John Kasaona: How poachers became caretakers

30,139 views ・ 2010-06-08

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Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:16
In Africa we say,
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"God gave the white man a watch
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and gave the black man time."
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(Laughter)
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I think, how is it possible
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for a man with so much time
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to tell his story in 18 minutes?
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I think it will be quite a challenge for me.
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Most African stories these days,
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they talk about famine,
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HIV and AIDS,
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poverty or war.
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But my story that I would like to share with you today
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is the one about success.
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It is about a country
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in the southwest of Africa
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called Namibia.
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Namibia has got 2.1 million people,
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but it is only twice the size of California.
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I come from a region
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in the remote northwest part of the country.
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It's called Kunene region.
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And in the center of Kunene region
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is the village of Sesfontein. This is where I was born.
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This is where I'm coming from.
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Most people that are following the story
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of Angelina Jolie
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and Brad Pitt
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will know where Namibia is.
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They love Namibia
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for its beautiful dunes,
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that are even taller
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than the Empire State Building.
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Wind and time have twisted our landscape
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into very strange shapes,
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and these shapes are speckled with wildlife
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that has become so adapted
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to this harsh and strange land.
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I'm a Himba.
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You might wonder, why are you wearing these Western clothes?
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I'm a Himba and Namibian.
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A Himba is one of the 29
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ethnic groups in Namibia.
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We live a very traditional lifestyle.
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I grew up herding,
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looking after our livestock --
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goats, sheep and cattle.
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And one day,
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my father actually took me into the bush.
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He said, "John,
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I want you to become a good herder.
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Boy, if you are looking after our livestock
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and you see a cheetah
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eating our goat --
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cheetah is very nervous --
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just walk up to it.
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Walk up to it and smack it on the backside."
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(Laughter)
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"And he will let go of the goat
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and run off."
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But then he said,
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"Boy, if you run into a lion,
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don't move.
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Don't move. Stand your ground.
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Puff up and just look it in the eye
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and it may not want to fight you."
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(Laughter)
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But then, he said,
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"If you see a leopard,
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boy, you better run like hell."
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(Laughter)
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"Imagine you run faster than those goats you are looking after."
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In this way --
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(Laughter)
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In this way, I actually started to learn about nature.
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In addition to being an ordinary Namibian
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and in addition to being a Himba
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I'm also a trained conservationist.
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And it is very important if you are in the field
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to know what to confront
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and what to run from.
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I was born in 1971.
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We lived under apartheid regime.
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The whites could farm, graze
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and hunt as they wished,
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but we black, we were not regarded as responsible
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to use wildlife.
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Whenever we tried to hunt,
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we were called poachers.
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And as a result, we were fined and locked up in jail.
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Between 1966 and 1990,
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the U.S. and Soviet interests
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fought for control over my country.
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And you know, during war time,
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there are militaries, armies, that are moving around.
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And the army hunted for valuable rhino horns
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and tusks.
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They could sell these things for anything between
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$5,000 a kilo.
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During the same year
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almost every Himba had a rifle.
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Because it was wartime,
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the British .303 rifle
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was just all over the whole country.
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Then in the same time, around 1980,
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we had a very big drought.
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It killed almost everything that was left.
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Our livestock was
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almost at the brink of extinction,
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protected as well.
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We were hungry.
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I remember a night
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when a hungry leopard
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went into the house
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of one of our neighbors
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and took a sleeping child out of the bed.
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It's a very sad story.
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But even today,
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that memory is still in people's minds.
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They can pinpoint the exact location
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where this all happened.
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And then, in the same year,
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we almost lost everything.
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And my father said, "Why don't you just go to school?"
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And they sent me off to school, just to get busy somewhere there.
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And the year I went to school,
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my father actually got a job with a non-governmental organization
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called IRDNC, Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation.
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They actually spend a lot of time a year in the communities.
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They were trusted by the local communities
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like our leader, Joshua Kangombe.
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Joshua Kangombe saw what was happening:
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wildlife disappearing,
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poaching was skyrocketing,
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and the situation seemed very hopeless.
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Death and despair surrounded Joshua
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and our entire communities.
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But then, the people from IRDNC proposed to Joshua:
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What if we pay people that you trust
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to look after wildlife?
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Do you have anybody in your communities, or people,
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that know the bush very well
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and that know wildlife very well?
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The headman said: "Yes. Our poachers."
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"Eh? The poachers?"
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"Yes. Our poachers."
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And that was my father.
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My father has been a poacher for quite a long time.
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Instead of shooting poachers dead
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like they were doing elsewhere in Africa,
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IRDNC has helped men reclaim their abilities
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to manage their peoples
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and their rights to own and manage wildlife.
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And thus, as people started feeling ownership over wildlife,
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wildlife numbers started coming back,
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and that's actually becoming a foundation for conservation in Namibia.
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With independence, the whole approach of community getting involved
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was embraced by our new government.
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Three things that actually help to build on this foundation:
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The very first one is
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honoring of tradition and being open to new ideas.
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Here is our tradition:
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At every Himba village, there is a sacred fire.
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And at this sacred fire, the spirit of our ancestors
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speak through the headman
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and advise us where to get water,
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where to get grazings,
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and where to go and hunt.
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And I think this is the best way of regulating ourselves
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on the environment.
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And here are the new ideas.
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Transporting rhinos using helicopters
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I think is much easier
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than talking through a spirit that you can't see, isn't it?
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And these things we were taught by outsiders.
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We learned these things from outsiders.
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We needed new boundaries to describe our traditional lands;
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we needed to learn more things like GPS
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just to see whether --
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can GPS really reflect the true reflection of the land
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or is this just a thing made somewhere in the West?
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And we then wanted to see whether we can match our
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ancestral maps with digital maps made somewhere in the world.
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And through this,
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we actually started realizing our dreams,
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and we maintained honoring our traditions
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but we were still open to new ideas.
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The second element is that we wanted to have a life,
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a better life where we can benefit through many things.
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Most poachers, like my father,
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were people from our own community.
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They were not people from outside.
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These were our own people.
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And sometimes, once they were caught,
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they were treated with respect, brought back into the communities
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and they were made part of the bigger dreams.
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The best one, like my father -- I'm not campaigning for my father --
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(Laughter)
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they were put in charge to stop others from poaching.
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And when this thing started going on,
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we started becoming one community,
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renewing our connection to nature.
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And that was a very strong thing in Namibia.
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The last element that actually helped develop these things
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was the partnerships.
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Our government has given legal status over our traditional lands.
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The other partners that we have got
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is business communities.
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Business communities helped bring Namibia onto the world map
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and they have also helped make wildlife
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a very valuable land use like any other land uses
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such as agriculture.
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And most of my conservation colleagues today
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that you find in Namibia
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have been trained through the initiative,
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through the involvement of World Wildlife Fund
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in the most up-to-date conservation practices.
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They have also given funding for two decades
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to this whole program.
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And so far, with the support of World Wildlife Fund,
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we've been able to scale up the very small programs
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to national programs today.
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Namibia ... or Sesfontein
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was no more an isolated village somewhere,
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hidden away in Namibia.
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With these assets we are now part of the global village.
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Thirty years have passed
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since my father's first job as a community game guard.
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It's very unfortunate that he passed away and he cannot see the success
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as I and my children see it today.
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When I finished school in 1995,
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there were only 20 lions in the entire Northwest -- in our area.
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But today, there are more than 130 lions.
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(Applause)
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So please, if you go to Namibia,
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make sure that you stay in the tents.
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Don't walk out at night!
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(Laughter)
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The black rhino -- they were almost extinct in 1982.
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But today, Kunene has the largest concentration of black rhino --
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free-roaming black rhinos -- in the world.
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This is outside the protected area.
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(Applause)
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The leopard -- they are now in big numbers
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but they are now far away from our village,
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because the natural plain has multiplied,
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like zebras, springboks and everything.
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They stay very much far away
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because this other thing has multiplied
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from less than a thousand to tens of thousands of animals.
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What started as very small,
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community rangers getting community involved,
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has now grown into something that we call conservancies.
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Conservancies are legally instituted institutions
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by the government,
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and these are run by the communities themselves, for their benefit.
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Today, we have got 60 conservancies
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that manage and protect over 13 million hectares
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of land in Namibia.
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We have already reshaped conservation in the entire country.
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Nowhere else in the world
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has community-adopted conservation at this scale.
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(Applause)
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In 2008, conservancy generated 5.7 million dollars.
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This is our new economy --
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an economy based on the respect of our natural resources.
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And we are able to use this money for many things:
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Very importantly, we put it in education.
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Secondly, we put it for infrastructure. Food.
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Very important as well -- we invest this money in AIDS and HIV education.
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You know that Africa is being affected by these viruses.
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And this is the good news from Africa
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that we have to shout from the rooftops.
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(Applause)
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And now, what the world really needs
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is for you to help me and our partners
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take some of what we have learned in Namibia
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to other places with similar problems:
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places like Mongolia,
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or even in your own backyards,
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the Northern Great Plains,
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where buffalo and other animals have suffered
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and many communities are in decline.
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I like that one:
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Namibia serving as a model to Africa,
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and Africa serving as a model to the United States.
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(Applause)
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We were successful in Namibia
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because we dreamed of a future
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that was much more than just a healthy wildlife.
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We knew conservation would fail
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if it doesn't work to improve the lives of the local communities.
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So, come and talk to me about Namibia,
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and better yet, come to Namibia
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and see for yourself how we have done it.
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And please, do visit our website
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to learn more and see how you can help CBNRM
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in Africa and across the world.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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