Last month, I blogged about the Equator Prize, which honors community-based groups for achievements in “advancing local sustainable development solutions for people, nature and resilient communities.” Today I’m going to share four things I learned at the award ceremony, which took place September 20th.
Winners of the Equator Prize pose with actor Edward Norton for photographs. Photo by Dylan Lowthian/UNDP.
Jane Goodall hasn’t heard of the landscape approach…but she practices it.
Jane Goodall was not with one of the prize-winning groups, but when I saw her standing on the red carpet at the ceremony, I just had to ask if she had heard of the landscape approach. And, well, she hadn’t. But once I explained it to her, she told me that the Jane Goodall Institute projects worked with similar principles, saying, “Well, the projects that we started in Africa are very holistic and you know we don’t have farming here and other things there unless the environment’s right for them. So when we have coffee, it’s shadegrown coffee, and the indigenous trees are coming back, and that provides habitat to the birds…We’re involving the people living around the wilderness areas, so they become our partners. That’s what we’re doing.” Sounds like she is a natural adherent.
The landscape approach works off-land.
When I talked to Hosin Nibani of Morocco’s Association de Gestion Intégrée des Ressources (AGIR), I couldn’t help but notice that the group seemed to be practicing integrated landscape management underwater. By introducing sustainable fishing techniques, launching a sustainable fishing cooperative to influence the market, and bringing Al-Hoceima National Park stakeholders together to create resource management plans at a landscape…er, seascape level, the group is benefitting people, food and nature. Now is it time to integrate landscapes and seascapes?
Participatory community conservation is the new black.
According to Mark Dowie’s book Conservation Refugees, between 1900 and 2011, “more than 108,000 officially protected conservation areas [were] established worldwide, largely at the urging of five international conservation organizations. About half of these areas were occupied or regularly used by indigenous peoples. Millions who had been living sustainably on their land for generations were displaced in the interests of conservation.” Thankfully, the existence of the Equator Prize, with its emphasis on “community-based, grassroots action” and the empowerment of marginalized groups, is one sign that mainstream conservationists have moved away from a model of forced land-sparing. Although not all the organizations receiving the Equator Prize were started or are directed by locals, they all highlight a shift towards a participatory community development model where people are empowered to sustainably manage their own resources and improve their livelihoods simultaneously.
For example, at the ceremony, Tom Lalaampa told me about the great work that Northern Rangelands Trust, an umbrella body supporting a network of 26 community conservancies in Northern Kenya, does. The idea for the Trust came from Ian Craig, a Westerner who had to spend a lot of time convincing the Maasai that community conservancies were not just a plot to steal their grazing land and make them poorer. Now, the two-thirds-westerner senior management team is accountable to a Council of Elders—consisting of democratically elected chairs of the conservancies, and institutional members representing county councils, local wildlife forums, Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the private sector—which governs the Trust. The Asociación de Mujeres Waorani del Ecuador (AMWAE), on the other hand, was organized by seven Waorani women who felt that women could better defend Waorani interests against business and manage development aid than the Waorani men’s organization. AMWAE has ten Waorani officers and two non-Waorani staff, whom they hope to replace as soon as Waorani women have the training necessary to take on the roles of accountant and secretary.
Every group needs more money…even Jane Goodall’s.
When I asked Dr. Goodall the biggest obstacle her organization faced, she said, “Money. Funding. We’ve got massive support all around the world, but that doesn’t always lead to funding. We could be doing twice as much if we had twice as much funding.” If an organization with the star power and connections of Jane Goodall can’t get enough money to tackle challenges in the area it’s based, what community organization can? Equator Prize 2014 winners received US$5,000 each, with eight selected for ‘special recognition’ receiving an additional $15,000. That’s $250k for 26 groups—not much. Luckily, some much larger sums of were pledged at the event, including $100 million from Norway to support indigenous people, protect their rights to the forest, and enable their participation in official processes, as well as $16.3 million from Germany for the Global Support Initiative for Indigenous and Community Conservation Areas and Territories. It’s a relief to see larger sums of development aid being directed at projects that put local people at or close to the steering wheel.
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