Posts in category: News & Updates

The October 2018 ABCG News Digest is a compilation of the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) latest news and resources from past events. Among the highlights include news from our Managing Global Changes Impacts thematic area that has been investigating the coping mechanisms of human communities to climate change and the impacts of these responses on biodiversity from surveys carried out in 10 countries in Africa. Reports from this work reveal how community coping responses are negatively impacting biodiversity. Also in the digest is the summary of the dialogue on ‘Strengthening Partnerships within Kenya’s Wildlife Conservancies Movement’ that ABCG supported to host that came up with enabling factors for creating healthy partnerships. Read more on the digest.

Photo Credit: Julie Larsen

Most of sub-Saharan Africa is under pressure from increasing population growth, urbanization, and consumption, as well as poorly-planned infrastructure development. All of these factors are negatively impacting the quality and availability of freshwater resources. In response to these threats to freshwater resources, the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG), supported by US Agency for International Development, pilot tested the integration of freshwater conservation and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) approaches in two African landscapes to improve both conservation and human health outcomes.

Conservation International, with its affiliate Conservation South Africa (CSA), and the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) integrated WASH activities into existing conservation programs in South Africa and Uganda, respectively. At the end of a two-year implementation period, both CSA and JGI staff agreed the pilots demonstrated meaningful results that prove the concept works. The demand from communities for improved water and associated health and conservation benefits underscore the need for more work on these projects.

The lessons learned from this work have been published and available in the report titled, The Convergence Factor: Lessons from Integrating Freshwater Conservation and Wash

The lessons learned from this work include:

• WASH activities create incentives and co-benefits for conservation.
• Gender analyses provide insights about roles and responsibilities relating to WASH and conservation that help with integration, resulting in more effective programming.
• Community education campaigns foster sustainability and ownership of conservation and WASH approaches.
• Monitoring and evaluation of these integrated projects is challenging but essential for demonstrating impact.
• Community-led project decision making and local policies support sustainability of these efforts.

CSA, JGI and partners are confident these pilots and lessons provide good fodder for future African practitioners in the ABCG community of practice and beyond to advance this approach and achieve their conservation and human well-being goals. These pilots demonstrate ABCG’s unique, collaboration-based capacity to develop, disseminate and scale up best practices and effective tools for effective biodiversity conservation.

A webinar presentation on the lessons learned is also available here

For more information contact: Colleen Sorto (csorto@conservation.org)

Recognizing there are strong linkages between biodiversity conservation and human health, the health of domestic animals, and ecosystem health, the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) Population, Health and Environment (PHE) task group advances a vision that incorporates health outcomes into biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa.

Over the past three years (2015-2018) and working with communities in two pilot sites in Western Tanzania and Southeast Cameroon, ABCG task members from the World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, the African Wildlife Foundation and the Jane Goodall Institute have implemented field-based activities to improve critical ecosystem services and human health and well-being outcomes.

On September 12, 2018, Nathalie Simoneau from the World Wildlife Fund, Kimberly Holbrook from The Nature Conservancy and Alice Macharia from the Jane Goodall Institute shared the lessons learned from implementing this work.

While sharing lessons learned in Southeast Cameroon, Nathalie Simoneau noted that the fight against malnutrition and food insecurity engages community conservation discourses and can be an efficient tool for positive actions against poaching.

In Southeast Cameroon, it was seen that cultural food taboos among the indigenous people are challenging to address and that the use of practical demonstrations help in getting them to adopt best practices. The need to conduct assessments on the knowledge, attitude and beliefs of communities relating to PHE sectors, to target activities was further mentioned as a key lesson learned. In the area of sustainable agriculture, it was noted that targeting women’s interests and/or capacity in agroforestry, small animal husbandry, improving entrepreneurship skills helps promote women’s empowerment and their engagement in natural resource management decision making.

The use of drama and storytelling was noted as a successful approach in communicating PHE messages in Tanzania. In addition, adoption of climate-smart agriculture increases with training and resources.

The establishment of the PHE network in Tanzania with the aim of providing long-term support for PHE activities in western Tanzania and creating linkages with national level initiatives into the long-term was also a key aspect of this work. Among the lessons learned from this initiative was that field visits grounded the understanding of PHE and that the local government authorities and the communities are essential partners in the success of these efforts.

Clive Mutunga from the USAID Bureau for Global Health also shared some reflections on how the lessons learned can provide an impetus for moving forward PHE and biodiversity programming.

For more on this event, click to watch the webinar recording and access the presentation slides below:

Presentation slides

Rebecca Goodman, Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group

• Advancing an Integrated Vision that Incorporates Health Outcomes into Biodiversity Conservation: 2015-2018 Lessons Learned

Nathalie Simoneau, World Wildlife Fund

• Lessons Learned in Exploring Linkages Between Food Security, Nutrition and Conservation Through PHE in Southeast Cameroon

Kimberly Holbrook, The Nature Conservancy

• Biodiversity Conservation, Improved Livelihoods, Health & Food Security in Western Tanzania: A PHE Approach

Alice Macharia, The Jane Goodall Institute

• Establishing a PHE Network in Western Tanzania: Results and Lessons Learned
  

Featured Speakers

Kimberly M. Holbrook

Kimberly Holbrook joined The Nature Conservancy in 2013 as the Africa External Affairs Manager. Her work focuses on building relationships and increasing engagement with TNC’s U.S.-based partners with the goal to advance policy initiatives and public funding opportunities and to raise awareness of TNC’s conservation priorities in Africa. Prior to joining TNC, Kimberly was a Science Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. She holds a PhD in Ecology from the University of Missouri-St Louis and a MS in Conservation Biology from San Francisco State University. She has more than 20 years’ experience working in Africa, Australia, Europe, and Latin America and is interested in protecting natural ecosystems and their services through conservation policy and practice that promote the sustainable development of human communities.

Nathalie Simoneau, US

Nathalie Simoneau is Lead Specialist, Gender and Social Inclusion, at the World Wildlife Fund. She joined WWF in 2010 as part of a team working on population, health and environment (PHE) initiatives. She has a background in public health nutrition and food security and holds a Masters’ degree from McGill University’s Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment. She has worked for over 18 years in program implementation at the nexus of health, development and conservation in Central African countries, Mozambique, Nepal, Cambodia and Northern Canada. Nathalie focuses on mainstreaming cross-cutting issues into major WWF programs globally including gender and social inclusion, food security and nutrition. She leads ABCG’s task group on PHE and provides strategic and technical guidance on the pilot project in Southeast Cameroon and in other similar initiatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Alice Macharia

Alice Macharia is Program Director, Africa Programs, at the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). She joined the Institute in 2003 as part of a team tasked with developing an overarching strategy for the JGI’s chimpanzee conservation and development programs in Africa. In her current role, Alice works closely with the organization’s senior leadership to manage existing relationships within Africa Programs, external partnerships, and to build new ones. She has master’s degrees in geography and sustainable international development. She has over 15 years of progressive experience in project design and implementation, grant administration, and program management of integrated conservation and development programming in Africa. Over the decade and a half, Alice has championed for population, health and environment programming within JGI.

Clive Mutunga

Clive Mutunga is Population, Environment and Development Technical Advisor at the Office of Population and Reproductive Health, Bureau for Global Health, where he oversees and coordinates USAID’s work that focuses on the linkages between population, environment and development, including the intersections and integration of family planning and the environment. Trained at the University of Nairobi and the University of Pretoria, Clive is an expert in environment and natural resource economics, and has conducted research on linking population, gender, climate change, and environment.

This event was hosted by the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group as a part of its Washington DC speaker series, which aims to foster information exchange and lessons sharing among cross-sector practitioners. To participate as a featured speaker, please contact Evelyn Namvua at enamvua@abcg.org and view the Guidelines to Speakers here.

Poor access to health care, limited livelihood opportunities, and unsustainable use of natural resources are some of the pressing challenges in Lake Tanganyika in western Tanzania that the Tuungane project is addressing.

Tuungane means ‘let’s unite’ in Kiswahili, and that is what this project does; it unites The Nature Conservancy, Pathfinder International, local governments, and local communities into an integrated project that simultaneously addresses maternal, reproductive and child health and natural resource management.

On September 5, 2018, Josaphat Mshighati from Pathfinder International and Lukindo Hiza from The Nature Conservancy while presenting on, Integrating Conservation, Health, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene to Support Families, Fisheries and Forests, shared on how the project is building healthy families, securing fish stocks and wildlife habitat, and enabling the local community to adapt to climate change.

Event Resources

Click below to watch the webinar recording from the event and here to view the presentation slides.

Featured Speakers

Lukindo Allan Hiza, Tuungane Program Director, The Nature Conservancy
Lukindo Hiza is an experienced Program Management Practitioner, Trainer and Facilitator. He spent years in designing and managing Integrated Community Natural Resource Conservation Programs. He is a Co-founder of Great Africa Food Company (GAFCo) which is a Climate Smart Company that promotes sustainable Climate Smart Agriculture Business. Currently he leads an Integrated Population, Health, Community Conservation Program popularly known as Tuungane or “Let us Unite” in Western Tanzania in area named Greater Mahale Ecosystem (GME), that focuses on Population, Health and Environment (PHE). Lukindo is a PhD Student (Natural Resource Economics), a holder of Master’s in Business Administration (Honours), B.Sc. Wildlife Management (Honours), Professional Program Management Certificate, Program Leadership Certificate and Bullet Proof Management Certificate. The former World Vision Tanzania Country director named him as “A leader by nature” and others named him extra energetic leader with both red and green colors meaning that he is Outcome and People focused at the same time. Lukindo likes critical thinking and critical challenging.

Josaphat Mshighati, Director for Advocacy & PHE, Pathfinder International, Tanzania
Josaphat Mshighati – A Tanzanian political science and linguistics trained teacher who has gradually grown into development management specialization and currently engaged in EAC regional, national and district level Health and Family Planning Advocacy through PHE and Demographic Dividend. He has led Governance & Accountability programs with Oxfam (National Governance Coordinator), SNV Netherlands Development Organization (Civil Society Strengthening Advisor); ActionAid (Head of Programs & Policy) and Sikika (Head of Programs). He has further managed Peace Building & Conflict Transformation Capacity Building programs as well as Food Security & Women’s Economic Empowerment program for the Government of Liberia under UNDP Liberia (2007-2011). He is currently the Director for Advocacy & PHE for Pathfinder in Tanzania. Josaphat holds a Master’s Degree in Development Management from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany and a Bachelor degree in Arts (Political Science) with Education from University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He has a certificate in Social Accountability Monitoring from the Centre for Social Accountability, Rhodes University, South Africa and Security in the Field Certificate from the UN. He is member of the Tanzania PHE Network; member of the EAC PHE Technical Working Group and a member of Social Accountability Monitoring Community of Practice. He enjoys plural politics and community work.

This event was hosted by the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group as a part of its Washington DC speaker series, which aims to foster information exchange and lessons sharing among cross-sector practitioners. To participate as a featured speaker, please contact Evelyn Namvua at enamvua@abcg.org and view the Guidelines to Speakers here.

Climate change threatens ecosystems and biodiversity throughout the globe, with its effects felt differently from one place to another. Extreme weather, changes in rainfall patterns and shifting seasons are some of the primary effects of climate change. Further, human responses to these effects have the potential to have long-term, negative impacts on natural systems. Effectively managing human adaptation to these effects so as to prevent, or moderate, negative impacts is essential.

Nikhil Advani, Lead Specialist for Climate, Communities and Wildlife at the World Wildlife Fund explains, “We have a good understanding of how communities are being affected by climate change and how they are responding to climate change through various adaptation strategies, such as shifting cropping and livestock raising methods, as well as natural habitat encroachment. One critical issue that has not been well understood is the intersection between communities’ coping mechanisms to changes in climate and weather, and how their coping mechanisms may negatively impact biodiversity.”

“For example, in periods of extreme drought, are communities engaging in practices that could be causing negative impacts on the ecosystem, such as deforesting for increased charcoal production or entering protected areas to access water?”

In 2015, the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG), under its Managing Global Changes Impacts (GCI) thematic area, embarked on a study to investigate the coping mechanisms of human communities to climate change and the impacts of these responses on biodiversity. The GCI working group sought to answer the following questions: a) What changes in weather and climate are communities facing in sub-Saharan Africa?; b) How are those communities responding to changes in weather and climate in this region?; c) How may those responses negatively impact biodiversity?; d) What locations may experience such impacts in the future?; and e) What alternative responses should be promoted and implemented to benefit both people and biodiversity in this region?

To the answer these questions, ABCG members and partners conducted over 600 interviews in communities engaged in farming, fishing and pastoralism across 19 different sites in 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Cameroon, Gabon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Namibia, Madagascar, Mozambique and Uganda). The data collected from these interviews is available on World Wildlife Fund’s Climate Crowd initiative website.

On August 14-16, 2018, ABCG members from The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, the Jane Goodall Institute and Conservation International, as well as research partners and stakeholders from Tanzania, Kenya, Cameroon, Namibia and Mozambique met in Nairobi, Kenya for a workshop to present the survey findings of the adaptation responses and how those responses impact biodiversity. The event also raised awareness of how adaptation strategies can benefit both people and biodiversity, and contribute to the long-term sustainability of landscapes.

Survey findings from the study countries revealed a range of community coping strategies. For example, in Madagascar, farmers are responding to perceived changes in shifting rainfall patterns and seasonality by increasing hunting activities. In Namibia, farmers are expanding their cropland to cope with decreased production. And in Kenya, pastoralists are changing livestock practices and encroaching into natural habitats.

“The results of our survey established that fishing and farming communities are responding to climate change in ways that often times negatively impact biodiversity. We therefore need to be innovative and implement strategies that help farmers to adopt to climate change in ways that can positively impact biodiversity”, said Camila Donatti, Director, Climate Change Adaptation at Conservation International.

Participants of the workshop discussed and put forward several strategies, such as agroforestry, building water storage facilities, and applying sound rangeland management practices that can help reduce the indirect negative impacts to biodiversity due to human responses to climate change. They further identified interventions that can be applied with their local communities to ensure that they develop appropriate coping strategies that do not negatively impact biodiversity.

Climate change is clearly a major threat globally to the wellbeing of both human communities and ecosystems. The way humans respond to climate change can increase the nature, number and intensity of these individual threats, worsening their impacts. This means that how we manage our wildlife and wild places will be key to successfully addressing the effects of climate change. Appropriate coping strategies adapted to local conditions – which don’t negatively impact ecosystems – are essential and urgently needed.

The work of ABCG’s GCI working group has been to foster greater understanding and dialogue on emerging coping strategies already being adopted, and with this workshop, beginning to explore how those strategies can be improved upon.

Workshop participants group photo

See workshop report here

See workshop photos here

Photo credits
Cover image: By Joseph Kathiwa, WWF-Kenya
Image 2&3: By Evelyn Namvua, ABCG

In their August 16, 2018 presentation titled, Watershed: Empowering Citizens – Linking Advocacy and Implementation, Samwel Jakinda, Neighbours Initiative Alliance and Jacob Baraza, Centre for Social Planning and Administrative Development shared their experiences on advocating for integrated approaches in Kenya. Elynn Walter, IRC, followed with a presentation on Watershed’s global work package that amplifies lessons across the partnership.

The Watershed program is a strategic partnership between the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and IRC, Simavi, Wetlands International and Akvoh, focused on systems building related to integrated water resource management and WASH in six African countries.

Event Resources

Click below to watch the webinar recording from the event.

Featured Speakers

Samwel Jakinda

Samwel is the Programme Manager at a Kenyan NGO, Neighbours Initiative Alliance (NIA), NIA facilitates community development in pastoral communities in Kenya’s Arid and Semi-Arid counties targeting the poor and vulnerable groups mainly through capacity strengthening/ knowledge transfer, influencing and brokering useful linkages. For over ten years, Samwel has been working with the Maasai people in Kajiado County, one of the 47 counties under Kenya’s devolved governance set up implementing community development programmes using Participatory Community Development (PICD) and Community Conversation (CC) methodologies. Trained in Agricultural Engineering, he is also a practitioner of rain water harvesting and has also been implementing community participatory rain water harvesting structures/interventions with emphasis on water buffering using 3R (Rainwater Retention, Recharge & Reuse) approaches within catchments.

Elynn Walter

Elynn is an international advocacy expert with IRC, a Dutch organization focused on supporting governments to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals for water and sanitation by 2030. In that capacity she leads IRCs advocacy work globally and is part of the Watershed – empowering citizens strategic partnership. Elynn works with key WASH stakeholders to create sector-wide advances in advocacy, sustainability and systems change. Prior to IRC, Elynn was the Sustainability Director at WASH Advocates and worked with corporations, foundations, civic groups, academia and implementing organizations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their WASH investments, projects and programs. Elynn has worked both in private industry as well as for the US Department of State. Her interest in water, sanitation and hygiene stems from her experience as a Community Health Educator for the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan. Elynn received her Master of Public Health from George Washington University and her Bachelor of Arts from James Madison University.

Jacob Baraza
Jacob is the Watershed Project Manager with Centre for Social Planning and Administrative Development.

This event was hosted by The Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group as a part of its Washington DC speaker series, which aims to foster information exchange and lessons sharing among cross-sector practitioners. To participate as a featured speaker, please contact Evelyn Namvua at enamvua@abcg.org and view the Guidelines to Speakers here.

Peter Apell, has been working with the Jane Goodall Institute in Uganda since 2000. Currently serving as the Uganda Country/Program Director he oversees the administration of the country office including oversight of country programs and projects. Peter is also a member of the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) Global Health Linkages to Biodiversity thematic working group focusing on the integration of freshwater conservation and Water, Sanitation and Hygience (WASH).

Tell us about your conservation journey?
I started out with the protection and care of wild animals and in my course of work, I realized that the root causes to some of the issues we were addressing, such as destruction of wildlife habitat and challenges with rising human population laid on a different side. This made me realize that there were solutions that needed to be sought from another angle. I have since turned my attention to being more proficient in integrated social development and conservation.

Tell us about your work with the ABCG Global Health Linkages to Conservation: Freshwater Conservation and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene thematic area?
This area of work focuses on the integration of freshwater conservation and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) by building the capacity of communities to conserve freshwater resources while improving human health and well-being. In 10 villages in the Albertine rift region of Hoima and Masindi Districts in Uganda, we have been working on building local community capacity to conserve freshwater resources and improving sanitation and hygiene. This region contains an important network of tropical rainforest, which faces threats due to high human population growth, such as deforestation, human-wildlife conflict due to shared water points, as well as sanitation challenges.

How has your experience been working on FW-WASH?
This was the first time that the Jane Goodall Institute in Uganda attempted to work on freshwater conservation alongside our conservation work. Interestingly, we observed that we were able to better engage with the community by addressing WASH issues that are a critical component of the community’s daily needs. Integration is also not a widespread strategy being implemented by many institutions, but we hope that after disseminating the pilot results of this current project it will be a more widely taken up approach. Water is a great convergence point for conservation and social economic needs. The Jane Goodall Institute has now adopted freshwater conservation and WASH as part of its broader Africa program strategy plan.

What are some of the opportunities that this integrated approach present?
Through cross-sector collaboration we have been able to realize environmental and human gains. The approach presents the community with incentives to protect the ecosystem as they have a better appreciation of how the catchment areas contribute to meeting their water needs. The approach further offers a much broader view of conservation and development objectives and reinforces protection of critical ecosystems that works as catchment areas.

What are some of the highlights of your conservation work?
From the freshwater-WASH pilot, I have been blown away by the impact of this integrated approach on the community. Before this work, communities used to report on how children were not able to fetch water as the watering places would become extremely crowded and they would even get injured in the process due to crowding together with adults. The construction of community water harvesting points and renovation of projected spring are some of the activities that have led to improved access to clean water and now children can safely collect water. We’ve also observed how human-wildlife conflict has reduced as a result of this integrated approach. The passing of local bylaws and policies to ensure that all local households have proper sanitation are significant achievements.

Away from this activity while working on the protection of animals I discovered an innovative mechanism for safely anesthetizing chimpanzees in the wild. Previously, it was considered impossible to anesthetize chimpanzees in the wild, because when they were darted with anesthesia they had the tendencies of climbing trees and they would later fall and be harmed. In 2007, while still with the Jane Goodall Institute, I innovated a safe mechanism to anesthetize chimpanzees in the wild, which today has had 100% success rate leading to the option of rescuing and treating chimps that are caught in snares and man-traps.

Meet more ABCG coalition members here: 

Conservationist Michelle Wieland Talks of the Importance of Community Engagement in Protecting Biodiversity

Photo: Peter Apell at an ABCG workshop. Photo credit: Evelyn Namvua, ABCG

Wildlife Conservation efforts in Kenya are at a critical stage. Four decades of extreme wildlife decline may progressively come to an end if current wildlife conservation efforts in community and private lands were to succeed in the longer term. Already we are seeing some good results:

• More than 6 million hectares of land is secured outside of national parks and reserves by a network of 160 community and private conservancies.
• Over 3,000 community rangers are working alongside Kenya Wildlife Service Rangers to protect wildlife habitats and minimize threats to wildlife species.
• An estimated 700,000 households are participating in wildlife conservation and accessing a variety of social and economic benefits.
• Populations of endangered species such as the Black rhino, Grevy’s zebra, lion and elephant are on an upward trend while other species are returning to their historical ranges.

Yet, despite these achievements, a majority of the conservancies are at a nascent stage, lacking in governance and management effectiveness, as well as the ability to deliver social, economic and ecological benefits in the long term. Threats to wildlife including incompatible land use, habitat degradation, unsustainable resource use and other illegal activities may diminish current conservation efforts.

Fortunately, the conservation sector in Kenya is engaged and committed to a vibrant and sustainable wildlife conservancies network, as it recognizes that it is critical to maintain momentum. Effective collaboration and long-term partnerships have been identified as key factors for success.

To explore this, the Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association (KWCA) and Maliasili, in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) with support from the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG), held a dialogue on Strengthening Partnerships within Kenya’s Wildlife Conservancies Movement, hosted by the African Wildlife Foundation in Nairobi on July 4, 2018. It explored partnerships between local actors and national, as well as international partners.

Insights from Kenya’s Conservancies’ Leaders and Supporters
Forty conservation leaders from local communities, regional associations, government, national and international NGOs and the private sector joined the dialogue. The event, was a follow up to the dialogue, Strenthening Partnerships for African Conservation Leadership, held in Washington in February 2017. It featured open discussions, panel forums, and working group sessions.

The following were the key highlights on lessons learned, best practices, factors for success, challenges and opportunities for fostering robust local, national and global partnerships to scale up Kenya’s conservancy movement.

Private Sector Stakeholders as Key Conservancy Partners
The conservancies representatives’ panel shared their experience in establishing partnerships with the private sector. Lessons from Mara, Amboseli, Laikipia and Northern Kenya highlighted a variety of partnership models ranging from inter-conservancy collaboration, inter-community partnerships, and private sector coalitions with the communities.

The tourism sector in Kenya was heralded as a model in partnership development, evidenced by the ability to work collectively to advance their agenda despite competing for business. It was concluded that the wildlife sector could draw some valuable lessons from tourism investors in areas, such as self-regulation, standardization and communication.

“Due to their nature of work, conservancies are like a mini state, they depend on multiple partnerships. These partnerships are significant for them to conserve, manage land, provide high social impact development programmes, create awareness, protect wildlife and everything that pertains conservation. Therefore, conservancies need capacity building on how to develop strong partnerships that are well coordinated and managed to provide equitable agreements that does not create a disequilibrium in the communities that result in conflict.“ Judy Kepher- Gona, Sustainable Tourism and Travel Agenda (STTA)

In partnering with the conservancies, tourism investors bring funds, information, network, and could be a tool in improving conservancy governance. To achieve this the right tourism investor is necessary, one whose motive is beyond profit and whose interest and commitment includes protecting nature and improving local community livelihoods. Partnerships between a tourism investor and local communities fail when profit is the only motive and where the relationship is not governed by a negotiated agreement and if there is inadequate communication and accountability. Understanding the need of the tourism investor and that of the community by either party is a key ingredient to successful partnerships with the tourism players. Noting that only a few conservancies in Kenya today have tourism investments, exploring further how conservancies can become recognized as tourism destinations of choice that attract the right the kind of diverse ecotourism investments is key to unlocking the value of wildlife conservancies.

Government and Conservation Organizations as Conservancy Enablers
National and county government and conservation non-governmental organizations were identified as key actors and essential partners to the conservancy movement in Kenya. It was however noted that at the county level, enabling policies were not in place. According to the Kenyan 2010 Constitution, wildlife conservation is a national function and the Wildlife Act 2013 devolves wildlife to owners and managers of the land where wildlife occurs. This dual approach however excludes the county governments whose policies and investments could hamper or support conservation in community lands. Several counties are however actively working on establishing systems or structures that will strengthen partnerships within the wildlife conservancy sector through supporting the conservancies in their areas of jurisdiction.

An enabling policy environment at both levels is therefore critical for incentivizing community-based conservation while the technical services and capacity building services offered by conservation organizations is critical for sustainability.

“Conservation is an expensive venture and it requires long-term investment if the communities are to realise the benefits and for wildlife to flourish. Therefore, this calls for a structured partnership that supports them. As Samburu County Government, we acknowledge the role international development partners and other conservation NGOs have played in supporting conservation in the country and realizing we have an obligation to provide financial support to the conservancies for the benefit of our communities and wildlife.” Peter Leshakwet, County Executive Committee Tourism, Conservation, Trade and Cooperatives

The conclusion from the dialogue was that effective and robust partnerships were identified as critical for the future of wildlife conservation in Kenya. To be successful in creating the right kind of partnerships for the conservancies movement, the following enabling factors were identified as building blocks:

• Ensure partnerships are built on transparency and accountability to ensure trust among stakeholders is cultivated.
• A shared common vision, goals, values and objectives are identified at the early stage of partnership building and to the extent possible should be clear and accepted by all through a negotiated process.
• Partnerships ought to be long term engagements, results focused and ensure participation by all; a successful conservancy takes time to build and the journey to a sustainable conservancy is full of pitfalls and challenges.
• Each partner brings in specific strengths and insights, which are regularly modified and leveraged upon to ensure each partner performs at its best.
• Collective prioritization of tasks, activities and allocation of resources and consistent communication between partners are vital in successful partnerships.
• The context in which the partnership is established should be well understood by both or all parties and, since context changes over time so must partners regularly define the current context and adjust the partnership to remain relevant.
• Create partnerships founded on mutual understanding and benefit and structure partnerships to empower instead of control.
• Develop a guiding framework for the partnership – assumptions that there is clarity on this should be avoided.
• Regular monitoring and evaluation of impact is critical for adaptive management

Finally, participants identified strategic opportunities for ABCG, KWCA and Maliasili to consider as they seek to strengthen partnerships for African conservation leadership:

• Build local institutional capacity to establish and maintain effective partnerships by sharing best practices from their engagements and supporting the design of robust partnership models.
• Provide a learning and sharing platform for conservancy stakeholders where information on partnerships would be shared.
• Provide opportunities for networking and collaboration through events and other channels.
• Develop guidelines and tools on partnerships for application within the wider network of stakeholders.
• Hold similar dialogue forums in other regions to strengthen community conservation work in Africa.

Special appreciation goes to community representatives who travelled from various parts of the country and the representatives of the various organizations for their contribution in making this dialogue a great success, and hope that they appreciated the nuances of partnership building and resolve to be a better partner in their respective areas. The support from ABCG, TNC and WRI for enabling this meeting is highly appreciated.

See the full workshop report here: Strengthening Partnerships in African Conservation: Kenya’s Wildlife Conservancies Movement

Blog authors: Joy Juma (Maliasili), Joyce Mbataru (KWCA), and Dickson Kaelo (KWCA)

Photos: Participants at the dialogue. Photo credits: KWCA