Landcare is ideal to empower and mobilize communities to restore and manage degraded lands

1. Landcare opportunities in Namibia
and at bigger picture
By: Emily Mutota
Beating Famine Conference, Lilongwe, April 2015

2. Namibia Environmental Challenges
 Land Degradation
 Loss of Biodiversity
 Climate Change

3. 70% population directly depend on land

4. Threat to food security and economic
growth!

5. Past and present initiatives
 20 decades, SLM programmes implemented.
oCBNRM: Communal Conservancies and
community forests
o Dryland and desertification Programmes
Short-term impacts—activities stop as projects
end!
 Incentives driven, and mainly top-down
approach (and not bottom-up). No Ownership!

6. Need to adapt landcare
 Double the effort
o Bottom-up , holistic and inter-disciplinary approach
o Mobilise communities to ‘’read the land’’ and find local-
based solutions
o Empower an d attitude and behavior transformation
 Landcare offer such opportunities: evidence from
over 15 countries, where its implemented.
 Great lessons, particulaly from S. Africa

7. Example to benefit from landcare
1. Fire Management
o Large part of the country suffer from fire ( appro. is 6.919
million ha, and representing 7.4% of Namibia total land surface).
o Threat : agriculture and tourism.

8. “Approximately 30% (26 Million ha) area is subjected to densed bushes.
Estimated loss of N$700 mio per year to beef market (de Klerk, 2004).
2. Bush Encroashment

9. 3. Degraded Rangeland

10. Landcare is ideal to empower and
mobilize communities to restore and
manage degraded lands

11. Realisation
Lobbying key ministries
Integrate into ministerial planning
Synergies for Convections, SDGs,
Change in Biodiversity
Land degeneration/
Desertificaton
Climate Change

12. Landcare in Big Picture
 Necessity for collective global focus on International
Year of Landcare (IYLC)
 Feasibility study in 2008, proposing establishment of
IYLC
http://www.unulrt.is/static/fellows/document/emily-1-.pdf
 A year to focus on exchange, awareness, land literacy and
bottom-up solutions
 Complement global SDG’s, Conventions and other years.
 IYLC is feasible, BUT require resources ( time, financial
support)

13. …Empower
local land users
Thank You!