“Land is Life, Conservancy is Life.” The San and the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy, Tsumkwe District West, Namibia

Community-based natural resource management or CBNRM, with its attention to community participation, its call for de-centralization of rights to local resource users through democratic and equitable structures, and its potential to deliver benefits to local livelihoods and national conservation interests now forms the predominant strategy for rural development in the communal areas of Namibia. This framework is presumed by the Namibian government and international bodies concerned with conservation and development to deliver measurable and positive economic, environmental, and political results for the State and all of its citizens. CBNRM has taken on particular form and significance for the San in Namibia.

Focusing on the experiences of a group of predominantly San communities in the North-East of Namibia, the historical and contemporary situations of the San of the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy and their engagement with CBNRM are examined. In looking to the future, this work seeks to understand what mechanisms and institutions give indigenous groups, such as the San, a foothold in the State and an avenue through which to navigate and shape their own modernity(ies). This work explores the modalities through which conservation comes together with interests of indigenous groups and how these groups deploy leverage gained through invoking conservation as discourse and practice.