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Importance
of environment to poverty reduction
26 September 2005 Among the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by world governments in 2000 within the framework of the United Nations is goal number seven, which emphasizes the need to ensure environmental sustainability. MDGs are measures that governments worldwide have committed themselves to take in order to promote human welfare by 2015. They include the following: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases and develop global partnership for development. As an environmental organisation we would like to demonstrate how other MDGs such as the need to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, are closely linked to the need to ensure environmental sustainability. Environmental sustainability improves the state of natural resources such as water, wildlife, soil and vegetation, without which we would hardly survive. However, very few people can access and control these resources, which are largely enjoyed by influential companies in both the private and public sectors. Environmental sustainability aims to address such issues by making sure that poor communities equitably share with the rich companies, benefits from natural resources found in their area. These communities should also be allowed to co-manage natural resources found in their area, working together with parks authorities, the private, public sectors and non-governmental organisations. Unfortunately, what we normally see in most parts of the world are people-park conflicts caused by a long-standing tendency in some countries to manage natural resources without involving rural communities. Historically, several rural communities were forcibly removed without compensation from their original homelands, to make way for the expansion of national parks. Parks all over the world especially in developing countries are tourist magnates, which attract handsome incomes that are largely enjoyed by the central government, the private and public sectors. Next to these national parks are extremely poor communities whose rights are occasionally violated by park authorities in the name of conservation. The central question is will the parks without people management approach that some Southern African countries are still clinging to help them to achieve environmental sustainability by 2015? The Governments of Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and to some extent Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa must be applauded for their recognition for the need for community involvement in the co-management and sustainable use of natural resources, through a programme called Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM). CBNRM is an incentive-based
conservation model that allows communities to co-manage and share benefits
from natural resources found in their area, working together with their
private, public sectors partners, the parks and wildlife management authorities
and NGOs. Most of the southern African communities benefiting from CBNRM
have taken significant steps to lift themselves from extreme poverty. They
are using money from CBNRM related business initiatives such running lodges
jointly with the private sector to build schools, clinics, sink boreholes,
develop good road networks, buy ambulances and anti-poaching equipment.
They also use revenue generated from tourist activities to employ community
game guards. It is this balance between conservation and development that
should help us achieve environmental sustainability and other MDGs in southern
Africa by 2015.
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