An analysis of the multiple use of indigenous plant resources by Damara farmers.

Methods:

Ethnobotanical surveys and monitoring of consumption of gathered natural resources in households. Field experiments & vegetation surveys to monitor impacts of uses of vegetation around settlements.

Findings:

Gathered natural resources were consumed when abundant rather than only as dry season dietary supplements and household wealth was a poor predictor of the use of gathered foods, contrary to widespread perception of these resources as 'poor man's food. A refocusing of 'community-based conservation' efforts to incorporate the full range of resources used would shift the emphasis onto less contested resources and be inclusive of a wider range of resource users.

Region:

Southern Kunene Region (the former 'homeland' of Damaraland), Namibia.

Dates:

1995-1998

Funding:

· Economic and Scial Research Council; · Emslie Horniman and Ruggles-Gates Funds of the Royal Anthropological Institute; · the Boise Fund, Dept. of Biological Anthropology, Oxford University; · the Parkes Foundation, Dept. of Biological Anthropology, Cambridge University; · the University College London Equipment Fund; · the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia.

Main papers:

Sullivan, S. 2002. Detail and dogma, data and discourse: food-gathering by Damara herders and conservation in arid north-west Namibia. In: Homewood, K. ed. Rural resources and local livelihoods. Forthcoming. James Currey, Oxford.

Sullivan, S. 2001. How sustainable is the communalising discourse of 'new' conservation? The masking of difference, inequality and aspiration in the fledgling 'conservancies' of north-west Namibia'. In: Chatty, D. ed. Displacement, forced settlement and conservation. Berghan Press, Oxford.

Sullivan, S. and Homewood, K. 2001. Natural resources: Use, access, tenure and management. In Bowyer-Bower, T. and Potts, D. eds. Eastern and Southern Africa, new regional text commission by the Institute of British Geographers. Developing Areas Research Group. Wesley Longman, London and Addision.

Sullivan, S. 2000. Getting the science right, or introducing science in the first place? Local 'facts', global discourse - 'desertification' in north-west Namibia. In: Stott, P. and Sullivan, S. eds. Political ecology: science, myth and power. Edward Arnold, London.

Sullivan, S. 2000. Perfume and pastoralism: Damara women as users and managers of natural resources in arid north-west Namibia. In: Hodgson, D. ed. Rethinking pastoralism in Africa: gender, culture and the myth of the patriarchal pastoralist. James Currey, Oxford.

Sullivan, S. 1999. The impacts of people and livestock on topographically diverse open wood-and shrub-lands in arid north-west Namibia. Global Ecology and Biogeography (Special Issue on Degradation of Open Woodlands). 8: 257-277.

Sullivan, S. 1999. Folk and formal, local and national: Damara cultural knowledge and community-based conservation in southern Kunene, Namibia. Cimbebasia 15: 1-28.

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