Overview : UNDP’s 2018-2021 Strategic Plan emphasizes the critical links between environmental sustainability, social development and economic prosperity inclusive of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and broader efforts to achieve the goals of the 2030 Agenda and Paris Agreement. As part of the UNDP’s Nature, Climate, and Energy (NCE), UNDP Namibia aims to promote and scale- up integrated ‘whole-of-governance approaches’ and ‘nature-based solutions.’ These solutions cumulatively aim to reduce poverty and inequalities, improve livelihoods and build inclusive growth, while enhancing local and national conditions for resilient governance systems that advance linked peace and security agendas. UNDP Namibia works with governments, civil society, academia, and private sector partners to integrate natural capital, environment and climate concerns into national and sector planning, and inclusive growth policies; while strengthening Namibia’s obligations under the Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs). UNDP Namibia implements the UN’s largest portfolio of in-country programming on the environment, climate change, and energy. Under the Namibia’s CBNRM[1] Policy, Namibia’s community-based conservancy programme aims to: 1. To synergise rural development with biodiversity conservation efforts. 2. To empower rural populations to be actively engaged in and benefit from the management of 3. Natural resources without compromising on biodiversity conservation. 4. To increase the yields of benefits derived from natural resources on communal land through research, adaptive management and application of sound technology. 5. To create conditions for the investment in conservation related businesses as an incentive to 6. protect the environment and manage its biodiversity. 7. To integrate and strengthen community institutions and structures. CBNRM enables communities to collectively engage in environmental and natural resource monitoring; mitigation and adaptation to climate change; and integrate communal-land residents into wildlife utilization and ecotourism development through the devolvement of rights over wildlife management by local communities in partnerships with the joint-venture management scheme which is legislated between government agencies, national non-governmental organizations and rural communities. Through the community-based conservation efforts, Namibia is recognised as being amongst the top countries, globally and continentally, with conservation success. To date, the national biodiversity is safeguarded in 21 national protected areas, in 86 conservancies, and in 32 community forests covering more than 55% of communal lands. Despite this status of excellent protection, old and new challenges (including health pandemics, poaching, human wildlife conflicts) to conservation efforts create both threats and opportunities. This is particularly due to the growing and cumulative impacts, which further impact the country overall economy. There worldwide pandemic Covid-19 has impacted all the sectors in the country. In view of conservation, which significantly contributes to the national economy, it is vital to capture both the challenges and opportunities that the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the broader tourism sector. UNDP Namibia is interested to capture, document and share some of the Namibia’s specific challenges and opportunities presented by Covid-19. UNDP would like to enable this by initiating and testing a platform called ‘conservation conversations with communal conservancies, tourism/nature-based enterprises/businesses/joint-ventures, government authorities and development partners. The conservations will be captured in a form of an annual magazine publication to be titled “Namibia Covid-19 Conservation Conversations”, shortened as NaCoCo-COP. Within the parameters of project preparation grants, units can prepare to get ready with full implementation by conducting either additional risk informed planning or stakeholders /beneficiaries’ consultations or tools development or trainings in advance of the project start. This first edition of the NaCoCo-COP publication will serve as a testing platform [creating basic conservation information and setting up conditions, i.e. conversations spaces for the readiness of the Namibia project titled “Integrated approach to proactive management of human-wildlife conflict and wildlife crime in hotspot landscapes in Namibia”, which is under the Global Wildlife Programme (GWP) phase II. The desired aim is to truly create a platform that enables and empowers, both employees and employers, to candidly converse about impacts of Covid-19 in their own settings with the prominence on their circumstances and environments. The audience of the publication will be emplaced with the Namibia pre-COVID-19 successes, challenges and post-COVID-19 opportunities in the tourism, nature-based and communal conservation spaces. The long-term objective is to enhance understanding of the Namibia’s conservation success stories, capture employees and employers’ perceptions about COVID-19 in a creative qualitative manner that elevates the human-nature interest narratives. The preparation for this publication involves initial discussion with UNDP Namibia to get the creative thinking about it, thereafter, the service provider will be provide professional layout design, content generation (story sourcing and capturing), editing and proofreading, research and analysis, graphic designs, illustration, photography and printing. To ensure that the publication is prepared, designed and printed in time, UNDP Namibia is seeking professional consultants to provide high-quality storytelling, layout/design and printing services around the conservation conversation. |