October 2024: Fieldwork on Social-Ecological Tipping Points and Bush Encroachment on Freehold Farms
Between late August and early October 2024, NamTip team members Marlen Britsch and Svea Muche, both MSc students from ISOE, conducted extensive field research in Namibia. Their qualitative interviews engaged freehold farmers, representatives from ministries, and private businesses between Windhoek, Otjiwarongo, Okakarara, and Osire. Marlen explored social-ecological tipping points that can lead to farm abandonment in rangeland systems, while Svea researched the socio-economic and socio-political conditions of rangeland restoration, focusing on bush thinning and bush biomass value chains.
Marlen’s work emphasizes the influence of social dynamics, context-specific factors, and feedback loops within the social subsystem. Understanding the interaction between these social dynamics and ecological processes is key for predicting how rangeland systems may shift and evolve. Through 21 interviews with freehold farmers, she explored their perspectives on issues such as land degradation, climate change, and the importance of skills, knowledge, political engagement, infrastructure, public support, and community cohesion. Her goal is to identify feedback loops within the social subsystem and understand their influence on a potential tipping point in the social-ecological rangeland system.
Svea’s research addresses the challenges posed by bush encroachment, a major cause of reduced land productivity on freehold farms in the study area (Fig. 1), and explores the potential of bush thinning for rangeland restoration. Through 29 interviews with stakeholders, she investigated bush control practices and the utilization of bush biomass, with a specific focus on the emerging bush-to-energy value chains (Fig. 2). Her work focuses on identifying the technical, political, social, economic, and knowledge-based factors that drive or hinder the adoption of bush-thinning and biomass utilization practices. Svea aims to shed light on the ongoing transformation in this field, contributing to the development of sustainable strategies for rangeland restoration.
