Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania

IUCN was in charge of the project financial management and provided technical support and coordination of project activities including convening of the East Africa Forest Network. Flexiblity in funding enabled IUCN to harness and form linkages with emerging initiatives, for example in poverty reduction strategies, and tenure and conservation.

Community’s voices are often forgotten in policy debates. Policy and national level planning, its rhetoric not withstanding, is often weak on integrating rural and urban people into these processes, especially those who are weaker and less empowered. Policy is seen as the purvey of the center. Yet communities, and especially rural people, have a rich knowledge and experience base on how they use their natural resources and environmental assets. Indeed for many land users, natural resources are a vital component of their livelihood strategies, and in particular their safety functions which help them cope with risk and uncertainity. It is this hidden importance of natural resources that this project has sought to document, understand and use to inform and influence policy.

The goal is to promote East African regional collaboration for the sustainable management and conservation of forests resources by: identifying and promoting common approaches to forest conservation across the borders; undertaking joint programmes for capacity building and research; promoting community conservation strategies; and sharing information on policy practice. This is based on making links between how rural people use their natural resources and the policy arena, so that the real value of those resources can be better integrated into conservation and macro-economic planning.

This project has allowed for greater inter-regional cooperation on conservation and forestry issues through the annual meetings of Directors of Forestry in the three East African Countries, known as the East Africa Forestry Network (EAFORNET), which has now been formalized as a sub-committee of the environment committee in the East Africa Community.

Activities undertaken have added value and knowledge, and built synergy for the mainstreaming of environment in national economic planning and development through an agreed East Africa joint regional framework for action, engaging with Environmental Sector Working Groups, and providing a Policy Brief on the links between natural resource valuation and national development. The convening of senior level Government meetings, bringing together both conservationists and macro-economic planners has raised the awareness of both groups on the importance of the environment and natural resources to local people.

Knowledge and awareness in eastern and southern Africa has been enhanced through a series of 4 reviews on community involvement in forest management (jointly funded with DFID). An interactive CD containing this material and other relevant work produced by partners from the region is in the final stages of production. The grant has also been used to support activities that have raised awareness on forest governance issues in Kenya through collaboration with the Kenya and Uganda Forest Working Groups. A regional experts meeting was held on the linkages between tenure and conservation, which brought together participants from 6 countries from the legal and conservation professions. It will form the basis for developing a more focused set of activities on these linkages between tenure and conservation.

Though small, this has been a very important project in being able to address certain key issues (understanding the importance of conservation to rural people, suggesting actions to be able to explore the linkages between conservation and tenure, forming a basis to integrate the importance of conservation to rural people as a component of national planning), and the project has been able to leverage a lot of additional resources.

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