Windhoek
The Ministry of Environment and Tourism is worried about losing staff in the field of environmental economics, while the University of Namibia (Unam) lacks capacity to train students for this specialised field.
The environmental commissioner Theofilus Nghitila confirmed the critical shortage at the ministry saying capacity is now limited in terms of personnel.
He said the ministry only has three qualified environmental economists.
“The ministry has done a lot in terms of training. We train them, then we lose them once they get qualified. They leave for greener pastures in the private sector where they pay more competitive packages. We have seen resourceful people who we trained and are now at institutions like Bank of Namibia,” he said.
An environmental economist studies the environmental significance of economic decisions, using theories of economic analysis.
From projects to policy, theses economists will then scrutinize the current or potential use of resources and advise the public, governments and business leaders on the resulting environmental effects.
Environmental economists are also involved in the reshaping of analytical economic models, as well as developing new ones to tackle complex issues related to environmental economics.
This process includes figuring out ways to assign economic value to the environment and discerning how that value correlates with the larger economy.
With the newly launched Resource Mobilisation for Biodiversity Conservation Project (ResMob), the ministry is hopeful this will support the activities of a critical environmental economics division in its attempts to put value on the country’s natural capital and integrate such values into accounting systems.
Unam Head of Department of Biological Sciences, Dr Elsabe Julies, says the university lacks capacity in training such people.
She said the shortage and lack of capacity are compounded by the fact that the importance of the environment in economic systems is a recent idea worldwide.
“Therefore, there is a lack of capacity not just in Namibia, but all over the world for environmental economists. We don’t have a course in environmental economics, we have a course called MEC-Biodiversity Management which falls under the Department of Biological Sciences,” she told New Era upon inquiry.
It has been running for the past 10 years at Unam. It was established in collaboration a German university and as part of that programme there is a module called environmental economics. She said currently there is no specific programme at Unam or the Polytechnic of Namibia that focuses only on environmental economics.
Unam has graduated over 30 students since the introduction of the programme.
“The graduates are also not specialists in environmental economics. They only have an idea in it – they would be good managers in biodiversity because of that background. We don’t have the capacity to teach at master’s programme level, because you need to have at least a PhD to teach a master’s programme. And currently in Namibia, there is no PhD specialising in environmental economics. And that is what we need to focus on to get people to do post-graduate training so that we have specialists in that field,” she noted.
She also alluded to the critical shortage of scholarships in such areas of study.