RESEARCH ARTICLE Effects of Community-Based Natural Resource Management on Household Welfare in Namibia

Biodiversity conservation, as an environmental goal, is increasingly recognized to be con-nected to the socioeconomic well-being of local communities. The development of a wide-spread community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) program in Namibia makes it an ideal location to analyze the connection between conservation and socioeco-nomic well-being of local communities. Namibia’s CBNRM program involves the formation of communal conservancies within rural communities and previous studies have found it to be successful on both ecological and economic fronts. In order to broaden the understand-ing of the program’s impact to include social factors, we have conducted a comparative anal-ysis to determine the effects of this program on household welfare outcomes. Data from two rounds of the Namibia Demographic and Health Surveys (2000 and 2006/07) and quasi-ex-perimental statistical methods were used to evaluate changes in various health, education and wealth outcomes of those living in conservancies, relative to non-conservancy compari-son groups. Regression results indicate mixed effects of the conservancy program at the household level. The program had positive effects on some health outcome variables, in-cluding bednet ownership, which was twice as likely to increase over time in conservancy compared to non-conservancy households. Program impacts were negative for education outcomes, with the proportion of school attendance of conservancy children being 45 % less likely to increase over time than non-conservancy children. Wealth outcome results were in-conclusive. Our findings highlight the importance of analyzing community conservation pro-grams at a variety of scales when evaluating overall impact, as community-level benefits may not necessarily extend down to the household level (and vice versa)