Namibia recently launched the Community Conservation Fund of Namibia (CCFN), a human-wildlife conflict (HWC) project, which seeks to ease the problem of limited funding for community conservation efforts.
The country’s environment and tourism minister Pohamba Shifeta said the fund creates a platform for Namibians to jointly bring together resources and to invest for posterity.
“The statistics show that Namibia has seen an increase in human-wildlife conflict incidents over the last few years due to various factors, the drought being one of them,” he said.
“How fitting is it that the first active project that CCFN shall embark on is designed to address this very challenge.”
The Namibian government facilitated the HWC project, which is co-financed by the Federal Republic of Germany through the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development through the KfW Development Bank.
The project is expected to run for four years.
Registered communal conservancies, mainly in central, western and northern Namibia, were the targeted beneficiaries.
Namibia was recently rated among the world's top 30 emerging travel destinations for 2020.
The Etosha National Park was also named as one of Namibia’s top attractions.
The direct contribution of travel and tourism to Namibia’s gross domestic product (GDP) was N$4,9 billion ($369.3 million) or 2.9% of total GDP in 2017.