A strategy for rural development

A Namibian policy for rural development hardly exists; instead there are a whole bunch of initiatives that could add up to one. The role of bioenergy in Namibia’s rural development depends on the country’s goals and strategies for its rural areas and how it integrates the production of bioenergy feedstock.

As a form of commercial agriculture/forestry, bioenergy production is only one potential land use among others that must be assessed in the context of alternative uses and their effects on rural development. Whatever strategy Namibia chooses will have significantly different implications for bioenergy production because of trade-offs between different land and water uses and strategies to develop livelihoods.

Because most of Namibia’s population – especially the poor – is concentrated in rural areas, rural development is crucial for reducing poverty and food insecurity, at least in the medium term. With Namibia’s long-term aim of becoming an industrialized knowledge-based society, the inclusive growth of rural areas may not be important, meaning that long-term costs for development could be reduced. But this perspective is a result of the

extreme income inequalities and dichotomies between North and South, rural and urban, black and white, mining and non-mining sectors, capital and labour – which are partly heritages of apartheid, but also reflect the weakness of the countries’ urban economy and industry. There is insufficient pro-poor, job-creating urban development in Namibia. But even if more dynamism in urban development existed and rural-urban migration was further boosted, an overly hasty urbanisation could jeopardize the country’s political stability. Achieving a fundamental transformation of the country’s economic, demographic and structural nature will require decades, a smooth transition process and intelligent policies in order to avoid short- to medium-term problems such as major rural unemployment, food insecurity and the large-scale irreversible destruction of nature.

It is not clear which immediate and medium-term strategies Namibia prefers to use to stepwise reach the goals set out in Vision 2030 for the population and land use in rural areas. There are no sound guidelines about how to transform the rural areas, especially in the North, with a long-term vision and timelines. The general uncertainty regarding urban and rural development translates into unclear signals for land use, including the production of bioenergy. A comprehensive assessment is needed that cuts across various sectors, policies and a large but heterogeneous share of the Namibian population, which is divided into many different stakeholder groups. Such an assessment exceeds the capacities of this study. Below, however, we briefly address the major trade-offs.

The biggest and most controversial competition for land in Namibia is between productive land uses and nature conservation. Preserving natural habitats is a goal for rural development in its own right (see Chapter 6.6).

While tourism and wildlife also provide income to local communities, interviewees indicated that their benefits to communities have been rather limited; agriculture, livestock and forestry are likely to be more productive and provide greater effects for food security and rural employment. At the same time, they may have more negative effects for the environment, depending on the specific kind of productive use: livestock versus agriculture, small-scale versus large-scale agriculture and food-crop versus cash-crop production (see Chapter 6.3). With careful debushing, bush-to-energy is theoretically a win-win situation in terms of economic use and ecological sustainability. In contrast, any large-scale monoculture Jatropha cultivation that replaces ecologically high-value ecosystems could severely stress the environment. Different stakeholders have a range of preferred

uses for land in Caprivi and Kavango – from leaving the natural resources

‘untouched’ to engaging in large-scale intensive agriculture. The ministries, in particular the MAWF and the MET, have different views and lack coordination, as demonstrated by multiple gazetting of land in Caprivi. Any long-term strategy for rural development must insist on close coordination of many sectors (see Chapter 6.8) with consistent national, regional and local land (and water) use planning.

The main issue in Namibia’s rural development is water, arguably the country’s most scarce and therefore valuable resource, which presents bottlenecks for not only agriculture and nature but also urban development and mining. Water must be a cross-cutting issue in many policy areas (compare various sub-chapters within this Chapter 6). Permanent surface water, which is only available from the rivers at the borders, is also the subject of international interests and agreements – in particular the Okavango water. Any new, large-scale activity in rural areas that affects water availability and use must be carefully screened. The bioenergy effects range from saving water through careful debushing to high water consumption for irrigating Jatropha production. Irrigating relatively low-value energy crops makes no sense in Namibia.

The long-term rural development of northern Namibia requires improved governance of communal land or a concentration of lands or land-use rights and planning (see Chapter 6.5). So far, there is no comprehensive strategy – and no integrated, inclusive land-use planning for rural areas.

In the sparsely populated regions of northern Namibia, developing infrastructure represents high costs per inhabitant and requires a careful cost-benefit analysis. However, the transport infrastructure is already quite well developed and often serves multiple goals (tourism, agriculture, food trade, etc.). Since transporting bulky biomass is costly – although investors calculate that it is not prohibitive – there are advantages to producing SVO and biodiesel for local use. Larger-scale bio-based electricity needs grids, mini-grids and feed-in structures. When consumers have reason to hope that they’ll be connected in the near future, they are less willing to accept non-grid solutions, so a solid plan for rural electrification is needed for generating electricity from biomass development (see Chapter 6.7).

Bioenergy could also play an important role regarding employment and migration. While the typical pattern of migration in Namibia is rural–urban (or rural–mining areas), successful bioenergy value chains would make it

possible for people to migrate from one rural area to another. No other option promises to create similar levels of employment in the vast arid and semi-arid lands. For both commercial and communal rural areas it is important to create the proper incentives, regulations and training opportunities to improve migrant workers’ employment opportunities (see Chapter 6.8) and make better linkages to their home areas, for example, by facilitating remittances.

Since the structural transformation of individual rural areas largely depends on local particularities, management must be flexible, with adaptable planning and implementation of investments and programmes – above and beyond a consistent institutional and policy framework. This is not possible from top down: the local population’s participation is essential (see again Chapter 6.8).

6.3 Agricultural policies