April 2026: NamTip Writing Retreat advances key joint publications
From 30 March to 2 April 2026, members of the NamTip project gathered in Potsdam for a dedicated writing retreat aimed at advancing the project’s scientific publications and key outputs. The retreat brought together 15 participants in person (Fig. 1) - representing both Namibian and German partner institutions - while five additional members joined virtually and actively contributed to discussions and working sessions.
The program combined focused parallel writing sessions with joint meetings to present and discuss ongoing work. Participants worked on a range of collaborative and discipline-specific papers, including a central research concept paper outlining the project’s innovative framework for studying tipping points, as well as a paper on feedback loops integrating insights from social and ecological perspectives on capital dynamics in Namibia’s freehold farming systems. In addition, ecological syntheses were advanced, drawing on results from the transect study of the previous project phase and from the TipEx experiment, which investigates long-term changes in vegetation, biomass, soils, and seedbanks under combined drought and grazing treatments. Depending on the stage of each manuscript, efforts ranged from drafting and revising text sections to consolidating initial findings and structuring emerging papers. Beyond scientific publications, the retreat also supported the preparation of further project outputs, including a booklet summarizing results from all 17 NamTip factsheets - targeted at practitioners and planned for translation into Otjiherero - as well as a policy brief addressing Namibian decision-makers.
Hosted at the historic campus Neues Palais of the University of Potsdam, the retreat offered an inspiring setting for concentrated work, complemented by informal exchanges during walks through the nearby Sanssouci Park and a shared project dinner. As one of the final in-person gatherings of the project, the retreat provided a valuable opportunity to strengthen collaboration while making significant progress on outputs that will be finalized and submitted for publication in the coming months.
