Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Clearly identify livelihoods opportunities (productive potential of dif erent
habitats is taken into account)
In Africa the ICDP approach has perhaps been most successful in savanna
woodland regions with large mammal populations that generate tourist
revenues, and/or can be used for hunting and meat production for local
people. There are numerous examples of successful or nearly successful
savanna woodland ICDPs from southern and eastern Africa (Leader-
Williams et al., 1996; Hulme and Murphree, 1999). In the dense forest
habitats there is a lower density of large mammals, a lower rate of biomass
production that can be hunted for food and a lower potential for tour-
ists to visit the area (see Lukumbuzya, 2000; Wily and Mbaya, 2001).
Most direct forest values have been realized by logging timber trees, or
hunting animals as bush-meat, and conservationists argue that these uses
are unsustainable everywhere they have been attempted in Africa. The
dii culties of designing sustainable management approaches with poverty-
stricken people whose short-term survival is likely to override long-term
management opportunities are well known (Hackel, 1999). Far more of
the forest values are indirect and realized by people away from the forest
edge, for example clean water supply, reliable water l ows to downstream
users (both people and industry), carbon sequestration, genetic resource
conservation and so on. Exceptions are rare, but include some of the
montane forests of the Albertine Rift in Central Africa; here the presence
of mountain gorillas makes the conservation of the forests i nancially
viable. There is a large direct economic benei t to the local people from
tourists and a large international interest in the conservation of the gorilla
as a species.
A sustainable end point is dei ned
All ICDPs have the ultimate aim of solving resource management prob-
lems and leaving a sustainable system in place that can carry on the work
of the project at the local level, forever. One of the i rst problems is decid-
ing how to measure sustainability. Ecological sustainability is often dif-
ferent from agricultural sustainability, or economic sustainability. Most
experiences so far indicate that in poor developing countries the problems
are not solved entirely, even after a decade of ICDP interventions, and cre-
ating the funding and institutional mechanisms to sustainably manage the
resources is complex. Typically, an ICDP will remain in an area working
to solve these issues for as long as funding is in place. Once the funding
ends, or is set to end, then attempts are made to leave as sustainable a
system as possible. It is a common perception that interventions quickly
disappear as soon as the project leaves the area and the situation returns
to how it was before the project was operational.
