Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) is one of Africa’s most accomplished conservation organizations. Starting in the 1980s, IRDNC pioneered new approaches of working with rural people in Namibia to protect rhinos and elephants.

A decade later, that provided a key foundation for policy and legal reforms that established communal conservancies, which have become one of Africa’s leading grassroots conservation models.

Today, IRDNC works with communal conservancies across roughly 5 million hectares, building their management capacity, supporting land-use planning, promoting rangeland management, and helping them generate revenue from nature-based enterprises. The more revenue they generate, the more incentives they have to support and engage in community conservation. IRDNC’s trusted role has propelled it into playing a regional role in community conservation, supporting transboundary natural resource management efforts between communities in northeast Namibia and neighbouring Angola, Botswana, and Zambia.