Environmental and social profiles of Caprivi and Kunene Regions

Namibia lies in the south west corner of Africa with a long, mostly wild Atlantic Ocean coastline. It is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world, and is very rich in natural resources. IRDNC's work focuses on the two most remote regions of this vast country - Caprivi and Kunene.

Caprivi

The small region of Caprivi is a thin panhandle some 450 km long and about 20,000 km² protruding from the north east corner of Namibia and surrounded by four countries - Angola, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Much of Caprivi's scenic beauty lies in its still relatively wild rivers including the Zambezi, Kwando, Chobe, Linyanti and the Kavango.

Lush green floodplains are grazed by hippo and other wildlife and traditional dugout canoes - called mokoro - are still in use by local fishermen.

About 110,000 people of six recognised groups live in East and West Caprivi, the majority of whom practise subsistence agriculture, with some cash cropping, and depend on trees, wild fruits, fish, water lilies, reeds and grasses for food, grazing, shelter, fuel and farming implements. Women provide much of the labour involved in resource exploitation.

Today luxury lodges and camp sites are doing well, thanks to the end of the Angolan conflict, although Zimbabwe's collapsed tourism industry places some limits on Caprivi's economic growth as our excellent tarred road system was a major conduit to Victoria Falls.

An environmental profile and atlas of Caprivi, by Mendelsohn, JM & Roberts, CS, was published in 1997.

The data are available for download.

Human population growth, combined with rising aspirations, the processes of modernisation, and an increase in weaponry during the long Angolan civil war have resulted in a deteriorating natural resource base. Wildlife, including elephant and buffalo can be regarded as an indicator of this deterioration, and by 1990 when IRDNC started work here numbers of all species had been decimated as a result of uncontrolled hunting and habitat disturbance or destruction. This situation has been reversed since the mid 1990s although Caprivi remains vulnerable to illegal hunting because of its proximity to other countries. For this reason IRDNC is vigorously supporting the various trans-boundary conservation and development programs being initiated by government and already facilitates a number of local trans-boundary community forums where users of common resources can meet to plan and implement ways to improve management of such resources.

Topographically Caprivi is particularly flat without a single hill except for small variations in contours around river valleys. The area is covered in thick deposits of Kalahari sands with very little of the underlying geology exposed, except along river courses. The extensive Kalahari sands and the rivers with their associated flood plains are the two major features which shape the landscape and give rise to six major land types:

• The Kavango, Kwando and Zambezi plus the Linyanti and Chobe rivers make up areas of open water.
• The floodplains associated with the rivers are dominated by grasslands and old river channels. River waters flood over these when sufficient rains cause river levels to rise.
• Riverine woodlands in the Kavango, Zambezi and Kwando river valleys are characterised by a high diversity of tall trees.
• Mopane woodlands lie in an area of old river drainage lines which are being covered by windblown sand deposits.
• Kalahari woodlands cover the largest area and are dominated by sand dunes and inter-dunes in the Mukwe area and Caprivi strip and extensive sandy plains of East Caprivi.
• Impalila woodlands covering Impalila island in East Caprivi make up a small but unique area from the rest of Caprivi - based on basalt rock rather than wind-blown sands or river systems.

Caprivi's wildlife species include lion, leopard, hyena, cheetah and some of Namibia's last surviving wild dog packs; hippo, crocodile and a range of water-adapted antelope including puku and sitatunga; plus buffalo, giraffe, impala, tsebbe.

Read about the use of fire as a tool to improve productivity in Caprivi.

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Kunene

The Kunene region (formerly Kaokoveld) lies in the northwest corner of Namibia and is one of the driest places on Earth. Neverthless, it is scenically spectacular and rich in endemics and thanks to CBNRM, its megafauna, including elephants and rhino is thriving, having been rescued from near extinction.

The region is separated from Angola by the Kunene River in the north, Ovamboland Plains in the northeast, Etosha National Park to the east, former southern Damaraland in the southeast and south, and Skeleton Coast Park and the Atlantic Ocean in the west.

Kunene is scenically diverse and parts have been described as a moonscape. It includes a mountainous region made up of the northern Namib Desert (100 - 600m) and the interior highlands (1,000 - 2,00Om), divided by a rugged escarpment. The area covered by the program is huge; approximately 75,000 km². The climate is semi-arid to very arid (50mm to 350mm rain per year) - a severely drought prone area and wildlife, as well as the domestic stock of its human inhabitants, have mobility as their key survival strategy.

The region is spectacular, with its vast barren landscapes and its huge tourism attraction - and potential - is evident to visitors who enjoy Kunene's wildlife, scenery and culture. A number of luxury lodges as well as campsites are flourishing and generating income for conservancies and private enterprise.

The central western part of Kunene was part of Etosha National Park till 1963 when it was released from this protection. It became a communal area and illegal hunting of wildlife became commonplace, reaching an all-time high in the early 1980s when severe drought wiped out up to 80 percent of domestic livestock. Without the efforts of community leaders and their community game guards it is doubtful whether wildlife would today exist, let alone thrive, in Kunene.

More than 30 Kunene communities, many of them formerly hotbeds of poaching, have registered, or are in process of registering their land as conservancies where wildlife is welcomed and protected. Wildlife numbers are rising annually. More than 20 communities whose wildlife was poached out in the 70s and early 80s, have asked government to assist them to restock their lands with game and this is an on-going strategy.

About 80,000 people now live within the program area, made up from Himba, Herero, Damara, Riemvasmaker and Nama groups. Livelihoods are based on semi-nomadic and settled livestock farming (cattle, goats and sheep), with some small-scale crop farming. Kunene residents have successfully adapted their way of life to make a living in this harsh environment, which is not suitable for intensive farming. Wildlife is arguably their most valuable resource.

Kunene species(*unique sub-species) include: Black rhino*, African Elephant*, Giraffe, Mountain Zebra, Burchell's Zebra, Giraffe, Gemsbok, Springbok, Greater Kudu, Impala, Duiker, Steenbok, Klipspringer, Dik-dik, Warthog, Lion, Leopard, Cheetah, Spotted Hyena, Brown Hyena.

Although no significant poaching - commercial or subsistence - has taken place for some years, commercial poaching for rhino horn and ivory by outsiders remains a threat and therefore conservancy game guards maintain their alertness.

Read about the Holistic Range Management Project which is currently underway in three Kunene conservancies.

Did you know...?

• More than 700 women are supported by our Caprivi and Kunene craft projects
• Many game guards are ex-hunters, known for their skills in tracking animals.
• Apart from Kunene the only other place in Africa where desert adapted elephants can be found is in Mali.
• In how many parts of Africa are local farmers asking government to restock their land with wildlife and applying to register their land under conservation status?
• The Namibian government has translocated hundreds of wild animals including giraffe and impala into conservancies in Kunene and Caprivi in the past few years.

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