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Has it ever dawned on you that when the government fails to give environmental information to the public, it is shooting itself in the foot because without this information we can hardly achieve sustainable development?

All citizens involved in national development can hardly achieve sustainable development without access to information and participation. 

Public participation is crucial. It is a cornerstone of sustainable development and of progressive environmental management. With public participation we benefit from better development decisions and ultimately less conflict between developers and the affected public.  Most importantly, public participation builds the capacity of communities to address their own environmental challenges. Governments should therefore facilitate easy access to information in order to promote effective participation by citizens in matters that concern them. Similarly, it is important for citizens to seek and act upon information that will improve the quality of their lives. 

Rio Declaration on Environment and Development: Principle 10
"Environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level," says Annex I, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 1992.  "At the national level, each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities, including information on hazardous materials and activities in their communities, and the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes.  States shall facilitate and encourage public awareness and participation by making information widely available.  Effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings, including redress and remedy, shall be provided."

Justification of access to environmental information
There are a number of situations that justify the need for easy access to information. A good example of a situation that warrants the need for access to information was the recent poison scare by workers at Maloma’s Ferrovanadium Processing Plant. Workers needed to know about hazards they were exposed to. As long as information is not made easily accessible to the workers they will continue to live in fear. Many of us could be in a similar situation. Do you know about the hazards that you are exposed to at your work place? The big question is have you cared to find out about these hazards? If you did, how difficult was it to obtain the information? Hazards in a working environment include among others safety hazards, physical hazards and so on. 

Information relating to environmental, occupational health and safety standards is critical especially to the protection and prolonging of human immunity within the workplace. More often than not workers experience difficulties in accessing this and yet company authorities are legally required to give workers access to this very important information. When company authorities do not release the information, workers depend on representative bodies such as such labour unions, associations and committees as alternative sources of such information.  Unfortunately, where such groupings are either not allowed or suppressed it becomes even more difficult to access and or communicate information of concern to them. Invariably, people living side by side an industry that is releasing emissions into the air, should be able to access information on the effects of these emissions on their health and the environment. 

The Limits of managing parks without the people 
(Last in the series)
14  November 2005

Rural communities from all over the world are gentle giants whose rights to benefit from natural resources are often not observed or are only given for political, conservation and development reasons. Last time we used Namibia’s approach to community based tourism as an example of how governments could help communities benefit from local resources. 

Community rights to natural resource use
The central question is where community rights to benefit from natural resources are not given, should communities wait for the relevant authorities to give the rights or they should proactively demand these rights in order to improve their livelihoods? 

When our governments find it difficult to persuade the international community to allow them to for example to engage in strictly controlled international trade in raw ivory that several southern African countries continue to stockpile; they use the need for poor African rural communities to use the money to alleviate poverty and promote conservation as a powerful argument which many find difficult to go against. What this shows is that these communities are gentle giants who only need to demand their rights to benefit from their natural resources, working with strategically placed partners such as NGOs, including the international community which sympathises with them.

The concept of community-based tourism in southern Africa is homegrown but did not come on a silver platter (was not just an easy-take). In fact some observers of community-based tourism argue that the driving force behind the concept was primarily conservation and not community development. 

Congratulated 
However, governments of southern Africa, which introduced the concept, should be congratulated as the involvement of communities in tourism has not only brought improved rural development but also meant better conservation, resulting in a significant reduction of poaching in most of these countries. 

"I used to be a poacher," unashamedly said Chief Luckson Masule of Botswana’s Chobe Enclave, 80 kilometres from Kasane Town in a recent interview. "I was almost shot by game rangers but hid behind a shrub but now I am the champion of anti-poaching in my Community (The Chobe Enclave) because wildlife has become our property just like our cows and goats."

How can communities demand rights to natural resource use?
Communities should explore ways of demanding their rights to benefit from natural resources through the people who represent them in parliament. In some countries, failure to represent community’s environment and development interests and ability to do so can mean that a member (MP) of parliament will lose or retain his post as an MP. What this demonstrates is that rights to use natural resources are important to the welfare of communities. It also means that very little meaningful rural development can take place as long as communities do not benefit from natural resources found in their area.
 

The limits of managing parks without people (continued from last time )
7 November 2005

Last time we ended with an appeal that efforts should be made to help local communities to benefit from their local resources. This week we would like to show how governments could help communities benefit from local resources by using Namibia’s approach to community based tourism.

Enabling policy and law
In order to allow communal areas to benefit from their local resources through community based tourism activities, Namibia introduced a policy on Wildlife Management, Utilisation and Tourism in Communal Areas in 1995. The following are some of the objectives of this policy: to establish an economically based system for the management and utilisation of wildlife and other renewable living resources on communal land so that rural communities can participate on a partnership basis with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and other Ministries in the management of, and benefits from, natural resources and benefit from rural development based on wildlife, tourism and other natural resource management. The objectives also include the need to improve the conservation of natural resources by wise and sustainable resource management and the protection of biodiversity and to redress the past discriminatory policies and practices which gave substantial rights over wildlife to commercial farmers, but which ignored communal farmers. 

 The policy also allows rural communities on state land to undertake tourism ventures, and to enter into co-operative agreements with commercial tourism organisations to develop tourism activities on state land. The policy on wildlife and tourism on communal land makes provision for rural communities, which form a conservancy to be given the same rights over wildlife as a commercial farmer. In order to put into effect the policy on Wildlife Management, Utilisation and Tourism on Communal land, Namibia later introduced a Nature Conservation and Amendment Act in 1996.

 The Nature Conservation Amendment Act, 1996 (Act 5 of 1996) amends the Nature Conservation Ordinance so that residents of communal areas can gain the same rights over wildlife and tourism as commercial farmers. According to the Act any group of persons residing on communal land may apply to the Minister of Environment and Tourism to have the area they inhabit or part of that area declared a conservancy.

Results from community involvement in tourism business
With community involvement in tourism and conservation, Namibia’s natural Resources management have improved. Threatened populations of both plant and animal species are improving. These economic activities are also creating employment for rural communities. One of Namibia’s outstanding achievements in CBNRM was the achievement made by Torra Conservancy to be the first southern African community to win the UNDP US$30 000 Equator Prize in 2003. The prize honours outstanding community projects that effectively reduce poverty through conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. The Torra Conservancy is a community-based initiative to generate income from tourism in the remote northwestern corner of Namibia. The communities act as tour guides; operate camping sites, and most importantly watch over the wildlife, which draws the tourists.
 
 

The limits of managing parks without people ( continued from last week)
10 October 2005

Last week we asked the central question: Can the parks without people management approach that some African countries are still clinging to help them environmental sustainability by 2015?

As long as southern African countries and other countries worldwide continue to manage national parks or game reserves without involving neighbouring rural communities, their conservation efforts will remain limited. In countries where communities are not involved in conservation and benefit sharing of natural resources from protected areas, communities surrounding parks view the parks as the property of the government and private sector. Why? One cannot claim ownership over resources that they are not allowed to manage or benefit from. Their lives are worsened by ongoing and uncompensated wildlife-related crop destruction, killing of livestock and the ultimate price of loss of one’s life or that of a loved one.

 Managing parks without involving communities living next to them is a conservation disaster because without benefits, residents from these areas are  more inclined to collaborate with poachers of both wildlife and medicinal plants found in the parks. In the end it is the governments and wildlife that lose.  It is against this background of failure to win cooperation from communities that governments and conservationists from all over the world endorsed the  community Benefits Beyond Boundaries conservation concept at the 5th World Parks Congress, held in Durban South Africa in September 2003.  This concept supports the need for communities to co-manage parks with park officials and also to benefit from park resources through sustainable use.

 The results from countries such as Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe and to some extent Mozambique and South Africa, which implemented and continue to implement  the incentive-based conservation and development approach, are impressive. This incentive-based conservation and development approach is popularly known as Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM). It acknowledges that rural communities should benefit from natural resources found in their area, including wildlife and that these resources should be utilised sustainably.

Through CBNRM projects such as community tourism projects are being run through  partnerships between communities and the private sector. They run projects such as sport hunting and cultural tourism.  Communities that never used to see  money left by tourists who visited their area are beginning to receive and use this money. They are also using it to lift themselves out of poverty associated with African communities. These communities are also very conscious of the need to conserve resources they are benefiting from. They are using revenue generated from their tourism projects to create   employment opportunities. In Swaziland, Shewula Community Nature Reserve is one such initiative. An effort should be made to assist communities establish their own locally based reserves.

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