The World Bank/WBI’s CBNRM Initiative

Case Received: February 6, 1998

Author: Monica Opole, CIKSAP

Tel: 254-2-448150

Fax: +254 2 444424

The Eastern African sub-region (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Eritrea, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and Sudan) agricultural biodiversity plays a major role in food security for its population estimated at 145 million and average growth rate of 3.1%. Agricultural biodiversity in East Africa includes crops and livestock. The sector employs 70-93% of the region population and generates 60-95% of foreign exchange earning .The farming system used by most of the Eastern African countries in its high to medium potential lands is mixed small-scale subsistence farms systems with little mechanisation.

The genetic diversity of the East African forests has received little research attention and yet specific habits and ecosystems in the region are known to contain endemic forest species including tree shrubs and herbaceous plants.

The replacement of local landraces for Agriculture, Forestry by increased population changes in land use systems, changes in feeding habits and inadequate policy support have contributed to a decrease of biodiversity at community level. Poor understanding and use of cultural diversity and indigenous knowledge, technology and practices has adversely affected the conservation of plant genetic resources in the region.

The laws on natural resources are still underdeveloped in the region though conservation ranks high in most governments’ development agenda as evident in the compilation of State of Environment Reports, and development of National Environmental Action Plans (NEAPs) which are primarily off-shoots of structural adjustment economic and environmental policies spearheaded by the World Bank.

Kenya is the only country in the region which has legislation on Intellectual Property Rights which are gazetted as Industrial Property Act (Cap.509), Trade Marks Act (Cap.506) and Copyright Act (Cap.130), under the Kenya Industrial Property Office established in 1989. The rights include protection of parts of products of biotechnological process in form of inventions. The Act has a provision for protection of plant genetic resources or improvement .

Legislation affecting agricultural genetic resources was based upon colonial agriculture was developed by the importation of new genetic material in form of new crops and varieties, species and hybrid seeds. This has disturbed the local genetic scenario. In its emphasis on agriculture meant that other genetic resources were ignored and trampled by expanding agricultural activities

Existing environmental policies, natural resources laws and plant genetic resources policies are beset with various technical, policy and socio-political constraints. Laws relevant to conservation and management of genetic resources in the region have been developed piecemeal over a long period of time. The fragments of policy which have emerged are sectoral, truncated, sometimes conflicting and above all not legally binding with lack of a legal framework for asserting national economic sovereignty over crop genetic resources. At the practical level, the development and implementation of the various fragments of laws and policies have been impeded by:

(i) Formulation and implementation of the laws and policies have traditionally tended to be a prerogative of the central governments which normally fail to involve the local people, resulting in lack of conservation responsibility at the community level.

(ii) Limitations of the existing laws which pay little attention to such important natural resources components as biodiversity in general and genetic resources in particular.

(iii) Inadequate implementation and enforcement mechanisms for laws and policies due to lack of logistic, financial and human resources.

(vi) Lack of proper co-ordination and integration mechanism for the many related and fragmented laws and policies which have evolved sectorally and have become compartmentalised.

Economics

The economies of the East African countries are primarily agri-based. The region has a high diversity of landraces and their wild relatives, numerous medicinal plants and under-utilised fruit, vegetables, forestry and industrial species all of which offer great potential for economic development through advances in the agricultural, medical, industrial and technological sectors.

The immense wealth of indigenous vegetables, fruits and other under-utilised species, which have proven high nutritional values, can go a long way in increasing food production through diversifying its sources as well as providing nutritional supplements especially to the rural majority. Such indigenous vegetables as Gynandropsis gynandra, Amaranthus spp,Solanum nigrum and Crotolaria spp among others are highly nutritious, cheap to produce and are well adapted to the environment in which they grow.

In the renewable natural resource sector in the Eastern African Region, the current resource management organisations seek ways of harvesting resources purely from an economic standpoint. Commercial interests surpass the capacity of the renewable natural resource to regenerate itself. Commercial productions also tend to disregard localised/commercial natural resource management policies.

Social

The social aspects of sustainable biodiversity conservation imply that there exists inborn/inherited traits of living with and utilising local biodiversity without threat to the potentiality of the resource base to generate itself.

Centres of crop diversity have been found to be inhabited by indigenous people’s world over. Over exploitation through harvesting of biodiversity by commercial interests continue to threaten not only local livelihoods but also destroys the indigenous knowledge of management of the plants ecosystems.

Indigenous/local communities interact with their plants and animals as part of their ways of life. In this process they are continuously experimenting, observing and learning. In the process, social taboos, penalties are placed on natural resource use by the culture of the community at large. At a more personal level every member of a community is responsible to the entire group (village/community) in the management of their local systems. Where natural manmade calamities affect those environments in traditional societies remedies were made in attempting to combat the wrong as indigenous communities laid great emphasis on their environment.

CIKSAP together with indigenous communities foresaw the strategies employed as creating a catalytic base for sustainable management of biodiversity based upon local values and criteria for the present and future generations.

Prior to the initiative, a number of assumptions from the community to the National level were found to exist. From the community was the assumption that the government(s) would adequately meet all food needs.

From the local communities the initiative situation was that natural resources would always be there and that they would continue to regenerate themselvesAt the policy level the problem was how to mitigate food needs at the local level against a background of parallel national/regional policies

At the community level, the efficiency for long term conservation without added strategic planning and technical input was questionable as the law of chance of existence of minority crops amongst local communities existed.

NGO’s as catalysts in themselves are not able to efficiently increase conservation of biodiversity without partner input of local community. Their comparative strength lies in their capacity to link up local with regional/global agenda issues of the voiceless rural people.

At the formal system level involving national governments, the sector and bilateral agencies the enabling environment for inco-operation of commercial needs to lacking thus leading to inefficiency in implementing sustainable conservation through use.

There exists inequity in the distribution availability of control of biological diversity. The tropical regions are rich plant/animal genetic resources but lack the financial capacity to maintain and improve upon their resource base.

At the start of the project accountability of conservation was assumed to be in the hands of relevant government ministries. This is a subsequent result of the process of disempowerment of local communities in their resource management following the establishment of by-laws based upon borrowed colonial policies. Simultaneously, many local communities have realised the need to make some form of concerted efforts aimed to salvage the situation so as to meet not only their basic needs, but to also be able to conserve for the future.

How long has the problem been apparent and to whom?

The problem of how to establish a mechanism of sustainable conservation of biodiversity through use is a problem the Africa Region has been grappling since the 60’s. A series of conferences leading to the Rio declaration of 1987 followed by the Global Plan of Action in Leipzig Germany and Rome in 1996 are some of the steps initiated at the Global level as contribution to alleviating the problem of adequate food security for the future.

At the community level, the problem is envisaged as incremental over years as a result of increased human demand on existing biodiversity surpass its production capacity.

Who/What would continue to suffer if the problem went undressed?

The global community at large to include local communities will suffer the consequences as there may be new crops, food, and medicine products from the world’s biological diversity.

At national levels food insecurity would increase with malnutrition increasing within national boundaries and beyond. At localised levels (rural/urban) alternative livelihoods would be lost together with the foundation of moving into the future in terms of loss of indigenous knowledge.

The institutional change process of viewing local communities as having the potential of maintaining biological diversity through use of the plants together with the indigenous knowledge attached to them has been a process involving first:- attitudal change followed by creation enabling environment at policy level to accommodate local initiatives.

How the issue emerge into public agenda:

Through exhibitions, workshops and conferences the issue was brought into the mainstream of the public agenda. Discussions and collaboration with the relevant agencies also contribute to their inco-operation of the issue into public attention. The farming community themselves also played a key role in raising the agenda into the public by requesting for production/technical support for the formal sectors.

Who were the Key actors in the change process?

Key actors in the change process were farmers themselves and the consumer at large in both rural/urban centres. Community Based Organisations (CBO’s) also contributed to the change process as they organised themselves to inco-operate local biodiversity into their household diet for food security. As they took the programme into their production planning processes, the change became a turnkey process of reaction .

What was their interest in bringing about the change?

Individual farmer’s key interest was to widen income generation opportunities through diversified production areas. Both individuals and community members had their confidence in local foods reinstated after being provided with technical data to prove that indigenous vegetables were indeed nutritious when compared with exotics and could grow under commercial production systems if given similar research attention.

NGO’s interest was to reinstate the value of edible local biodiversity (indigenous vegetables) with the objective of increasing local household food base. They were also concerned that without use, the indigenous knowledge that goes with the identification, production, processing of local indigenous vegetables would disappear.

Who took the initiative and responsibility of bringing about the change?

NGO’s (KENGO, CIKSAP) took the initiative ‘seed work’ demystifying the myth that some local vegetables were poisonous, not nutritious, could not be grown under domesticated did not have seed were some of the myths /assumptions which needed clarification. To add onto the myths was the need to reinstate social pride/value of local biodiversity as people who consumed local vegetables were considered backward (counter development) and illiterate

OUTCOMES

Change in attitude towards use of indigenous vegetables which led to adapted positive change of consumption, sales, increased use of indigenous techniques of production methods by farmers. Indirectly farmers also started the process of domesticating on-farm indigenous/local genetic biodiversity previously only collected from the wild showing a change in the approach that biodiversity is free would regenerate itself freely without man.

The expected impact of people’s ability to maintain biodiversity through use, means that in the future more responsibility of resource management would be left at the local/community level. The central authorities (governments) would play more of technical backstopping and co-ordinative role between the different sectors of the government, private sector, and international research and community groups.

Inco-operation of local communities as equal partners and as stakeholders would ensure adequate implementation and enforcement mechanisms for laws and policies and would decrease the cost of external measures born in logistical and human resource input.

Communities who have lost control of managing their resources as a result of adverse policies cannot at a communal level manage to enter the market economy on their own terms. The poverty that these people eventually face force them to further destroy the same resource base (biodiversity) they depend on as globalisation and consumer demands for the North imp on their livelihoods.

Marketing of tropical biodiversity products is one aspect. If equal trading terms are employed then local communities should be able to derive income from their conservation activities and thereby create sustainable incomes for their subsistence needs and long-term survival. For the national governments, the central authorities of government will increase gross national products as green capitalisation takes effect. The situation is evident today in products such as Body Shop and Free trade U.K.

Indigenous communities consider biodiversity as important to them as biological diversity is to environmentalists and biological scientists. Whereas the loss of biodiversity is a global crisis in terms of loss on unknown/unmeasured benefits of biological diversity, locally based communities need recognition on their role as conservationists of biodiversity.

A recognition of their capacity means that they should be provided with the relevant support services for central authority, NGO’s and the formal sector with the common objective of sustainable conservation. This requires inco-operation of the social values to biodiversity for sustainable harvesting.

Social value such as the use of forests for cultural activities such as ceremonies are valuable if supported as it encourages their sustainable use/maintenance. Further together with ceremonies medicinal and food by-products are found in forests hence the need to maintain cultural diversity for the sake of indigenous knowledge.

Replicability/Uniqueness of the case.

The lesson learned and replicable in this case is that where natural resources management is embedded in local cultural knowledge there is a need to have multiphase disciplinary input.

Multiphase disciplinary inputs should however consider them as equal partners in the development process of a people based programme.

A multiphase/multidisciplinary approach should allow indigenous communities to innovate so as to allow the process of experimentation, learning from experiment to evolve itself at the level of farmer need.