A quantum model of climate change? Insights from community-based natural resource management in Namibia

Introduction

Having lived in the harsh, dry conditions of the Erongo Region of Namibia for generations, Eric and his family have always been farmers. “We are farmers” he says, “traditional farmers, historically farmers, we are farmers.” For Eric and other subsistence farmers of the area, life has always been challenging; the soils of the Erongo Region are not known for their productivity and Namibia is the driest country in sub-Saharan Africa (Saarinen, 2016, 2009). Despite these environmental challenges, the independence of Namibia in 1990 brought new hope for the communities of the Erongo Region. Finally freed from Apartheid rule, there was a hope that land would be more fairly distributed, and that many Namibians would be able to prosper from natural resources. In 1996, the Nature Conservation Amendment Act was passed, which created the program known as Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM). This form of resource governance devolves control of resources from central governments to local communities, and many Namibians welcomed this change, especially in light of the economic possibilities that ecotourism promised (Richardson, 1998). Neighboring countries such as Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Zambia were already having successes with CBNRM and many felt that Namibian communities could experience similar benefits (Berkes et al., 2009). While the development of CBNRM efforts often involves tradeoffs between the three goals of economic development, environmental conservation, and community empowerment (Heffernan, 2022a, 2022b, 2022c), the success of the program from a policy perspective is evidenced by its growth.

However, policy progress cannot undo the existing environmental challenges of the desert any more than it can protect a region from the threat of climate change. Indeed, the effects of climate change on CBNRM conservancies are undeniably complex. As humanity contributes to massive shifts in the natural world, that natural world radically reshapes the social relations possible within it. This is not a matter of single-path linear causation where natural forces produce effects in the natural world and social forces lead to social change alone; indeed, the complexity of causality in the case of climate change sees social interactions produce natural effects, and natural causes drive cultural change. The dense network of relations has many nodes exerting pressures on one another, while the system as a whole encounters the devastating wave of climate change.

Karen O’Brien (2021) has argued that the complex effects of climate change require a substantial conceptual shift, away from the conventional explanations of social science that reify and reaffirm Newtonian assumptions about the social world. In a similar vein, Cameron Harrington (2020) employs a quantum frame to draw attention to the entanglement of human and non-human in the Anthropocene. To grapple with the radical disruption of climate change, we join a diverse group of scholars applying the concepts and methods of quantum mechanics to social science, while also dissolving the boundary between social science and the natural world. Prior forays into quantum social science have approached a wide variety of angles, including mathematical models (Arfi, 2005), quantum consciousness theory (Wendt, 2015), time (McIntosh, 2020, 2021), entanglement (Fierke and Antonio-Alfonso, 2018; Fierke and McKay, 2020; see also Noxolo, 2020), superpositions (Murphy, 2021a), relationality (Bowman, 2021) and beyond. As described in the subsequent section, our quantum framework in this article employs a critical-quantum theoretical framework (e.g. Murphy, 2021b; Voelkner, 2022; Voelkner and Zanotti, 2022; Zanotti, 2019), using the concepts of social wavefunctions and interference effects to explain and explore the interactions between climate change, CBNRM, and Namibian communities. If we are to take seriously O’Brien's provocation that our beliefs and paradigms matter (2021), then the call for a quantum leap in the analysis of climate change may be our only hope for thinking through new ways of understanding and addressing the climate crisis. The present investigation seeks a descriptive rather than a prescriptive goal, but we hope that our collaborative work—bringing together empirical research on climate politics and theoretical research on quantum International Relations (IR)—can offer one example of how a quantum imaginary helps to understand the stakes of a policy challenge in the face of climate change. ¹

We understand CBNRM as the social wavefunction of an entangled system, complex in its composition and dense in its relationality, which encompasses both natural and cultural elements. Entanglement describes the fundamental, ontological connectedness of a quantum system, such that the constituent elements cannot be understood in isolation. While we recognize that many and multiple complex intra-actions occur within the phenomenon of CBNRM, we argue that the interaction of CBNRM with climate change can only be fully appreciated as a quantum encounter. Like the artist sketching waves on a rushing river, capturing all the details would lead to overwhelming frothiness in our description. We must therefore ask the reader's forgiveness for our brevity—our sketch consists of bold strokes that outline a new way of understanding climate change, and we will leave the fine detailing to future iterations. The first section provides an introduction to quantum IR and quantum social theory, while the second section presents our empirical case of CBNRM programs in Namibia. The third section undertakes the diffractive reading ² of CBNRM through critical quantum IR to describe the intra-actions of CBNRM and the interference of climate change. The conclusion returns to the question of quantum social change and perspectival shifts.

Critical/quantum

While quantum IR theorists are not the first to critique the limitations of Newtonian physics as a model for social science (e.g. Bernstein et al., 2000), the argument for a replacement of a Newtonian imaginary with a quantum one is rhetorically elegant in its simplicity (Murphy, 2021b; Wendt, 2015: 10–14; Zanotti, 2017, 2019). The assumptions of separability, law-like predictability, and objectivity that are characteristic of Newtonian physics dominate positivistic projects of social research and IR. Yet, as Wendt (2015) and Zanotti (2019) have argued, even post-positivist approaches shy away from a direct challenge to Newtonian mechanics—while epistemological and methodological arguments may challenge linear and simplistic models, these moves do not go so far as to unsettle the “causal closure of physics” (see Wendt, 2015: 7–11). Therefore, while concepts in critical IR may have quantum-like tendencies, they “remain bound by the confines of Newtonian assumptions” (Murphy, 2021b: 103). While quantum accounts may equally seek improved predictions through the mobilization of quantum mathematical models in positivist game-theoretic research or radical destabilization of conventional binary categories of society, they remain nevertheless united in their rejection of the Newtonian assumptions of conventional social science. Saying that explanations are “improved” when developed through quantum logics is perhaps somewhat misleading for a non-quantum audience—because in quantum theory measurement is an active force in the world, an improved description is not one that “objectively” represents a detached world in a more precise manner, but a reflexive and transparent recognition of relationality and positionality that includes the researcher within in the system (Barad, 2007; Murphy, 2022a).

The point of this article is not to further the theoretical debates offering physical and metaphysical justifications for quantum theory or the insufficiency of Newtonian imaginaries, nor to argue directly with other emerging perspectives such as complexity, chaos, or systems theory. Instead, we move to applied description. Newtonian assumptions of causal linearity limit our understanding of social complexity, while locality denies the radical connectedness of a globalized world; substantialist onto-epistemologies are unable to grapple with subjectivity and reflexivity, and a Newtonian model of matter is fundamentally irreconcilable with the existence of intentionality and consciousness (Der Derian, 2011, 2019; Der Derian and Wendt, 2020; Murphy, 2021b; Wendt, 2015; Zanotti, 2019). ³ As we have moved beyond the early introduction of quantum ideas to IR theory, we can leave (meta)physical debates to (meta)physical debaters, and applied-theory efforts can get to work applying the theory. To this end, our investigation will lay out our theoretical framework in the manner that we might expect of any other theoretical framework in IR; in our case, introducing the social wavefunction, entangled ontologies, and destructive interference.

Quantum mechanics emerged out of debates around the nature of light. Registering as a particle when interacting with other systems—such as measurement apparatuses (Feynman, 2006)—but producing wave-like pattern effects when left alone, the smallest units of light could not be understood as either wave or particle, but as indivisible “quanta” that exhibited both characteristics (Einstein, 2005). This dualistic nature of light has important implications for the predictability of future positions of a unit of light—called a photon. In Newtonian physics, the future position of a photon could be anticipated along a single path, but in the quantum system the same definitive predictability is impossible. Instead, a mathematical model called a ‘wavefunction’ must be introduced to model the potential positionality of the photon as it emanates in a wave through space. In technical terms, we move from a single position to a multiplicity in superposition. Instead of predictive statements, we must—following Schrodinger (1980)—blur together all possible future positions of the photon in its wave-path to ensure that we can be correct about the future measured position, but also because of the actual wave-effects that the photon may produce en route. The exact ontological significance of the wave/wavefunction relationship remains hotly debated in the philosophy of physics, but for our purposes, the lesson to be drawn comes from the model of the wavefunction as a blurring-together of potential future states. In the words of Giorgio Agamben, we might say that the social wavefunction expresses the “ontology of the possible” (2018: 28) for a social entity.

In the case of an individual actor, then, the social wavefunction might represent all the potential future states that the person might occupy. ⁴ Over the small scale, this may be rather mundane (the decision to sleep in or obey the alarm clock remains in superposition until the morning comes) but on a larger scale, the description covers almost an infinite ground incorporating all potentialities in all spheres of life. The important notion here is not the concept of infinity in isolation, but of the boundaries of that infinity (Murphy, 2021b: 8). The wavefunctions of the rich, for example, include expensive future states inaccessible to the poor. ⁵

However, the quantum wavefunction does not only apply as a description of the potential future states of an individual. Rather, the social wavefunction can operate across the levels of analysis familiar to scholars of IR. The phenomenon known as entanglement describes a fundamental ontological connectedness between particles whereby the description of one is incomplete unless it includes consideration of the other because of the spooky action at a distance possible between the two. Quantum social theory, following Barad (2007), understands ontological entanglement as a fundamental description of reality where entangled phenomena serve as the primary units of analysis (rather than component thing-units). While this sounds complex, it is in reality a clearer expression of complexity. In short, approaching social inquiry from the perspective of an entangled ontology means recognizing relational systems as constituting a new whole. A larger social unit (e.g. structure, hierarchy, institution, organization, etc.) is understood as an entangled wavefunction, meaning that the system cannot be understood in isolation from its parts and the parts cannot be understood in isolation from the system. We note this with the caveat that an individual will generally be more influential in a small system (e.g. a romantic couple) than a large system (e.g. the global oil market), although we could imagine many suprises. An “entangled social wave function” refers to phenomena consisting of inseparable components whose boundaries are fuzzy and relational networks are dense. Barad (2007) describes activity within phenomena as “intra-action” rather than interaction, reflecting the significance of the relations within a system over the status of relata.

In summary, quantum social theory offers us a model of units as wavefunctions that considers potential future states in an ontology of the possible. Social structures and other dense relational networks are understood as systems called entangled wave functions. Within these systems, actions are intra-actions intelligible only within a phenomenon; between entangled wave functions, actions are interactions. In the case of climate change interacting with community-based natural resource management in Namibia, we must turn our attention to a specific interaction known in quantum theory as interference.

The phenomenon known as quantum interference describes a set of interaction effects produced by two waves coming into contact. While interference may produce a spectrum of outcomes, there are two ideal types. The first, constructive interference, describes where interacting waves are in sync, such that the superposition of two waves produces higher peaks and lower troughs. Returning to Schrodinger's explanation of the wavefunction as the blurring of all potential future states, we might say that the result of constructive interference is an expansion of the spectrum of potential future states. The second ideal type of quantum interference is destructive interference. Here, interacting waves are precisely out of sync, such that the troughs of one wave meet the peaks of the other. If amplitudes are equivalent, the waves will be perfectly cancelled out; if one wave is of a larger amplitude than the other, then the superposed wave will be a reduced form of the stronger wave. In either case, the range of potential future states is greatly reduced vis-à-vis the original waves. Waves meeting while off-set might see peaks superposed with neutral values, or troughs with ascending but non-peak points. This spectrum of complex interaction effects known as interference describes the behavior of two or more waves coming together.

What lies at the heart of quantum interference in social theory is the ability of two interacting wavefunctions to expand or contract the spectrum of future possibilities. Whereas we may intuitively connect “positive” with “good” and “negative” with “bad,” the important considering in the case of a social wavefunction is the breadth of the spectrum of future possibilities accessible to a social unit. An individual who occupies a privileged position within a social hierarchy will necessarily enjoy—through the constructive interference of their being in phase with that social hierarchy—a wider spectrum of future possibilities than an individual who is oppressed by the same social structure (Murphy, 2022b). Given that the social wavefunction is a representation of a social unit, this can apply equally to an individual as to an institution, hierarchy, or other composite actor. Indeed, it is precisely the interference between the social wave of the hierarchy and the social wave of the individual that shapes the spectra of future possibilities available to each (these are not necessarily equal in impact, as the disturbance of an individual on a country will typically be more subtle than the impact of a country on an individual).Within the ontology of the possible, the reduction of potential future states constitutes a concomitant reduction of being for the interfered-with wavefunction. When destructive social interference occurs, the challenge is not merely one of policy or decision but ontological possibility.

Before presenting the empirical foundation of our analysis it is worthwhile to outline the quantum connection that will be established later on. As described through this article, we approach CBNRM as an entangled wave function, and argue that the many multiple constituents of CBNRM must be understood in their complexity. Within CBNRM, there are many multiple and complex intra-actions between constituents. The case of climate change is significant because climate change, as a wave function distinct from CBNRM proper, produces through its interaction destructive interference effects that radically reshape the ontology of the possible.

Historical and climactic background for CBNRM in Namibia

Namibia is home to many of Africa's charismatic megafauna and has long boasted some of the largest populations of many species including desert elephant, black rhino, giraffes, zebra and more (Brown and Bird, 2011). However, the colonial occupation had an almost immediately negative impact on these populations in the late nineteenth century, which continued through to 1990. In particular, the 1970s and 1980s saw increased pressures put on wildlife, many of which resulted in populations declining at an alarming rate (Boudreaux, 2008). Specific examples of violence include poaching for the sale of animal products, the hunting of wildlife to feed armies and communities, and the slaughtering of animals by colonial forces seeking either to starve Namibian forces or in general pursuit of a scorched earth approach (interview 20).

Marked decreases in wildlife populations in countries across southern Africa led to the recognition that new models of natural resource protection were necessary. This led to the emergence of community-based forms of conservation. These approaches would see humans and wildlife coexist peacefully and sustainably rather than through earlier ‘fortress conservation’ approaches which had attempted to entirely limit local residents from engaging with the wildlife or their habitat (Galvin et al., 2020). Because many communities in Namibia at this time relied heavily on subsistence agriculture as the sole means of livelihood, many individuals tended to see wildlife as a nuisance. This relation to wildlife was only reified by the status quo methods of fortress conservation, where local populations tended to incur many of the costs associated with wildlife populations, while enjoying little in the way of the benefits. Costs were born particularly by farmers, who were often limited from expanding grazing areas and faced increased threats to their livestock owing to predators, as well as infrastructural threats in the form of elephants destroying pipes in their own search for water (Bollig, 2016). As a response to these complex issues, CBNRM emerged as a key technique of resource governance in a number of southern African countries (Child, 1996).

The introduction of the 1996 Nature Conservation Amendment Act set out the terms by which communities close to natural resources could organize and approach the Namibian Government in order to become ‘gazetted’ as communal conservancies with rights over specific natural resources. Communities had to decide on the size of their group and territory, and write a constitution (including plans for electing a conservancy council, holding AGMs and other meetings) and a resource sharing plan. In meeting the minimum threshold outlined by the legislation, conservancies developed as a new layer of democratic governance which was intended to provide not only participation, but also ownership over development projects (Richardson, 1998). Since the 1990s the CBNRM program in Namibia has continuously expanded, growing from four conservancies gazetted in 1998, to 92 today (Heffernan, 2023; Roe et al., 2009). The country is widely touted as one of the greatest CBNRM success stories based on it boasting the highest percentage of land devoted to the program, positive development indicators, and marked increases in wildlife populations (Hoole, 2010). Since independence, Namibia has decreased the proportion of Namibians living below the national poverty line from 57% to 17.4% (World Bank, 2020). While this decrease in poverty is due to a number of factors, the burgeoning tourism sector based largely on CBNRM has played an important role.

Namibia has been experiencing a severe drought in most regions of the country for the better part of a decade. While droughts are part of the normal hydrological cycle, their frequency, duration, and severity have all worsened over time. Conservancies are experiencing higher human population growth rates than the rest of the country and high demands on the land mixed with increasingly fragile environments as a result of climate change are compounding an already difficult situation (Heffernan, 2023). Satellite data indicates that large parts of the northwest region of Namibia—which hosts many CBNRM conservancies—has faced considerable declines in the productivity of land over the past 17 years (Coldrey and Turpie, 2020). Of the various types of land use, however, wildlife-designated zones tend to be actually increasing in productivity. This means that land designated strictly for wildlife use, where ecosystems and natural habitat tend to be protected, is improving in quality (Coldrey and Turpie, 2020). Therefore, it is the non-wildlife use zones which tend to be used for various forms of farming that are contributing to the brunt of the decline in productivity. Farming can be demanding on land and ecosystems in general, and this is exacerbated in the fragile landscapes of Namibia where scarce bush and tree cover is removed to make room for farming activities, livestock grazing decreases veld food, and local freshwater resources are stretched. While agriculture and ecosystem stability are not inherently in competition, the scarcity of resources means that they are often increasingly in conflict in the case of Namibia. This is only further exacerbated by the fact that they are contributing to the same deleterious effects of climate change, compounding a number of environmental issues—particularly in farming zones. This is leading to worries as “there is also increasing concern that wildlife areas are being reduced through fencing off land for agriculture as well as through invasion by cattle” (Coldrey and Turpie, 2020: vi). Thus, as the effects of climate change further limit the ability of Namibians to subsist on agriculture, some are attempting to expand their farming practices, which is encroaching on and threatening wildlife zones that remain productive. These very concerns elucidate the complexity of the relationship between the natural and cultural worlds as initially farmers opposed CBNRM as they feared the protection of wildlife would lead to less land available for livestock grazing as well as growing threats from predators. Over time the program developed mechanisms that allowed the two forms of land use to co-exist more or less in harmony, and revenue from tourism was able to be used to compensate farmers for any losses that did occur. As a result, there came to be much broader buy-in from Namibian farmers. However, since the onset of the present drought, renewed pressures have once again challenged this relationship between farmers, communities, tourists, and private entreprise, thus limiting future possibilities. Furthermore, 200 hectares of forest coverage has been lost on average per year since 2001 across northern Namibian conservancies. Core wildlife zones of conservancies have seen 556 hectares of forest lost and 2209 hectares from multiple use zones between 2001 and 2018.

While it is difficult to isolate the exact causes of both land degradation and loss of forest cover, scientific data suggests that it is at least in part due to human population pressures/activities and changes in the climate (Coldrey and Turpie, 2020). Research has used forecasting tools based on historical averages and have concluded that the total precipitation across Namibia will decrease by approximately 9% for the period between 2040 and 2060 relative to historical (1960–1990) precipitation. This amounts to decreases in precipitation of 8% in the rainy season and 20% in the dry season. Average annual temperatures are also forecast to increase by 3°C (15%) (Coldrey and Turpie, 2020: vi). These decreases in rainfall and increases in temperature are significant developments in an already extremely hot and dry place where people rely heavily on their local environments for livelihoods and subsistence.

The current drought is making agriculture—which was already a low productivity activity in the region—continuously less productive, thus making it increasingly difficult to feed growing populations. Certain areas have not received precipitation in years, and while some of the flora of Namibia has evolved in order to survive the extreme drought conditions, food staples can be grown in fewer and fewer regions of the country. Livestock has also been dying off at a frightening pace, as the World Bank reports that 48,000 animals have died owing to the present drought (World Bank, 2020).

As the benefits derived from the program diminish, the costs borne by communities and farmers become less tolerable, opposition can mount, and people begin to wonder whether a return to traditional activities would make more sense. However, as the drought has begun to severely limit the ability of farmers to produce sufficient food, there has been renewed support for the program which for many communities has become virtually their sole source of income and economic activity.

While climate change may be a global issue that impacts every region, that does not mean that all will experience climate change equally. Indeed, the Namibian experience demonstrates how the disproportionately negative effects of climate change can reify pre-existing inequalities. Despite having contributed some of the least toward global climate change, Namibia is experiencing some of its worst effects (World bank, 2020). This is further compounded by it being one of the least well positioned countries to mitigate and adapt to changing realities. Despite its relative per capita wealth, its extremely small population of only just over 2.5 million people makes investing in infrastructure an ongoing challenge (Coldrey and Turpie, 2020). The Awis Dam reservoir, which once formed a plentiful lake and supplied water for the capital, Windhoek, has run dry and is now a popular running and hiking destination rather than a place to swim or for animals to drink. The same is true across the country as rivers and streams have dried up and, in many cases, have become informal roads widely used in getting to remote destinations. Groundwater levels are dropping and bore holes are being dug ever deeper while water supplies near the coast become increasingly salinized (Bollig, 2016).

All of this means increased challenges for virtually every aspect of life in the country. Everything becomes more difficult and more expensive as everything requires water. The people of Namibia have become accustomed to this way of life and are working collectively to innovate in order to use less water while continuing to engage in livelihoods in whatever way they can. While for the most part water remains available to urban dwellers, as with much of the rest of the African continent, over 60% of Namibians rely on the land to some degree for their livelihoods and thus shifts in the climate not only cause acute disasters, but also chronically limit people’s ability to feed themselves or to obtain sufficient fresh water (Snively, 2012). The provision of water for daily needs (e.g. drinking and bathing) has become a challenge. Furthermore, it has also begun to make any sort of food production nearly impossible across much of the country. Where and when certain communities are able to continue agricultural activity, yields are lower than before as demand continues to increase (Schnegg, 2016). The impact of water shortages in the management of livestock is double, requiring both a substantial amount of water for the animals to drink and water for irrigating pastures so that they consist of more than rock and sand. Radical increases in pressures on both crop and livestock farming increase food insecurity and uncertainty about the future for many Namibians. Although so much of the above demonstrates ways in which future possibilities are constrained, there remains ample opportunities for engagement with developing scholarship and practice on climate change adaptation (Owen, 2020), ecosystem-based adaptation (Gilruth et al., 2021) and nature-based solutions (Seddon et al., 2021), among others.

Climate change as destructive interference

Unlike prior challenges facing CBNRM conservation programs, climate change is not isolatable to one aspect (e.g. funding, training, ecotourism promotion) or another—nor even to CBNRM itself. While Karen O’Brien (2016, 2021) argues that quantum social theory may provide a new and empowering model for theorizing responses to climate change, we believe that the utility of quantum IR (and the broader corpus of quantum social theory) may be equally as useful in understanding climate change itself. While our focus in this article rests on the concept of interference to understand the radical shift in policy environment, it is important to recall that entanglement is another significant element of quantum social theory—and as O’Brien (2021) demonstrates, the latter concept makes an important contribution to theorizing agency in face of the challenge of climate change. To explore this claim, we begin by describing CBNRM as an entangled wave function and then discuss its unfolding interactions with the wavefunction of climate change as a case of destructive interference.

As the historical review of CBNRM demonstrates (Heffernan, 2022b), there are many nodes in the network, each of which can be described in terms of a social wave function. For example, an individual farmer may find that more income flows through the family's stake in a local conservancy than the subsistence farming practice that has sustained the family for generations (NACSO, 2020). Communities, especially those which have experienced substantial economic development as a result of CBNRM activities, may find that power relations within the community are restructured, connections to the Ministry of Environment and Tourism become more important, and participation with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) providing financial management assistance take center stage in political deliberations (Heffernan, 2022c). Conservancies, which only arose as a result of the design of CBNRM legislation, exist within the social constellation of CBNRM as substantial legal entities whose future decisions related to revenues and expenditures ripple through communities and families. The significances of the connections between these and other social entities related to CBNRM only take on their full meaning when understood in terms of their entanglements—to say nothing of the actual animals that make the projects profitable in the first place! ⁶

To understand the complexity of CBNRM as a phenomenon, a full description demands consideration of all potential future states, relations, and unfolding within the ontology of the possible. Yet this has an important implication for the fallout of waves interacting with CBNRM. When the global pandemic wave of COVID-19 interacted with the system, it was not only a matter of one change at the system level, but rather differential effects produced across the phenomenon and complex intra-actions between entangled constituents. In the case of climate change, the interference effects are much greater, over longer time horizons, and effect a range of potentialities that are continually and radically reshaped through circular and cumulative causal spirals, producing destructive intra-actions between entangled constituents in addition to the system-level interference.

Communities are experiencing vastly limited potentialities as a result of the ongoing drought that has been impacting Namibia for almost a decade. Following the implementation of CBNRM in the 1990s they experienced expanding potentials as they could choose to become conservancies and resultantly benefit from the options to continue traditional farming activities as well as to expand into various ecotourism ventures. However, as the impacts of climate change have been worsening, livestock are dying off and people are struggling to find fresh water for themselves, let alone crops and livestock, which are both dying off at alarming rates. This is limiting their ability to gain livelihoods through farming and as a result, there has been renewed support within conservancies for CBNRM. The drought has resulted in something of a roller coaster effect for conservancies. Often ecotourism is most successful during the dry season as wildlife congregate around increasingly rare water sources and are thus easier to find for safari-goers. Thus as precipitation levels have decreased, specifically during the dry season, conservancies have benefitted with increased wildlife sightings which they are able to market and use to bring in more clientele. However, as the drought has dragged on, the situation has been exacerbated to the point where wildlife populations, which had been increasing for years, have plateaued and in many cases begun to decrease again (Hebinck et al., 2019; Schnegg et al., 2016). Watering holes have also increasingly disappeared and thus wildlife has once again become more difficult to find as it goes ever further in search of freshwater sources. Thus, as communities have increasingly relied on CBNRM for sustenance in the absence of their ability to farm, ecotourism has simultaneously taken a renewed hit and its possibilities are being limited.

There is a similar paradoxical interference being experienced by farmers as they have been losing their ability to produce crops and raise livestock owing to a lack of water; however, the drought has also meant less wildlife to threaten their crops and livestock. Yet, while there is less wildlife to threaten farmers, wildlife is also increasingly desperate and being forced closer to human settlements it would normally prefer to avoid. Less rain has meant less veld food for animals to graze on, which means less prey for predators (van Rensburg and Tortajada, 2021). As a result, there have been notable increases in human–wildlife conflict as desperate predators such as lions, cheetahs, leopards, hyenas, and jackals attack unprotected livestock (Stoldt et al., 2020). Even elephants, increasingly desperate for water, search out water infrastructure and rip pipes out of the ground, both doing costly damage and depleting already limited freshwater resources.

For the state, NGOs, and the international community, climate change has resulted in a renewed requirement for partnership, which means an increased foothold for outside actors within communities—also another way in which communities/conservancies are impacted. As conservancies have struggled with the above issues, they have worked with the Namibian government to partner with global organizations to assist with developing solutions to these climate problems. Examples of this include the Green Climate Fund partnering with the Namibian government, conservancies to build solar power plants for communities and tourism lodges, and NGOs such as Lightforce working with the CBNRM program to install solar lights on livestock enclosures to scare off predators, as well as a number of other global actors working with communities to develop innovative ways to procure fresh water, recycle grey water, and continue farming activities in increasing harsh conditions. On the surface these initiatives can predominantly be viewed as examples of constructive interference that is triggered by climate change and expands on future possibilities for CBNRM and the actors that are central to its governance. However, ongoing partnerships have also been demonstrated to undermine one of the key goals of CBNRM, that is community empowerment, which is an example of destructive interference that limits the possibilities for some (often those already most marginalized; see Heffernan, 2022a, 2022b, 2022c). It is therefore integral to analyze these complex and ceaseless processes of both constructive and destructive interference that are unleashed by the climate crisis beyond binary Newtonian approaches. Here we have presented a quantum model of climate change as one effective avenue for doing so.

Conclusion

Describing climate change as a quantum phenomenon does not “solve” the problem any more than proposing CBNRM as being an entangled system's wavefunction “solves” its trilemma. However, expecting a one-shot actualized solution is a Newtonian measurement of quantum efforts destined for a misreading. As Karen O’Brien argues, part of the promise of quantum is about presenting an alternative mode of understanding to open up new ways of addressing the crisis of our time. Even at the metaphorical level, our explanation of climate change as interference provides a first effort at replacing the Newtonian metaphors that dominate climate change discourse but ultimately reproduce “a classical and fragmented representation of the world” through simplistic descriptions that “constrain the discourse and limit the solution space by marginalizing alternative policies” (O’Brien, 2021: 55). Turning toward nested wavefunctions instead of distinct levels of analysis, entanglement instead of separateness, and interference in future states rather than abstract models, we can offer a new and quantum alternative to frame our descriptions of climate change.

While the case study may be a particularly powerful example of quantum dynamics in the social world, we do not intend to set out Namibia as a uniquely quantum space, nor climate change as the only quantum subject. The broad applicability of quantum theories of International Relations promises productive engagement with a broad range of case studies. Yet these applications must begin somewhere, and the complexity of the case study presented here—where uncertainty and paradox characterize the imbrication of natural and cultural—seems to make it as productive a starting point as any. While this exploration provides a policy framework, future empirical work can reflect on prescriptive policy advice, while future theoretical work can join Zanotti (2019) in exploring the ethical implications of an entangled and relational worldview.