Conservation Fund projects to be officially launched
The Community Conservation Fund of Namibia (CCFN) and the Human Wildlife Conflict (HWC) projects will be launched this week at the Namibia Institute of Public Administration.
The Fund in a statement said that the projects are expected to run for 4 years and the targeted beneficiaries are the registered communal conservancies mainly in Central, West, East and Northern Namibia and Kyaramacan and their members, who are negatively impacted by Human Wildlife Conflict.
“Over the last few years Namibia has seen an increase in Human Wildlife Conflict incidents which if unaddressed will threaten the prevailing harmonious coexistence of wildlife and communities in these rural conservancies,” the statement said.
According to the Fund they have secured EUR 5million, with the assistance of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, from the KFW Bank for the institution of a EUR 6.85million project targeted for the establishment of the establishment of sustainable Human-Wildlife-Conflict management systems in Namibia’s communal conservancies that will in turn contribute to biodiversity conservation and rural development.
The Community Conservation Fund of Namibia was founded from the recommendations of a National Task force that had been established to look at ways of securing the long term sustainable financing of Namibia’s Community Based Natural Resource Management Programme.
Currently they focus in areas that have been identified as HWC, Minimum Support Packages (MSP) and Payments for Environment Services (PES). The organisation was resisted in 2017 under and are ready to officially launch and start working on its areas of focus.
Caption: (File) Third-year student in Natural Resource Management at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), Ruben Angala setting up trail camera