As the sun dips below the Namibian horizon, it casts long shadows over what should be golden grasslands. Instead, dense thickets of thorny bushes stretch as far as the eye can see. With some bushes reaching five metres high, the landscape looks like a flourishing forest. But it conceals an ecosystem in collapse.
Research shows that approximately 45 million hectares of land in Namibia are covered by acacia bushes - an area more than ten times the size of the Netherlands.
In Namibia – a vast country more than twice the size of Germany, yet home to just 3 million people - the relationship between people and nature has always been intimate. With over a third of the working-age population unemployed and having limited economic opportunities, communities rely heavily on freely available natural resources. For generations, farming and cattle herding have been the mainstay of local livelihoods.
However, when there is little to fall back on, people use what they have – until it’s gone. Years of overgrazing have stripped the land of its grasses, while fencing has prevented elephants and antelopes from controlling shrub growth, leading to the spread of thorny bushes. Native woody plants – species that had once played supporting roles in the savanna ecosystem – suddenly exploded in numbers.
These aren’t invasive plants in the traditional sense – they belong here. But like guests who have overstayed their welcome, they began to remake the home to suit themselves.
“We sing about the beautiful savannahs in our national anthem, but this is not the reality which we are having today.”
Progress Kashandula, CEO of Namibia Biomass Industry Group (N-BIG)
The roots of these bushes compete with grass for already scarce water and nutrients, ultimately suppressing grass growth. Wildlife, which once moved freely across open savannas, finds itself trapped. For livestock, the situation is equally desperate. Cows stand helplessly before thorn walls, no longer able to find food.
From problem to opportunity
Yet what conservationists saw as a pressing environmental issue, entrepreneurs began to recognize as an untapped resource. This shift in perspective gave rise to what is now called Namibia’s biomass economy – an emerging sector that focuses on utilizing encroacher bush to create economic opportunities, while restoring the ecosystem.
Since the early 2000s, farmers began producing charcoal and, more recently, biochar from harvested biomass for international markets. In 2020, the FSC National Forest Stewardship Standard for the Republic of Namibia was approved. This created an opportunity for small-scale forest managers and landowners harvesting bush biomass to do so responsibly, in accordance with the FSC’s rigorous standards.
Lilani Fourie, head of CMO International, one of the FSC Group Scheme managers in Namibia, explains the transformation:
“Initially, charcoal production was a secondary income source for some of the farmers and small businesses. The financial benefits from charcoal carried a lot of farmers through the droughts. More and more of them started to see that it’s a stable source of income and it became their primary income source.”
Members of the CMO group scheme now employ 9,000 charcoal workers and harvesters per year, providing local farmers with an opportunity to join the FSC value chain at an affordable cost. As of mid-2025, 1.9 million hectares of land in Namibia are FSC-certified.
Fourie sees even greater potential ahead: “Charcoal production only uses a very small portion of this available excess biomass that we have, and there’s a big need to expand into alternative products to use the remainder of the biomass.”
Decarbonizing the power grid
The most ambitious initiative yet is underway near the town of Tsumeb, where NamPower – the state electricity utility company – is building a biomass power plant. Instead of importing coal or oil, Namibia will literally power itself by rehabilitating its own ecosystems.
The Otjikoto Biomass Power Station will convert bush wood into electricity, burning woodchips to produce steam that drives turbines. Sourcing biomass from within a 100 km radius, the project will create a vast bush-thinning operation certified under FSC, with the potential to restore thousands of hectares of degraded land.
Johnson Ndokosho, Namibia’s Director of Forestry in the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism.
“This is a significant undertaking,” said Johnson Ndokosho, Namibia’s Director of Forestry. “NamPower will use around 240,000 tonnes of woodchips annually. That’s a massive harvest – an unprecedented scale for Namibia. The requirement for FSC certification gives us peace of mind, ensuring that bush control and harvesting activities are carried out responsibly.”
Roughly 70 per cent of the plant’s fuel will come from farms under the FSC Group Certification Scheme managed by Environmental Compliance Consultancy (ECC). The rest will be supplied by FSC-certified smallholder landowners. The first deliveries are expected in mid-2026, with commercial operations planned to start in 2027.
For Stephan Bezuidenhout from ECC, the biggest challenge lies in educating local harvesters about sustainability. “As you can imagine, we don’t have the best education and certification requirements seem complex to the local communities. We’ve got some excellent employees at ECC from these communities who can communicate these standards in accessible ways, eventually getting us to a higher level of certification and compliance.”
The facility is funded by the French development agency AFD, Mitigation Action Facility , the French Fund for Global Environment and the government of Namibia. “We needed international support for financing, and they needed to know that all the environmental safeguards would be in place,” explains NamPower project manager Tangeni Tshivute. “Among the standards we evaluated, FSC was the most widely adopted in Namibia, making it the clear choice.”
Social benefits
Namibia’s bush-encroached rangelands contain an estimated 1.5 billion tonnes of woody biomass. Around 30 per cent of this could be harvested sustainably – and that figure doesn’t include annual regrowth or the continued expansion of bush-thickened areas. More than 10 million tonnes of new woody biomass grow back each year while only about 2 million tonnes are currently harvested, mostly for charcoal and firewood.
There are measures in place to prevent overharvesting, notes Namibia’s Director of Forestry Ndokosho. “We only allow harvesting where there’s a problem of bush encroachment. If we don’t control that, people will end up harvesting protected species.”
According to Stephan Bezuidenhout from ECC, the biggest risk would be excessive harvesting of these areas to convert this rangeland into a more productive grassland.
"There needs to be a fine balance between managing the bush thickening and eliminating it - to maintain that restoration component and to preserve the habitat for wildlife: from birds to insects.”
The power plant is expected to bring a wave of employment to rural communities, offering a lifeline to areas with few other opportunities. “We did a macroeconomic study in 2019, which showed that up to 2,500 jobs can be created throughout the whole project,” says Tshivute.
Reversing land degradation
The ultimate question, however, is not what can be removed but what should come back. “To which point in history are we restoring the rangelands?” some ask, “to a wild savannah, or a managed livestock farm?”
“The way the Namibian FSC standard has been written and approved was the fact that you can have one of two primary objectives,” explains Stephan Bezuidenhout of ECC. “The first is that you harvest with the intention of applying aftercare, thereby promoting increased carrying capacity for specific farming practices. The alternative would be to promote the regrowth of these encroacher species, and it means you can sustainably harvest them again in between 15 and 20 years.”
In truth, restoration may be the wrong word; rehabilitation is more accurate. In the age of climate change, recreating past ecosystems is neither possible nor always desirable. The goal is a new balance: a landscape that supports biodiversity , sequesters carbon, sustains livelihoods – and powers a country.
The road ahead
Research institutions are studying how to optimize every aspect of the process, from sustainable harvesting methods to advanced biomass processing technologies. However, significant knowledge gaps remain. More research is needed to fully explore the potential of harvesting bush to restore rangelands, capture carbon, and conserve biodiversity. Currently, scientists don’t have consensus on whether bush harvesting decreases or increases soil carbon capture.
What is clear is that Namibia has transformed what seemed like an environmental disaster into a model for sustainable development. “Essentially, we want to create a thriving biomass industry with decent jobs for people, decent income for farmers, but also ensuring that there’s environmental sustainability and land restoration,” explains Namibia’s Director of Forestry Ndokosho.
“We want to protect biodiversity and have wildlife back in the areas where we have thriving tourism. We want increased productivity for our beef industry. We also want to make sure that you leave some of the thickets and bush standing. The rule of thumb is that there must be 20% left on the land because we essentially do not want to render the area a desert. We want to control the bush but at the same time we need to keep a balance so that we attain what we call savanna. If we can meet and have that balance sorted, then I would have said we have achieved our objective.”