"A Regional/Community Approach to Conservation and Development Interventions at the Livestock/Wildlife Interface"

George Gitau

Conflicts between humans, livestock, wildlife and the environment have remained a sensitive issue in many parts of Africa, especially in East Africa. These conflicts arise from the use of shared natural resources that have been increasingly dwindling during the last few years. The latter is associated with increasing human population, change of land tenure system and land use to agro-pastoralism and sedentarisation of formally migratory groups of pastoralists. In addition, there has been an increased uncontrolled encroachment of national parks and private ranches by the pastoralists in search of grazing resources.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) selected the African Union-Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) as one of its focal points. The UNCCD mandated AU-IBAR to address the Thematic Programme Network 3 (TPN3) that focuses on the theme area of “rational use of rangelands and fodder conservation.” In order to address the above theme, AU-IBAR has initiated a cluster of stakeholder meetings in 2002 comprised of local, regional and international institutions with interest or currently working at the livestock / wildlife / environment interface. After a series of meetings between AU/IBAR and the partners, existing gaps were identified in the understanding of the socio-economic, political and institutional drivers for environmental change and degradation at the interface between the livestock within pastoral systems and wildlife and the environment. A proposal has been developed for funding and is currently receiving positive consideration by UNEP-GEF.

The main objectives of the project proposal are 1), to develop models and approaches to stabilize livestock/wildlife populations for sustainable livelihoods, biodiversity conservation and reduced land degradation and 2), to enhance capacity for management at the livestock-wildlife interface for economics and/or food security in Africa. This will be achieved through community and regional approaches via compilation of a database from available information from other studies and from pilot activities set-up by the project, and by enhancement of capacity for dissemination of the livestock / wildlife / environment interface model through the Thematic Programme Network 3 in Africa.