Posts in category: News & Updates

Happy New Year!

The Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) continues to advance understanding of critical biodiversity conservation challenges and their solutions in sub-Saharan Africa by fostering collaborative and adaptive learning opportunities that help practitioners improve, scale and replicate, while generating valuable user-driven knowledge disseminated globally. As such, we strive to apply the best accessible approaches to present practical knowledge to our community of conservation and cross-sector partners.

In 2017, ABCG took a critical look at the face of our collaboration—our interactive website—and invested in redesigning its functionality for a more effective user interface, including enhanced content searching, streamlined user experience, and agile layout. We are delighted to announce our newly redesigned ABCG website!

Our new look clearly presents the Current Issues we’re tacking while maintaining the ability to access our past work spanning a diverse range of conservation challenges over our almost 20 year history. The News and Events pages provide our visitors with up to date information on our implementation progress, publication releases, partner news, upcoming events, past event resources, and other highlights.

Additionally, we’ve refined our searchable database of Resources for greater ease of use. ABCG.org houses a wealth of collectively generated knowledge by ABCG members and partners who produce policy reviews, conduct workshop trainings, catalyze technology development and transfer, and improve upon conservation practices. These resources are shared with cross-sector communities of practice, which include local NGOs, civil society, and government agencies, to enable broader conservation impact across multiple landscapes, and to help avoid the pitfall of “reinventing the wheel”.

Collaboration cultivates the strengths of individual institutions; encouraging peer learning and applying specialized expertise to jointly addressing complex, interconnected conservation challenges in an integrated, multidisciplinary, and systematic manner for results that no one organization could accomplish effectively on its own. This is the strategic advantage of ABCG—a voluntary partnership to achieve substantial impact on a large scale.

By accessing the wide-ranging expertise of our members and their extensive networks throughout sub-Saharan Africa, ABCG is in a unique position to: draw on the best minds and institutions to work together, and enhance the impact of their combined resources; engage the affected community in seeking enduring solutions, and; share evidence-based knowledge with the broader conservation and development community.

We hope you find ABCG.org valuable as a portal, a forum, and resource for innovative conservation solutions. We encourage you to visit and engage with all who are interested in bridging the complex challenges of integrated development and biodiversity conservation.

Resources

Find our printable brochure all about ABCG here.

A new report, Community Natural Resources Management in Tanzania, by Andrew Williams and published in December 2017 by the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG), reviews Tanzania’s land and natural resource management policies and laws which provide a framework for enabling local communities to varyingly administer, manage and sustainably utilize their land and natural resources. The report analyses how effective these laws have been, particularly over the last 15-20 years from when most were promulgated, in enabling communities to secure tenure over their common property resources – principally pastures, forests and wildlife.

This work was commissioned by ABCG’s Land and Resource Tenure Rights working group through the African Wildlife Foundation and World Resources Institute as part of their work in examining progressive land and natural resource management policies and laws which provide a comprehensive framework for enabling local communities to administer, manage and sustainably utilize their land and natural resources, such as Group Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs).

The report points to challenges in the Tanzania’s community land and natural resource laws, for instance, both the Village Land Act, and the Land Use Planning Act (2007), have only been implemented in a very limited way, and often not very well. The sectoral laws were designed with differing approaches as to how communities should be endowed with user rights over their land-based natural resources. The forest law extensively devolved management and benefit rights to communities from the outset whereas the wildlife law adopted a much more cautious and conservative approach, and only through repeated advocacy has the law devolved improved levels of management and economic rights to communities. Even so today, the law still does not allow communities to fully manage and benefit from wildlife resources on their land, and the central government maintains a bureaucratic grip on how community wildlife management operates.

The state of community natural resource management in Tanzania does not look good. The report notes that many Wildlife Management Areas (the designated legal form for community wildlife management) are barely functioning, as they have struggled to attract the necessary partnerships with the private sector to generate the revenues. Many of these Wildlife Management Areas have low levels of wildlife and varying levels of unplanned settlement and conversion to agriculture.

Securing a Certificate of Village Land, Carrying out Village Land Use Planning, and Group Certificates of Customary Right of Occupancy are key conclusions made in the report for enabling communities secure commons in Tanzania.

The report makes the following recommendations towards supporting communities to safeguard their commons in increasingly challenging circumstances:

• Review the new (draft) National Land Policy 2016 and its accompanying implementation strategy – identifying key areas of concern and missed opportunities for improving the policy and legal framework underpinning village-based land and natural resource management.
• Review the existing Village Land Act and its associated regulations and laws – a longer-term undertaking in relation to the new National Land Policy and its implementation strategy, is to carry out a review of the Village Land Act as a pro-active step towards ensuring that its key strengths are safeguarded, and that recommendations for improving its shortcomings are readied in advance of the amendments to the Land Laws that will surely be tabled in Parliament in due course.
• Review and strengthen the legal safeguards for using Group Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (GCCRO) to secure pastoralist and hunter-gatherer commons – the ‘legal light touch’ approach that has thus far been taken should be thoroughly reviewed to address a number of risks around addressing the lack of a sufficiently strong legal relationship between the ‘trustees’ who hold the customary right of occupancy certificate on behalf of the community.
• Pilot the use of group certificates to secure and better manage grazing in other contexts – to date GCCROs have been used in the northern Tanzanian rangelands to increasingly good effect amongst pastoral and hunter-gatherer groups but not yet much elsewhere. What about their suitability, for example, in the Miombo woodlands with mixed farming and socio-culturally different agro-pastoralist communities?
• Review and document the emergence of more innovative and entrepreneurial models for scaling up community-based forest management – there are parallel ongoing initiatives which have adopted different business models in developing and scaling up sustainable forest management (i.e. timber and charcoal harvesting) across the country, mostly facilitated by NGOs. What are the emerging lessons from these initiatives, and what is required to enable the most promising models go to further scale?
• Review best practice business relationships between the wildlife tourism private-sector and communities – in terms of structuring long-term performance-based partnerships for both photographic and tourism sport hunting, for which extensive knowledge and expertise exists from, for example, Namibia and Kenya.
• Investigate arrangements for integrating all natural resource management at village level – the sectoral approach adopted by government has limited the options available for communities in terms of how they manage their common property resources. Some Wildlife Management Areas have significant volumes of exploitable timber, and some community-based forests potentially have exploitable wildlife. Both forestry and wildlife laws generally permit joint community wildlife and forestry management, but this has yet to be explored or implemented.

Findings from the report will be used to influence policy and strategy for enabling successful common property resource management for local communities.

See related publication: The Local Community Viewpoint Regarding the Review, Procedure, and Process of Writing the Tanzanian National Land Policy

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the World Resources Institute (WRI), recipients of the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group’s (ABCG) Emerging Issues small grant recently concluded their project titled, on July 31, 2017.

Through its Emerging Issues small grants, ABCG identifies and develops strategies to respond to new and growing threats that are likely to shape conservation priorities in the coming years, and influence the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation efforts in Africa.

The project sought to develop and implement a new program for bolstering the management and leadership capacity of key individuals working in African natural resource management and conservation. They aimed to focus their efforts on mid-career leaders of organizations in eastern and southern Africa.

In Tanzania, TNC, in collaboration with Maliasili Initiatives hosted workshops to augment the leadership skills of African conservation leaders. TNC also commissioned a retrospective analysis of the efficacy of WRI’s previous investments in the long-term development of African civil society organizations (CSO) in East Africa. Meanwhile, WRI hosted Edward Lekaita, Legal Advisor and Head of Advocacy – Ujamaa Community Resource Team for a month-long fellowship aimed at strengthening his leadership capacity at its Washington, DC headquarters.

The workshops helped create an African Leadership Network which provides a versatile framework for enriching leadership and collaboration in African conservation organizations. The retrospective analysis aided in the development of best practices on how donors and non-governmental organizations (NGO) should engage with and support African civil society organizations.

The creation of a leadership network allows for a productive exchange of ideas and experiences that increase the potential for future collective action in relation to conservation challenges. Best practices from the retrospective analysis will help to educate NGOs and donors on how to use their investments to make African CSOs more self-sufficient and able to impact other organizations.

Contact:

For more information please contact Kimberly Holbrook, TNC at: kholbrook@tnc.org

Photos:

Photo 1 – Far left, Dickson Ole Kaelo, CEO of Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association, and John Kamanga, Executive Director of SORALO, at the African Conservation Leadership Network seminar in Tanzania. Photo credit: Rachel Ambrose

Photo 2 – On the right, Sam Shaba, Program Manager for Honeyguide, and John Griffin, facilitator from Reos Partners, going through an exercise during the two-day African Leadership Network seminar in Tanzania. Photo credit: Rachel Ambrose.

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), recipients of the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group’s (ABCG) Emerging Issues small grants, concluded their project titled, A Scalable Approach to Engaging Chinese Overseas Enterprises to Mitigate Impacts of Wildlife Trafficking in Africa in 2017.

Through its Emerging Issues small grants, ABCG identifies and develops strategies to respond to new and growing threats that are likely to shape conservation priorities in the coming years, and influence the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation efforts in Africa.

The project sought to develop a wildlife trafficking framework that could be implemented by Chinese companies, African host countries, and civil society partners in order to augment their current policies. The objectives were to:

• Increase understanding of the risks Chinese investments pose to wildlife trafficking in African countries.
• Determine the extent to which existing Chinese government policy/regulation governing overseas sustainability covers wildlife trafficking.
• Determine factors which lead to increased implementation of risk mitigation activities by enterprises in Africa.

WWF carried out a landscape study to ascertain potential exposure risks to wildlife trafficking which Chinese enterprises in Gabon might face, as well as examining existing gaps in Chinese overseas policies/frameworks with respect to wildlife trafficking. WCS developed a wildlife trafficking monitoring framework for incorporation into Chinese companies’ policies/guidelines. To further inform the Chinese business community about their conclusions, WWF hosted workshops in Cameroon and Gabon, while WCS did the same in Uganda and China.

The workshops hosted by WCS and WWF, strengthened relationships formed and educated Chinese companies about how to include conservation in their business model. Furthermore, the risk mitigation framework presented Chinese companies with a template for how to apply lessons learned from the workshops and create or enhance their wildlife conservation policies.

The project aided in developing a strategy for approaching the Chinese business community with regards to wildlife trafficking. This in turn allowed for the identification and development of receptive partners. By recruiting companies to become actively involved in wildlife trafficking prevention, there is increased potential for decreasing wildlife trafficking in Africa.

Contact:

For more information, please contact Stephanie Wang, WCS at: swang@wcs.org

Photos:

Photo 1 – A Chinese NGO representative shares group discussion results with conference participants. Photo Credit: WCS

Photo 2 – The Hon. Dr. Goretti Kimono Kitutu, Uganda’s State Minister for Water and Environment delivering her inaugural speech at a workshop. Photo Credit: WCS

Introduction

On October 26, 2017, the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) examined preliminary data on how climate change affects rural African communities and how their adaption responses impact biodiversity in its presentation titled, .

A major oversight of most climate assessments has been the inadequate consideration of indirect impacts on biodiversity due to changing human behavior in response to climate change (e.g. changes in human use of natural resources). ABCG’s thematic working group, Managing Global Change Impacts on Biodiversity (GCI) is classifying human coping responses across Africa, and the impacts of these responses on biodiversity. Click here to view the GCI factsheet.  

The GCI working group members presented their progress to date in collecting data on human responses to climate change from 19 sites in Kenya, Zambia, Namibia, Madagascar, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, and Gabon, and a preliminary analysis of the resulting effects on biodiversity. Results will be used to predict future responses to climate change in order to provide guidance on ecosystem based adaptation strategies.

The meeting commenced with opening remarks by Rebecca Goodman, ABCG’s Coordinator who provided a brief overview of ABCG’s approach and current activities. Nikhil Advani, Lead Specialist: Climate, Communities and Biodiversity at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), then provided an overview of the project as a whole followed by a report from Chris Zganjar a conservation scientist at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) on activity progress across the 19 sites.

Activities

Key informant surveys were conducted at the 19 sites by ABCG members: TNC, WWF, the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), the World Resources Institute (WRI), Conservation International (CI), the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Interviewers asked community members about their perceived changes in climate and weather patterns and how they have responded to these changes.

CI is creating a typology of responses which transforms qualitative data from the interviews into quantitative data for use in mapping the occurrence of responses. So far, CI has analyzed 122 interviews (17% of total) with 630 responses to perceived changes in weather or climate.

34 unique responses have been identified where multiple responses are associated with decreased livestock productivity, crop productivity, and water availability. Responses primarily included adaptation strategies, such as migration and coping strategies, such as hunting.

Data collected from meteorological stations near pilot sites will determine whether interview responses are correlated with actual weather data. Assessing this data will indicate regions where people are likely to demonstrate varying (i.e., good and bad) coping strategies. Human response impact maps will then be overlaid onto maps of conservation priorities (e.g., national parks, species range, or ABCG partner project sites) to understand where human responses are most likely to impact conservation.

Overall recommendations from these activities for effective survey implementation/data collection:

• Simpler questions elicit more meaningful responses.
• Categorizing responses aids in determining trends and effects.
• Experienced interviewers decrease the time needed for interviews.
• Comparison of several climate models might lead to identification of areas where data is most significant.
• Comparing actual weather data with observed data sets provides a more accurate picture of possible climate trends.

Next Steps

The GCI working group will continue to review surveys and build a typology of responses. Climate maps will be prepared for all sites and responses associated with current climate trends. The GCI group will also identify locations where certain responses may happen in the future and identify alternate responses that should be encouraged.

WCS, TNC and CI will use the evidence base of human responses and likely conservation impact of response types to identify and prioritize adaptation strategies that improve biodiversity outcomes by helping people adapt to climate change. They will then develop and pilot a methodology to identify areas and prioritize adaptation efforts, including ecosystem-based adaptation, that accounts for potential trade-offs between targeting projects primarily to benefit to people and projects designed solely based on conservation objectives.

A final dissemination workshop will bring together varied stakeholders, including community representatives from the different survey sites, to present recommended adaptation strategies that are most likely to be successful for people while also benefiting biodiversity conservation efforts.

Resources

Click below to watch the event recording.

Click here to view the presentation slides.

For more information please contact, Nikhil Advani at nikhil.advani@wwfus.org

Photos

Photo 1 – ABCG survey sites. Photo Credit: Chris Zganjar, TNC
Photo 2 – Key informant interviews. Photo Credit: WCS

Introduction

On October 24, 2017, the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) presented the interim results from three pilot studies which examined methods for securing land and resource tenure, in its presentation titled, Piloting New Approaches for Securing Tenure in Three Critical Ecosystems in Africa.

ABCG’s Land and Resource Tenure Rights (LRTR) working group enables more effective conservation by enhancing local land and resource tenure rights. Community land and natural resources represent fundamental assets for rural communities—primary sources of livelihood, nutrition, income, wealth and employment. Land and resources are also a basis for security, status, social identity and political relations. Strengthening rights and securing tenure, especially over the community lands managed as common property, are central to the sustainable management of their land and resources, including biodiversity. Click here to view the LRTR factsheet.

The LRTR working group members presented on methods employed, achievements, and lessons learned from their activities in three pilot sites in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Southern and Western Tanzania. Pilot activities explored the co-management of protected areas, and the registration and documentation of common property resources – principally grazing, forests and wildlife– within communal lands.

The meeting commenced with opening remarks by Rebecca Goodman, ABCG’s Coordinator who provided a brief overview of ABCG’s approach and current activities. Deo Kujirakwinja, Kabobo Project Manager at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), then provided progress on pilot activities in the DRC. Peter Veit, Director of Land and Resource Rights Initiative at the World Resources Institute (WRI), presented activities undertaken in Southern Tanzania by WRI and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF). Matt Morley, Associate Director-Programs and Analysis, Africa Programs at the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), followed with activities in Western Tanzania undertaken by JGI and The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

Pilot Activities

In Kabobo Wildlife Reserve, DRC WCS focused on gaining formal approval of Kabobo as a protected area through a participatory process involving local communities and stakeholders in decision-making. WCS succeeded in securing the gazettement of Kabobo while also gaining support from local political authorities and communities to employ a co-management model with local communities retaining resource rights and management authority of the Reserve.

AWF, WRI, TNC and JGI explored alternate methods for improving land tenure in Tanzania with Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCRO) being selected as the best approach and employed in the field by AWF, TNC, and JGI. CCROs are used to formally allocate parcels of village lands to individuals or groups.

WRI shared its findings of the inefficacy of current land use plans and the benefits of CCROs with senior government officials, members of parliament, and donors with hopes of pushing officials to address the issues affecting Tanzania’s land policy. They also supported the efforts of local NGOs such as the Ujamaa Community Resources Team and the Tanzania Land Alliance in the land policy reform process.

In Southern Tanzania, AWF worked to engage with communities at the village level and sensitize them on the importance of tenure security. AWF obtained the support of the Tanzania National Land Use Planning Commission to survey local communities about access and use rights over land in the Kilombero Valley. With the assistance of the Kilombero District Council, 6000 CCROs were prepared and 2100 CCROs issued through the land tenure support program.

In Western Tanzania, TNC supported district authorities in the Greater Mahale Ecosystem in issuing CCROs and training the institutions that issue CCROs. TNC trained high level district officials, members of the Participatory Land Use Management Team, and local leaders from 10 villages on land use planning and land planning. Furthermore, TNC in collaboration with the National Land Use Planning Commission and Tanganyika District Council prepared land use plans for six villages.

JGI provided support to issuing agencies, village councils and assemblies, village land use management plan teams, and adjudication committees with the intention being the issuing of CCROs. So far, JGI has procured IT equipment to store and issue CCRO documentation. They have also started initial Geographic Information System work and held outreach meetings with villagers focusing on vulnerable households.

Overall recommendations from these activities for improved land tenure:

• Effective management of protected areas requires the support and involvement of local authorities.
• Effective and sustainable land use and land tenure security requires planning, administration and management to be a bottom-up process.
• To ensure tenure security and protect the natural environment, the issuance of CCROs must be promoted.
• The Tanzania land policy must be reformed in order for CCROs to be an effective land tenure method.

Next steps

In ABCG’s future phase III, the LRTR working group will host meetings to increase awareness and understanding of CCROs in local communities, as well as train local institutions on the CCRO issuance process. Findings from field studies will be presented to local authorities with the intention of influencing national land policy. Results and best practices from these activities can then be used to inform future LRTR projects.

ABCG is supported by USAID to advance understanding of critical biodiversity conservation challenges and their solutions in sub-Saharan Africa. ABCG is hosted by the Wildlife Conservation Society, in coalition with the African Wildlife Foundation, Conservation International, the Jane Goodall Institute, The Nature Conservancy, the World Resources Institute, and the World Wildlife Fund.

Resources

Click below to watch the event recording

Click here to view the presentation slides.

Contact

For more information, please contact Peter Veit at peterv@wri.org

Photos

Photo 1 – Women and Batwa people included in the Local Governance Committee. Photo Credit: WCS
Photo 2 – Mr. Ismail Kipalanga of Mkula Village holding his CCROs. Photo Credit: AWF

Through its Emerging Issues small grants, the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) supports Conservation International’s Vital Signs project on Establishing a Community of Practice to Share Best Practices and Enhance Learning from the Vital Signs Monitoring System and Resilience Atlas in East Africa. Under the Emerging Issues themmatic area, ABCG employs short, targeted interventions  to respond to new and rising threats to biodiversity that are likely to shape conservation priorities in the coming years, and influence the overall effectiveness of biodiversity conservation efforts in Africa.

The Vital Signs project held its third community of practice meeting in Nairobi, Kenya from September 12-14, 2018 in order to learn and share best practices and lessons from Conservation International’s Vital Signs Monitoring System. The meeting was attended by project partners from Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania.

The meeting helped to identify opportunities and entry points for using results from Vital Signs data analysis to inform policy and decision making at the local, national, and regional level.

Potential policy implications identified included: 

Forests acting as buffers against malnutrition: These results suggest the need for policies that promote more sustainable access to forests in order to address malnutrition. Integrated policy and planning between the Forestry and Health Departments will be essential.

Female headed household’s access to productive resources and ecosystem services: Women are more enterprising and contribute more to household livelihoods. Because women reinvest 90% of their food and income for the household’s welfare, interventions that target women in the households would have a far-reaching impact. The results suggest a need for specific polices directed towards this.

How natural resources supplement household expenditure on food: Natural resources including food and non-food products, such as medicinal products and building materials, among others, play a role towards meeting household needs. If these benefits are to be maintained, the results suggest a need for policies that promote more investments in community led conservation efforts and landscape restoration.

How benefits from agricultural intensification relate to household income, level of education, and gender: Proxy indicators of Ag-intensification, such as fertilizer and pesticide use, show variations by landscape. Differences between household use of agricultural inputs are attributed to differences in gender and household wealth such as land. The results suggest a need for policies that address the gender gap in particular as it relates to access to land and fertilizer use.

Access and use of extension services: Access to extension services is generally reported to be low, but the results pick up a marked increase in access to extension services in those landscapes engaged in large scale commercial agriculture, with the private sector and non-state actors providing dedicated support. These results underscore the role that private and non-governmental actors play in improving access to extension services and suggest a need for policies to promote these to complement Government efforts, which appear to be overwhelmed by the need.

Read more on the meeting here: http://vitalsigns.org/blog/vital-signs-3rd-community-practice-meeting-held-nairobi