DRFN: The biggest natural laboratory in the oldest desert in the world

By Conrad Brain

It takes a very special type of creature to survive in the desert. Most desert inhabitants sporting specialised and bizarre adaptations very often have an unusual appearance and almost always have a list of daily activities that surprise, intrigue and baffle onlookers.

Welwitchia monitoring

Creatures of the desert have been perfecting their art of survival for a very long time, and with time everything changes. However, in the mere lifetime of a human, major new adaptive changes are unlikely to develop and mature, let alone be noticed by those spectators of the desert arena. So how is it that one organism, so to speak, has been able to defy the age-old laws of the desert so blatantly? Under circumstances of desiccation, erosion and evaporation, of shifting sands, east wind and flood, this organism of humble beginnings has reached a surprising stage of adaptive greatness, and like its neighbourly creatures of the desert, it isn’t just surviving, it’s thriving. I speak here of the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia, or the DRFN.

It is somewhat fitting that today’s DRFN started with the lure of a beetle. This lure drew a small group of scientists to a place where three very different desert habitats lay next to each other and in a place with easy access to each other. Desert-adapted invertebrates abounded and the small group stepped into a researcher’s paradise. It wasn’t long before the magnificent diversity of beetles led the founder of this research haven to address his new-found natural laboratory as the oldest desert in the world. Dr Charles Koch and his beetles had started an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of desert organisms and deserts as a whole.

The beetles that started it all had millions of years to adapt, to catch life-giving fog, to run on hot sand and generally avoid turning into premature dead beetles. This gift of time was not something that the newly founded research station at Gobabeb had. As with matters human, time is short and very often time is money. However, in an astoundingly short period of time, Gobabeb and its researchers elevated an area of the central Namib Desert to what is probably the most understood and circumscribed ecosystem on planet earth. Scientific diversification blossomed, and for three decades, the climate, geology, ecology and more subtle aspects of desert life were researched with such proficiency that journals were filled, books and monographs appeared and films were produced. Soon the rest of the world was watching.

It was indeed a time to be watching. Because Namibia was about to become independent and the former security provided by umbrella organisations for managing Gobabeb was closing. However, the seeds of diversification in desert research had been sown and an avenue for future survival had opened. With astute leadership, well-defined purpose and a foundation of productivity and research excellence, the desert fledgling seemed ready to bloom. One year prior to independence the transformation occurred from the former research foundation to the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia. Simultaneously, the focus was shifted from the most studied area in Namibia to Namibia as a whole, and this too was about to expand.

With expansion comes fragmentation. It is an inevitable consequence but not necessarily a negative one, and in the case of DRFN, expansion has been managed elegantly. Part of this management is reflected in the mission statement “Enhancing decision-making for sustainable development”. Sustainable development is a very complex matter, and in arid environments with their highly variable conditions, many environmental and social factors are brought into play. DRFN management obviously recognises this fact acutely, as no less than sixteen current projects are active, ranging from such contrasting habitats as the Okavango river basin (Every River has its People) project to desert margins in Africa (Desert Margins Project). Other acronyms akin to rap music titles – NamBEMP (Namibia Biomass Energy Management Programme) and WERRD (Water and Environment Resources in Regional Development) – echo the scale and diversity of DRFN involvement.

However, sub-Saharan Africa’s future rests not with the environment, but with the people, more specifically, the vast cross-section of communities living in arid and semi-arid environments and the decision makers influencing those communities. Again, these two groups are targets of the DRFN approach. To reach these communities the DRFN defines the three most critical aspects – land, water and energy. The focus on these three is sustainability, not exploitation, and the guidelines are not rigid. Sensitivity to each location and situation means that there is always some form of overlap between the three aspects, and indeed, between the communities and even individuals within a community.

While offering communities the captain’s seat, DRFN assumes a co-pilot position and through the continuous flow of relevant information based on sound research and communication with the pilot, good decisions are made and a course to sustainable development becomes a reality.

Development by the DRFN in this regard has not gone unnoticed and it is fitting that the place where it all started – Gobabeb – has been awarded a new designation. On 9 May 2005, the Gobabeb Training and Research Centre was officially inaugurated. On the occasion, the long-established links between the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and Gobabeb were reaffirmed. Furthermore, celebration was made of the designation of Gobabeb as a SADC Centre of Excellence in support of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the UN Convention on Biodiversity Conservation and the UN Convention on Climate Change.

In two ways, DRFN has defied the age-old rules of the desert. It has adapted quickly and it has grown exponentially.

Luckily arid environments and people living in them stand to benefit from this defiance. At the time, while much was being made of a great success amongst the hullabaloo of fame and recognition, the creatures of the desert quietly prepared to survive another day.

This article appeared in the 2005/6 edition of Conservation and the Environment in Namibia.