Posts in category: News & Updates

Conservancies best practices participants at AWF Nairobi, Kenya. Photo Credit: Peter Chira /AWF

Africa’s ecosystems, with immense benefits to current and future generations, are at serious risk due to human activities and habitat loss. The Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) works to conserve biodiversity and natural resources in balance with sustained human livelihoods, and one of the ways we accomplish this is through collaboration and information sharing across conservancies and its African partners.

Therefore, we are excited to announce that one of our members, the Africa Wildlife Foundation (AWF), has published a volume, African Conservancies Volume Towards Best Practices, on best practices among conservancies across the African continent, as the result of a workshop held on April 20, 2016 in Nairobi Kenya. At the workshop, at which ABCG was present, individuals from various NGOs, government agencies, the private sector, and over 10 different countries discussed best practices in conservation across the continent. To read more about the workshop, click here.

 “Today is not about the ‘why’ of conservancies, we all agree on the ‘why’, we all know the rate of biodiversity loss, today is about the ‘how’. How do we ensure the conservancies across Africa are sustainable?” remarked Kathleen H. Fitzgerald, Vice President of Land Protection, AWF. 

Despite the varying differences among conservancies, there are commonalities among findings of best practices that are cross-cutting. Presented here are analyses of best practices that can be replicated across country contexts.

While there is seldom one method for conservancy establishment, conservancy practitioners can learn from each other and adapt ideas to local contexts. Five factors have been shown to lead to success among conservancies:

Photo by AWF.

First, a national policy framework (1) is usually in place to support the conservancy. Within a country’s legal system, a system of legal instruments and operational tools is often in place to regulate conservation. Policies not only lay out the principal legislation supporting conservation, but also serve as a convergence among differing views by a wide array of actors (i.e. end users, governments, and the private sector).  Within that realm, sound policies and effective laws can be essential to preserve local ecosystems and guide land tenure and resource allocation, which are key factors in creating conservancies. Despite this, there are plenty of communities that have thrived without a policy framework, and instead promoted a grassroots level experimental initiative.

In addition, good governance (2) of conservancies requires transparency and accountability to be successful.  Governance is how a community or group organizes itself to make decisions or achieve a goal. Good governance is crucial to successful conservation projects and goals because it leads to high community participation, better leadership, and ultimately an increase trust and support for the conservancy. Governance structures work best when developed by the community under guidance from conservation actors.

Although economic viability (3) is important, it does not need to be the main overarching criterion for success. Some conservancies make up for a lack of economic potential with other gains, such as technical, social, and institutional factors. There are several examples where social and environmental factors are very strong but economic gains are low. Thus, the viability of a conservancy depends on multiple factors, not just economic viability. 

Although not all conservancies can directly provide economic gain, some provide social services, such as security, infrastructure, amenities, and livestock management- which are often mandated by the government. Therefore, opportunities can present itself to receive government funding for such services. Lastly, communities need to assume a certain level of risk and bring something to the project, to create the desire to see the conservancy succeed.

Photo by AWF.

Often a conservancy’s success depends on the relationship between humans and each other and the environment in which they live. In other words, the complex social, political, and cultural factors need to be considered to properly manage a conservancy. Considering the socio-political context (4) of a conservancy aids in better understanding human-related sources of ecological stress as well as characteristics and values of stakeholders and its effect on the conservancy.

Lastly, a discussion was held on whether a conservancy can maintain ecological viability (5) in the long term despite the many threats it faces. For ecological viability to be attainable, it is crucial that long term viability is ensured through using simple ecological monitoring systems, integrating solutions based around existing livestock and emerging threats, and cooperating and working collectively with state and local authorities. Community involvement in monitoring is also important, but it needs to be more simplified.

Twelve case studies in seven countries were discussed in this report, including one by the Northern Rangelands Trust  in Kenya. In ABCG’s first programmatic phase (2012-2015) as part of its Emerging Issues small grants program, ABCG collaborated with NRT to address global climate change through grazing management and carbon sequestration in community conservancies of Northern Kenya.

To read the full report (including case studies), download the report here.  

“Water is life. It’s vital. It supports the immense diversity of life on Earth. It’s a source of food, health and energy. Fresh water makes civilization possible. But fresh water, in turn, isn’t possible without a healthy planet – and human actions are putting a healthy planet at risk.” – Conservation International.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s freshwater resources are under increasing pressure from population growth, urbanization, and consumption, as well as poorly-planned infrastructure development.

To combat this, the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) aims to reduce watershed degradation and pollution to improve the health of freshwater ecosystems. The ABCG is a coalition of seven US-based international conservation organizations that works to tackle complex conservation challenges in Africa through collaboration. Specifically in the collaborative working group on Freshwater Conservation and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (FW-WASH), we aim to generate information on the impacts of infrastructure developments on watersheds and the impacts of freshwater conservation in meeting FW-WASH goals. We empower local communities and authorities to address the root causes of human-induced pressures- including limited access to water resources and poor resource governance. Click here to view the WASH Fact Sheet.

The WASH task group has recently presented results from pilot studies in South Africa by Conservation South Africa (CSA), a local affiliate of Conservation International (CI) and Uganda by the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) on implementing integrated development and conservation projects from a freshwater ecosystems’ prospective.

On November 29^th, project leaders presented their accomplishments thus far at the Conservation International headquarters in Arlington, VA. The morning began with an introduction of ABCG by Program Coordinator, Rebecca Goodman, followed by a brief discussion by Kirsten Siex, Senior Biodiversity Advisor for the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID), on USAID’s support of ABCG’s cross sector integration. Peter Appell, Programs Director for the Jane Goodall Institute in Uganda, then spoke remotely about JGI’s accomplishments this year under the WASH task group, followed by Colleen Sorto (Senior Manager, Peace and Development Partnerships, Cl) and Janet Edmond (Senior Director, Peace and Development Partnerships, Policy Center for Environment and Peace at CI) about CI’s work in South Africa.

Pupils demonstrating hand washing, at St. Phillips Primary School, Uganda. Photo Credit: JGI

Specifically, JGI is conducting its work in the Albertine rift region of Hoima and Masindi Districts of Uganda– known for its species diversity. It has been named the Budongo-Bugoma Corridor due to the critical chimpanzee habitat there. JGI has been working with the Hoima and Masindi district councils, local institutions, and schools to reach young people through education campaigns on water conservation and improved sanitation. In addition, the organization has improved infrastructure to increase access to potable water by renovating protected streams and constructing community rain harvest points in schools. Access to potable water and increased hygiene awareness is crucial to reducing illness, improving health, and reducing poverty.

Woman carries stone, Mzivubu catchment, South Africa Photo Credit: CI

CI has been implementing WASH projects in the Mzimbuvu catchment of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. This catchment spans over two million hectares of the some of the poorest rural areas in the province. It is crucial to the region’s people and the ecosystem in which they live- providing water to approximately one million people and supporting more than 2,000 unique plant and animal species.

This is why CSA, with technical assistance from CI, is piloting FW-WASH integration tools in the Alfred Nzo District of South Africa. CSA has trained community volunteers in water quality monitoring to promote awareness of how to protect water sources and improve sanitation practices. In addition, they have engaged local community members to protect freshwater springs and understand how livestock impacts their water sources- to improve water quality as well as human and ecosystem health.                                                                                                                                                                       

To view the Webinar recording of this event, click here.

Conservation has frequently been limited by an inability to secure the financing needed to achieve impact at scale. Local communities and small-scale producers, if provided with the right incentives and enabled to manage their land and natural resources sustainably, stand to be a powerful force in achieving conservation aims and responding to some pressing global environmental challenges. However, conservation action often requires up-front costs with delayed returns, which often are a strong disincentive and hindrance for communities and small scale producers alike.

Simultaneously, it is estimated that about 270 million small-scale producers worldwide (48 million in Africa) and their wider communities are under-served by finance institutions and in need of about $200 billion of financing. In short the world’s small holders are seeking access to the finance they need to advance and improve their farms and livelihoods. This presents an unrivalled opportunity to develop a system of finance that rises to this challenge, while enabling and incentivizing small-scale producers to improve the sustainability, resilience and environmental footprints of their farming, forestry and fishing practices, as a condition of their access to this finance.

On October 17, 2016, Andrew Williams, co-founder of F3 Life share how, together with the Climate Policy Institute and other partners, they are putting together the first phase of a climate-smart lending platform, which will pilot the requisite financing, systems and tools for taking performance-based environmental lending to scale. 

Featured Speaker

Andrew Williams

Andrew’s conservation and natural resource management career began on Zanzibar where he was part of a team that created Tanzania’s first multi-use national park with community participation baked into the park’s governance and community benefits flowing from a revolving fund. Since then he has been involved in several conservation-related start-ups in East Africa, that have consecutively focussed on collective policy advocacy, organisational development and latterly conservation finance. Andrew currently is a co-founder of F3-Life, a social enterprise that provides the tools and systems to enable environmentally-conditional lending to small holders – working with both banking and community-level savings institutions. This new approach is designed to be highly adaptable and scalable in delivering a more financially effective and sustainable solution towards overcoming large-scale climate and ecosystem management challenges.

Event Resources

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Urbanization is rapidly changing the face of the African continent.  While only one in 10 people lived in urban areas in 1900, almost half of all sub-Saharan inhabitants now live in towns and cities. The growing Central African urban bushmeat problem is a direct result of this population shift from rural areas to urban centers and the consumer choices people are making. The Wildlife Conservation Society, and its partners, Endangered Species International, Renatura, and YoYo Communications, are conducting a two-year, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-funded pilot project to identify the key drivers behind urban bushmeat consumption in Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo, a city of approximately 1 million located on the Atlantic coast about 100 miles north of the mouth of the Congo River and 60 miles south of Conkouati-Douli National Park.  

The goal of this project is to reduce the hunting threat to wildlife populations around nearby protected areas by developing an approach that raises societal awareness, builds constituencies and support, and uses a first-of-its-kind mass media behavior change campaign to reduce the level of bushmeat consumption.  The speakers of this ABCG seminar on October 11, 2016 describe the interdisciplinary framework of the project and present preliminary criminology, social, and market research results which will be used to develop the campaign.

Event Resources

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Feaured Speakers

Dr. Michelle Wieland, Socio-economic Advisor, WCS Africa Program

Michelle Wieland lives in Kinshasa, DRC and has worked across Africa since 1999. She focuses on the people-biodiversity interface, engaging in interventions that secure socially and ecologically sustainable livelihoods, help governments to develop programs to engage people in wildlife conservation initiatives, and contribute to broader program monitoring and local buy-in. Michelle currently works with WCS field teams across Africa to strengthen socio-economic capacity, establish M/E frameworks for wellbeing and governance, improve intervention frameworks, and to build up programs and partnerships for addressing bushmeat threats.

Lucie Escouflaire, Pointe Noire Urban Bushmeat Coordinator, WCS Congo

Lucie Escouflaire completed her Masters’ Degree in International Relations and Risk Management in Developing Countries at the Political Sciences Institute in Bordeaux (France). In 2014, she started working with WCS as a consultant on firewood consumption and the implementation of fast-growing trees’ plantations in the Plateau Batéké Landscape. She then worked for a year as the community development coordinator for this Landscape. Since 2016 she is the Urban Bushmeat Project Coordinator in Pointe-Noire.

Rachel Boratto, PhD Candidate, Michigan State University

Rachel Boratto is a doctoral student in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. Her research interests include conservation criminology, wildlife crime, transnational trafficking, anti-poaching strategy and wildlife management.  She holds an M.S. in Natural World Heritage Management from University College Dublin, Ireland and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Guelph, Canada.

Roy Buhendwa, Léonard Mubalama, Marco Lambertini, WWF Director General, Laurent Nsenga 

In order to ensure the integrity of protected areas, civil society and public institutions all levels must collaborate in developing and implementing conservation policies. On September 13, 2016, ABCG hosted field staff from World Wildlife Fund’s office in Democratic Republic of Congo to share how WWF-DRC is developing a conservation strategy based on a long-term vision of its role in harmony with national conservation policies.  

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