choose not to participate? Our analysis is based on a survey of approximately 1,000 households in seven conservancies within the Kunene and Caprivi regions of Namibia.

We use quantitative program evaluation techniques to determine the impacts of conservancy creation. We first assess whether households in established conservancies are better off relative to households in new conservancies. Thus, our control group is comprised of households in recent conservancies while our treatment group is made up of households in more established conservancies. We evaluate household income and three other income-expenditure measures of household welfare and ask whether differences in these measures can be attributed to the presence of conservancies. By analyzing impacts on four indicators of household welfare, we examine the robustness of our results. Our results suggest that community conservancies have a positive impact on household welfare. We also conclude that this impact is poverty-neutral in Kunene and pro-poor in Caprivi.

The second part of our paper focuses on households that report that they are participants in conservancies. We restrict our analyses to established conservancies and ask whether there are significant welfare gains to participating households. While a simple perusal of data suggests that participants are indeed better off, statistical analysis (controlling for differences amongst households) leads to more ambiguous results. We find that there is little difference in welfare gains between participants and non-participants. Thus, welfare benefits from conservancy appear to be evenly distributed between participant and non-participant households.

In interpreting our results, we need to consider whether household income-expenditure measures are reasonable indicators of overall well-being. Conservancy benefits accrue in the form of communal public goods as well as household income. To the extent that these public goods impact income, household welfare measures are adequate. However, to the extent that household income measures do not fully capture all the benefits created by conservancies, our analyses may be underestimating the returns from community management. Our results suggest that households living in established conservancies gain relative to comparator groups, yet participants themselves may not see noteworthy benefits. We interpret these results to mean that the community benefits of conservancies dominate individual benefits and these community benefits are beginning to have an indirect and positive impact on households.

# **2.  Background on Community Conservancies in Namibia**

CBNRM in Namibia illustrates the nature of the challenge such activities pose and the role of historical artifacts in shaping community efforts. In 1968, Namibian colonial authorities granted white commercial farmers conditional rights over certain wildlife species, and allowed them to use and exploit wildlife for game and trophy hunting and tourism (see Jones and Murphree (2001) for a detailed account). These rights were reinforced through the passage of the Nature Conservation Ordinance of 1975 (Barnes and De Jager, 1996). Individual farmers pooled their land to provide wildlife with the required habitat, and created large _private_ conservancies. There are currently 24 private 3