Bank of a river, Namibia

From the sky, the salt deposits that have accumulated in the crevices of the banks of this lake in the Etosha national park, in Namibia, look like surprising shapes of plants or fanciful animals. This 22.270 km2 park, one of the largest protected spaces in Africa, is set around a 5.000 km2 bowl covered in salt (Etosha pan) which turns into a lake during the rainy season, from November to April. Its brackish water repels mammals but allows blue-green algae that attract thousands of flamingos to grow. When it is dry, the bowl is covered with grass which large herbivores feed on. Natural protected areas in Namibia account for a fifth of the territory’s surface area and the environment’s conservation is one of the country’s main objectives and is even written into this country’s Constitution. Today, there are about 102.000 protected areas in the world which represent over 18.8 million km2 (12.5% of land surface). This surface area has more than quadrupled over the past thirty years. However, some of these protected areas are only theoretical and do not escape degradation: there are farms in over half of them