evaluates the ability of community conservancies to withstand this external shock and maintain their conservation efforts.

Paper long abstract:

Namibia is viewed as an example of how community-based conservation can be effectively implemented. Tourism, specifically safari and hunting, generates income that supports conservation efforts and has led to an increase in wildlife populations. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the tourism industry and tested the ability of regional social-ecological systems to handle external shocks. Despite this, with government support, local governance institutions known as conservancies were able to partially maintain the distribution of value from tourism during the pandemic and improve the relationship between agriculture and tourism for long-term sustainability. These results suggest that local institutions have the ability to promote resilience in the region through their ability to adapt and drive diversity in the regional economy.

Paper short abstract:

The Communal Conservancies program has been around for over 26 years in Namibia. However, when the country went into the first national lockdown there was already mounting fear that the program will be severally impacted, because of their heavy reliance on hunting and tourism.

Paper long abstract:

COVID-19 has devastated the global economy in all sectors that contribute to the gross domestic product (GDP) of many countries and tourism is the third largest economic sector in Namibia on which the communal conservancies’ areas depend. The recorded impacts of COVID-19 on communal conservancies demand a need for serious reflections on the community conservation programme in Namibia. The community conservation programme has been, for the first time, exposed to a major shock in the form of COVID-19, its stability has been shaken. and threatened. Over the years, conservancies and community forests have registered progress on many fronts, ranging from positive contributions toward natural resources conservation, income generation, enterprise development, improvement in livelihoods for communities, and stability in key governance structures. COVID-19 has had its own ripple effects, reinventing itself through the different variants resulting in further uncertainties and unpreparedness among CBNRM actors. The need to diversify revenue and livelihood sources to prevent exposure to shocks and crises was also identified. If the community conservation initiatives are to become resilient communities, a new culture should be inculcated that of an investment base, and long-term financial planning in order for the community-based institutions to withstand shocks at least in a short to medium-term span. This, along with all other external shocks of different manifestation, require serious reflections and preparedness from all stakeholders involved to assist in building resilient communities and community-based management and governance processes.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on two Namibian Conservancies: Anabeb and Sesfontein. We will analyze how the fall in tourism revenues affected the economy of local populations, wildlife, and land use, and how the situation has evolved in the post-pandemic environment.

Paper long abstract:

Namibia’s programme of Communal Conservancies has been depicted as one of the most successful in Africa when it comes to combine wildlife conservation outside of and around Protected Areas with socioeconomic benefits to rural residents. In Conservancies, communities have established tourism ventures, either by themselves or in partnership with private operators. In the last decades, ecotourism and trophy hunting have been providing most of the Conservancies’ income as well as employment for locals. One of the main effects of COVID-19 and its containment measures, however, was an almost total collapse of international tourist visits to Namibia, leading to a sharp fall in income to Conservancies and communities. As part of an international research project on the impact of COVID on drylands, this paper will trace the evolution of two Conservancies, Anabeb and Sesfontein, and will explore how the crisis in the tourism sector has impacted the rural populations in Communal Conservancy areas. Special focus will be placed on three issues: the impact of declining revenues and employment on the population, the effects on wildlife (poaching and Human-Wildlife Conflict), and, finally, the possible changes in land use in Conservancies. Although attention will be devoted to the crisis years of 2020 and 2021, the situation in the post-pandemic environment will also be discussed.

Paper short abstract:

How COVID restrictions have affected the pastoral livelihood in arid lands of Kenya? The paper focus on women from Pokot and Gabra communities in North Kenya, asking to understand the effects of COVID on livelihood and the effects of participation in the research project on co- researchers lives.

Paper long abstract:

Following the first confirmed Covid case that was announced in Kenya on March 13, 2020, the Kenyan Ministry of Health announced, “There is no need for alarm” but on the other hand and on the same time published precautionary measures for the public. Kenya's case study and the arid areas in northern Kenya are in between these two extremes. This case study deals with the rural areas of Northern Kenya and asks how COVID restrictions have affected the pastoral livelihood.

This research was based on a participatory unique methodology. Designing the research collaboratively with my two Kenyan co-researchers we ask how young and adult women from Pokot and Gabra communities were affected? And how is participation in the research project is evidence in co researchers lives?

Paper short abstract:

During the Covid-19 pandemic, governmental policies had a special effect on the native population of Bedouins in the Negev Desert of southern Israel. We aim to address how these communities were affected, how they adapted, and then compare them to similar ones in African drylands.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last century, different economic and social pressures have increasingly forced the once-nomadic Bedouin people to establish fixed settlements. Maintaining a unique identity separate from other Islamic or Arabic cultures, many Bedouins still keep herd animals, socialize in traditional tents, and organize their society around extended families, known as clans.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the many Bedouins, who are settled in Israel’s Negev Desert, lived away from the wider Israeli society, but close to their traditional ways of life. Once the pandemic began, the social and economic rift between these societies expanded.

There were many instances in which government institutions failed to appreciate the position of the Bedouin people, who due to the unrecognized status of their villages often live without modern infrastructure. Then, due to this oversight, many pandemic policies only left them further behind. We aim in our paper to discuss the ways that the Covid-19 pandemic affected this unique population. We will discuss the shortcomings of the Covid-19 response, as well as the community's internal assets, which made the Bedouins more adaptable on the whole in the face of the pandemic. Then having informed ourselves of their special case, we apply the lessons learned to other similar populations, especially those in African drylands.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a case study of Rwanda's hospitality sector development since 2000, revolving around high-end gorilla tourism. It explores the role of nature conservation in the country's tourism strategy and finds that economic demands do not always trump ecological needs.

Paper long abstract:

Based on Rwanda’s natural endowments (mountain gorillas and geographic location in the centre of Africa) and recently created features as a by-product of state-building and power consolidation (good reputation, high security, and cleanliness), for the last two decades, the country's government has put high efforts into creating a high-end eco-tourism sector from scratch. It invested a massive share of its scarce public resources and pooled further foreign and domestic funds to construct the needed infrastructure, including luxury hotels and lodges. While diversification towards conferences and other forms of tourism are showing some success, the sector's revenues rise and fall with gorilla visits. Covid-19 led to a sharp drop in tourists and income, and pre-pandemic levels may only be reached in 2024 or later. At the same time, the government has been lauded for its genuine and exemplary conservation efforts that led to a substantial growth of the mountain gorilla population. Most recently, the Volcanoes National Park's area (where gorillas reside) has been expanded by 23% with an even bigger additional buffer zone despite the country's overpopulation and precarious land scarcity. Based on interview evidence and secondary literature, the paper finds that trade-offs among competing economic interests as well as between economic and ecological demands have been settled by the political leadership in its idiosyncratic top-down governance mode, sometimes with long-term strategies in mind and sometimes in ad-hoc decisions, but overall in a fairly balanced way.