Conservation Works Better With Social Justice

Poverty threatens wildlife conservation despite widespread efforts to integrate conservation and development so that local communities benefit. So what’s going wrong? A research project suggests it’s social justice that’s missing.

Aug 24, 2014 – Uganda.  All too often, Integrated Conservation and Development (ICD) projects fail to stop poaching, encroachment and other activities that threaten the world’s most endangered animals. One example is Uganda’s mountain gorillas, living in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.

Bwindi is home to around half of the world’s population of this critically endangered species. And it lies in one of the poorest and most densely populated regions of Africa. Bwindi adopted an ICD approach shortly after it became a national park in 1991 and ICD has been a key way for park authorities to improve relations with local communities.

But now, more than 20 years later, with illegal bushmeat hunting and timber collection continuing, IIED and partners are researching how ICD can do more for both protected area conservation and local livelihoods.

Who are the poorest of the poor?

The poorest people live in the ‘frontline zone’, extending about 0.5km from Bwindi’s boundary where crops and livestock are frequently raided by wild animals. They are at greater risk of disease because they have fewer sanitation facilities. They have less education, making it harder to find work, and they live far from trading centres and transport that others within their community benefit from.  All of that creates a perpetuating trap of poverty.

Do they benefit from ICD projects?

Some ICD benefits are reaching people in the frontline zone. But few or no ICD benefits are reaching the poorest people living there.

The poorest people also feel less involved with decision-making and less ownership of ICD projects. From investigating why this was so, it appeared that most ICD projects occur near trading centres and roads, but not in remote areas where the poorest live.

Who and why?

We wanted to understand who uses Bwindi’s resources illegally, and why, despite ICD. People who have been arrested for illegal resource use were generally poorer than other local residents and lived close to the national park and far from trading centres – suggesting poverty is the major issue.

Please continue to read this very interesting article by Julia Baker, a biodiversity specialist, on the IIED Blog.

For this project, IIED partnered with the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC), the Jane Goodall Institute-Uganda, Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE), Imperial College Conservation Science and Parsons Brinckerhoff.

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Read more about reducing local poverty in Bwindi here .

Please follow IIED – International Institute for Environment and Development on Facebook and @iied on Twitter

Please read the original story at: IIED

 

 

 

 

Humans Of New York Go Africa

On the path of the UN-Millennium Development Goals 2015 (MDG): Brandon Stanton, an American blogger and photographer (Humans of New York), travels the world, right now he is in the DRC. His pictures are writing the stories of people he is meeting on the streets. The results are touching portraits.

Aug 20, 2014 – All Africa.  It all started in 2010, when the American Brandon Stanton started taking pictures of people walking in the streets of New York. Before, the 30 year old just had lost his job as a bond trader in Chicago. Because he also collected quotes and short stories from them, he decided to create his own blog: Humans of New York. He took nearly 5000 portraits and the blog is now a huge success.

So successful, that the United Nations wanted him to become a partner. Since August, Brandon is on a 50 day trip, supported by the Secretary General’s MDG Advocacy Group, posting pictures and storied from the trip. Brandon:

“We’re calling it a ‘World Tour,’ because the trip will span over 25,000 miles and circumnavigate the globe. But since there are only ten countries on the itinerary, it would be rather foolish to claim that these portraits and stories somehow represent ‘the world,’ or humanity as a whole. The point of the trip is not to “say” anything about the world. But rather to visit some faraway places, and listen to as many people as possible.”

The purpose of the tour is to raise awareness for the UN-Millennium Development Goals 2015 (MDG) The MDGs are eight international development goals that every member state of the UN agreed to accomplish by the year 2015. .

Currently, Brandon is in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Before he was visiting Iraq and a refugee camp in Jordan. Next on his list are Ukraine, Haiti and South Sudan.

Please read the stories about the people Brandon met in the city of Kasangulu (DRC) and look at the nice portraits he took of them:

“What is your biggest dream?”
Brandon asked two boys.
“To have my own house. With two stories.”

The elderly lady said she’d let him take her photo if he bought some peanuts from her. Afterward, Brendon asked if she could remember the saddest moment of her life. She laughed, and said: “You’re going to need to buy some more peanuts.”


When asking the mother and son in their fancy clothes, Brendon got the answer: ”I’m studying to be a lawyer. He likes books about frogs.” 


“I’ve had to run from war twice. Both times I left good jobs behind, and it was very painful. The second time was the worst. I thought I’d escaped a hopeless situation, and then it happened again. You can feel when war is coming to your town. Traffic picks up. People’s faces begin to look very worried. Nobody cares for each other. If someone talks to you, you can tell that they want the conversation to end as soon as possible. The second time I had to run, I thought: ‘This time I have to get as far away as possible.’ So I came all the way to Kinshasa.”
”Were you worried the war would reach Kinshasa?”
”No. Because the wars have all been about Kinshasa. So if the war reaches Kinshasa, the war is over.”


You can read more about his trip on the website of Humans of New York and on Facebook. You can also follow Brendon on Twitter.