Implementing the UNCCD: Participatory challenges

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) emphasizes the need for public participation in land degradation assessment and rehabilitation. While participatory approaches are supported by a growing body of research and practice, meaningfully involving the people affected by land degradation is far from straightforward. This paper investigates the challenge of using the UNCCD as a guide to influence community participation in policy‐making and practice at national and local levels by analyzing experiences from three southern African countries. We show that the UNCCD represents a useful normative framework for addressing degradation problems, but that the participatory ethos is difficult to enact at the national level. Whilst there is increasing evidence that combining local and scientific knowledge using participatory mechanisms can deliver the benefits that the Convention strives to achieve, communication between researchers and practitioners, and those involved in implementing the UNCCD at the national level needs to be strengthened. Broad lessons and best practices in incorporating participatory practices into policy development are elucidated. Our case studies show that a range of mixed‐method, interdisciplinary approaches can enable policy‐makers and practitioners to meaningfully engage those who are affected by land degradation in its definition, assessment and rehabilitation.     

Land Degradation Monitoring in Namibia: A First Approximation

This paper presents development of a first approximation of a Namibian, national level, land degradation monitoring system. The process involved a large number of stakeholders and led to the definition of four primary indicators that were regarded as related to land degradation in Namibia: population pressure, livestock pressure, seasonal rainfall and erosion hazards. These indicators were calculated annually for the period 1971–1997. Annual land degradation risk maps were produced for the same period by combining the indicators. A time series analysis of results generated by indicators was undertaken at two sites. The analysis revealed a general trend towards an increased land degradation risk over the period 1971–1997. A decrease in annual rainfall and an increase in livestock numbers caused this negative trend at one site, while decreased annual rainfall and increased human population were the causes at a second site. Evaluation of resulting maps through direct field observations and long-term monitoring at selected study sites with different conditions relevant for the indicators defined, is an essential next step.     

Mining on communal land as a new frontier –a case study of the Kunene Region,Namibia

ABSTRACT

This paper is about mining under communal ownership which makes this kind of mining a new mining frontier. The newness of the frontier is that it has introduced a series of institutional complexities that is uncommon to artisanal and large-scale mining. Mining companies have to negotiate deals with communities and their leaders to be able to prospect for mineral resources. We also argue that the state’s environmental legislation is poorly harmonised with the prevalent conditions in communal areas where mining is gaining greater importance. Legislation remains silent on the rights of those living on communal land. These rights remain in a state of confusion with often negative effects on the local communities who are exposed to a number of duplicating development programmes and legislative structures. The aim of this paper is to explore the dynamics communal mining in the Kunene Region in north-western Namibia.     

National minerals policies and stakeholder participation for broad-based development in the southern African development community (SADC)

This paper explains how the well-accepted concept of improved stakeholder participation during mineral policy development leads to a national mineral policy that accommodates the diverging views and interests that allows wide acceptance of decisions, enhancing the success of implementation and, ultimately, national benefits. This process is based on lessons learnt during the South African experience and has been successfully applied in the development of the Namibian and Malawian national minerals policies. An effective policy in the SADC will engineer the delicate balance between poverty reduction and an internationally competitive minerals sector. This balance enhances the possibility of long-term economic growth and development in the SADC region. The overriding advantage of this strategy is that it generates ‘home-grown’ policy instruments and implementation of mineral law with which stakeholders can identify. This process presents a new challenge to traditional policy formulation strategies in emerging economies and the bottom-up approach, linked to wide political support, allows the potential realisation of national objectives.     

The role of size inequality in self-thinning: A pattern-oriented simulation model for arid savannas

The self-thinning line is a very robust pattern, which can be obtained in modeling studies by a variety of different mechanistic assumptions. Our opinion is that we can only advance in our understanding of mechanisms leading to the self-thinning relationship if we demand that the model also reproduces several other characteristic features (patterns) of the self-thinning process such as the degree of size inequality and the average size. We use a pattern-oriented modeling approach to develop a model of self-thinning under size inequality in overcrowded, even-aged stands, which reproduces these three patterns simultaneously. Our approach is to first develop an initial model based on our current ecological knowledge and then to refine the model by modifying the initial model to derive the model that reproduces all patterns of interest.The initial model is as simple as possible while avoiding incidental, ecologically unjustified, assumptions. It is a further development of zone of influence-simulation models: each plant is described by two circles, one describing a minimum-domain-area and one describing the zone of influence. In the initial model, mortality is “death-by-contact” of minimum-domain-areas and growth is a function of inter-tree competition, i.e. overlapping zones of influence. Model parameterization is based on field data on Acacia reficiens in southern Africa. Simulations follow patches of initially small trees through time for up to 1000 years with five parameters, three describing growth and two describing inter-tree competition. A sensitivity analysis shows that all parameters of the initial model contribute significantly to the number and size of plants through time. The two competition parameters, which describe competitive asymmetry and the size of the zone of influence relative to canopy size, are both important for generating size inequality. Thus, both competitive asymmetry and spatial pattern contribute to size inequality, and their relative importance may vary greatly.The sensitivity analysis suggests that all processes included in the initial model are essential to the evolution of size inequality. However, size inequality under the initial model is below field values, meaning that additional, as yet unconsidered processes, contribute to size inequality. Our best-fit model additionally contains details on growth stochasticity.This study establishes the often-proposed direct link between mortality driven by local competition and self-thinning and highlights the importance of stochasticity in ecological processes.     

Indirect effects of African megaherbivore conservation on bat diversity in the world's oldest desert

In extreme environments, temperature and precipitation are often the main forces responsible for structuring ecological communities and species distributions. The role of biotic interactions is typically thought to be minimal. By clustering around rare and isolated features, like surface water, however, effects of herbivory by desert-dwelling wildlife can be amplified. Understanding how species interact in these environments is critical to safeguarding vulnerable or data-deficient species. We examined whether African elephants (Loxodonta africana), black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis), and southern giraffe (Giraffa giraffa) modulate insectivorous bat communities around permanent waterholes in the Namib Desert. We estimated megaherbivore use of sites based on dung transects, summarized vegetation productivity from satellite measurements of the normalized difference vegetation index, and surveyed local bat communities acoustically. We used structural equation models to identify relationships among megaherbivores and bat species richness and dry- (November 2016–January 2017) and wet- (February–May 2017) season bat activity. Site-level megaherbivore use in the dry season was positively associated with bat activity—particularly that of open-air foragers—and species richness through indirect pathways. When resources were more abundant (wet season), however, these relationships were weakened. Our results indicate that biotic interactions contribute to species distributions in desert areas and suggest the conservation of megaherbivores in this ecosystem may indirectly benefit insectivorous bat abundance and diversity. Given that how misunderstood and understudied most bats are relative to other mammals, such findings suggest that managers pursue short-term solutions (e.g., community game guard programs, water-point protection near human settlements, and ecotourism) to indirectly promote bat conservation and that research includes megaherbivores’ effects on biodiversity at other trophic levels.     

Long Term Fire Scar Monitoring with Remote Sensing in Northern Namibia: Relations Between Fire Frequency, Rainfall, Land Cover, Fire Management and Trees

A cost-effective method was developed to map fire scars on Quicklooks of Landat TM imagery. The method was compared with a full resolution Landsat image using visual interpretation and supervised classification using the Maximum Likelihood procedure, resulting in a high degree of agreement between methods. A long time series of fire scars was developed using all available Landsat Quicklooks between 1989 and 2001 for an area of 63000 sq km in north-east Namibia. Between 27 and 51% of the study area burned annually, while only 10% of the area did not burn between 1989 and 2001. Not-burned areas were mainly settled areas and permanent wetlands. 33% of the area burned between 5 and 7 times during the 13 years indicating a high frequency overall. Rainfall and livestock had little influence on burned areas. In 1996 formal fire management started in a portion of the study area consisting of building firebreaks and holding awareness programs. A comparison of burned areas before and after the intervention started allowed evaluating its effectiveness. The area where the formal fire management program was undertaken showed a significant decrease in burned area. It is suggested that awareness campaigns rather than firebreaks contributed to this decrease. Selected tree population data were compared with fire frequencies. Differences in tree occurrence, regeneration, and stem diameter distributions between low and high fire frequencies could be detected and explained with known responses of the species to fire. This suggests that the observed time series is representative of a long-term fire regime in the area.     

Declines in migrant shorebird populations from a winter‐quarter perspective

Many long‐distance migrating shorebird (i.e., sandpipers, plovers, flamingos, oystercatchers) populations are declining. Although regular shorebird monitoring programs exist worldwide, most estimates of shorebird population trends and sizes are poor or nonexistent. We built a state‐space model to estimate shorebird population trends. Compared with more commonly used methods of trend estimation, state‐space models are more mechanistic, allow for the separation of observation and state process, and can easily accommodate multivariate time series and nonlinear trends. We fitted the model to count data collected from 1990 to 2013 on 18 common shorebirds at the 2 largest coastal wetlands in southern Africa, Sandwich Harbour (a relatively pristine bay) and Walvis Bay (an international harbor), Namibia. Four of the 12 long‐distance migrant species declined since 1990: Ruddy Turnstone (Arenaria interpres), Little Stint (Calidris minuta), Common Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula), and Red Knot (Calidris canutus). Populations of resident species and short‐distance migrants increased or were stable. Similar patterns at a key South African wetland suggest that shorebird populations migrating to southern Africa are declining in line with the global decline, but local conditions in southern Africa's largest wetlands are not contributing to these declines. State‐space models provide estimates of population levels and trends and could be used widely to improve the current state of water bird estimates.     

Landuse experience does qualify for adaptation to climate change

The need to implement sustainable resource management regimes for semi-arid and arid rangelands is acute as non-adapted grazing strategies lead to irreversible environmental problems such as desertification and associated loss of economic support to society. In these sensitive ecosystems, traditional sectoral, disciplinary approaches will not work to attain sustainability: achieving a collective vision of how to attain sustainability requires interactive efforts among disciplines in a more integrated approach.