Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) has emerged as a critical technique of resource governance in Southern Africa. It is intended to give control over specific natural resources such as freshwater, forests and forest products and wildlife populations and their habitat to local communities. Its three broad goals include economic development, environmental conservation and community empowerment. However, my recent fieldwork in Namibia has shown that this supposed local approach to sustainable development is inherently global and that the existing literature fails to account for the politics involved from the local to the global levels.