Forest Products, Livelihoods and Conservation

Rachel Wynberg 55

Figure 1. Omaheke Region, Namibia

Sources: ESRI data and Maps 2002; Barnard, P. 1998; Wynberg, R. forthcoming.

to the Tjaka Ben Hur complex. These cover an area of 307,415 ha, much of

which is degraded through overgrazing. Some 10 tons of raw material are

traded from this area, representing 1.7% of the total devil’s claw trade. The

objectives of the SHDC project are:

• to enable marginalized rural communities to improve their household
  food security through earning a reasonable income from sustainably
  harvested devil’s claw;


• to equip harvester groups to manage and utilise their resource
  independently on a sustainable basis and to facilitate their direct
  involvement in the trade; and


• to further demonstrate, on a scale large enough to be significant in
  the overall market, the viability of a fair trade in sustainably harvested
  devil’s claw (CRIAA SA-DC 2002).

The SHDC project is atypical and illustrates the situation in a minority of

communities in Namibia. Its origins lie in the initiation of a project by the

Namibian NGO Centre for Research and Information Action in Africa – Southern

African Development and Consulting (CRIAA SA-DC), which has enabled

communities to link directly with a local exporting firm and to put in place

measures to achieve sustainable harvesting. Elsewhere in Namibia, an

unfacilitated ‘free market’ approach to the trade is in place, and harvesters

are more vulnerable to exploitation.

04devilcslaw.P65 55 22/12/2004, 11:04