Community Conservation Project,
Delivering green economic growth for communities and conservation
Our ambitious landscape project in Zambia’s Muchinga Province aims to mitigate climate change by restoring degraded miombo and through avoided deforestation, enhance the area’s biodiversity index, and improve the well-being of local communities living adjacent to the forests.
This will be achieved through the promotion of sustainable forest-friendly green economic development opportunities, and by building capacity for good forest governance and resource management for the long-term.
Meanwhile, the wider landscape-level project is undergoing government approval and VERRA certification to establish a 40 year avoided forest conservation project over an area up to 350 000 ha. There are many types of landowners in the landscape, and through this project WeForest aims to bring them all together behind one vision of forest landscape restoration. This involves securing tenure rights for community-owned forests, and bringing the owners of private lands on board to invest in conservation-based green economic development, as well as building a coalition of other stakeholders such as researchers and market experts.
Some restoration activities are already underway within the framework of the first phase of the project, with Community Forest Management Groups sustainably managing three Community Forest Areas covering around 10 000 ha along the eastern boundary of Lavushimanda National Park.
The project connects two protected area clusters, and there is evidence for historic wildlife movement in the area. The area also holds multiple endemic species of flora and fauna, and recent evidence of large carnivores.
There’s a lot of forest cover, but also a lot of people now living in the area, with a high rate of deforestation particularly since 2012. Forest clearance is carried out for small-scale agriculture, unsustainable harvesting of timber and non-timber forest products, man-made late dry season fires, and following land privatization for commercial agriculture.
Poverty rates are high, and communities are dependent on low productivity shifting cultivation (chitemene) and the often unsustainable collection of forest resources: bushmeat, caterpillars, fruits, timber and fuelwood. In this landscape, forest conservation and restoration must deliver positive impacts for local communities through conservation-based green economic development.
Lavushimanda District (including Mpumba Chiefdom), Muchinga Province, Zambia
Conservation; Assisted Natural Regeneration; agroforestry
Ongoing: VCS using REDD+ methodology and CCB triple gold
Bucorvus leadbeateri (southern ground hornbill) (VU), Panthera leo (lion) (VU)
To improve the well-being of local communities, the project’s green economy focus will include market systems development for forest-friendly products including natural juices, sustainable caterpillars and dried mushrooms. It will provide training in alternative livelihoods and climate-smart agricultural value chains, and the local knowledge of community forest management groups will be supplemented with scientific best practice, skills and knowledge to effectively manage their natural resources for future generations.
For wildlife, the project will protect and enhance forest habitat linking two protected areas of conservation importance: Lavushimanda and South Luangwa National Parks. This will entail a combination of improved forest management, law enforcement, biodiversity monitoring, and awareness campaigns to limit risks of human-wildlife conflict as wildlife returns to the area.
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HQ (BE): WeForest asbl/vzw
Cantersteen 47, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
VAT number BE0826.151.968
Incorporated May 26th 2010
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