Community Based Conservation Program
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
Restoring Land and Livelihoods
This
program was initiated in 1994 as a series of smaller projects but has
since grown into a full-fledged program managed in the context of a 100-year
time horizon in order to emphasize and prioritize long-term thinking.
The purpose of the Community-Based Conservation Program (CBCP) is to assist
the Africa Centre’s neighbors
in the Hwange Communal Lands, through Holistic Management® training, to
achieve a long-term, sustainable future of their own design, and to develop
their communities in a way that incorporates their own personal and cultural
values.
In mid-2005, Holistic Management® International received a grant from
the US Agency for International Development that enabled HMI and the Africa
Centre to consolidate years of effort into an extensively monitored
pilot program that, with refinement, can serve as a model for other communities
in Africa seeking to restore desertifying land, diversity of wildlife,
and community livelihoods.
Restoring Land and Livelihoods.
The Hwange Community is enormous, covering over a million acres of rapidly deteriorating land on which over 145,000 people attempt to subsist on livestock, marginal cropping areas, and wildlife. The pilot program involves three communities within the Hwange Communal Lands, numbering close to 4,000 people.
In each community we are working
to achieve these objectives:
Village Banking.
To reduce hunger while elevating approximately 600 individuals within the most vulnerable families out of poverty through the conversion of an on-going micro-lending program to one based on goats as the currency.
The Africa Centre had launched a village banking program in 1999 that eventually served 500 women who used the profits from their microenterprises to feed their families and send their children to school. But we had to suspend this program in 2004 when inflation in Zimbabwe reached 600 percent. By moving to livestock as the currency we could more than match inflation: not only do they maintain their value, they also produce offspring, thus outpacing inflation. Five banks, of 20 families each, have been formed following six weeks of training in the three pilot communities.
Each family has been loaned 10 goats (a minimum of 9 females) for three years. Interest is due annually (3 goats per annum) until the loan is repaid. (Interest payments provide the goats needed to start new banks). Goats were selected as the currency because they often kid more than once a year and can also produce twins. In theory, this reproductive rate should allow families to grow their herds, while consuming some animals, selling others, and repaying their loans. We should know in fact by early 2007.
Gender and HIV Awareness.
To effectively address the long-standing prohibition against female ownership of livestock, the issues of safe family sexual practices, and the stigma of those living with HIV, through gender empowerment training to the 200 male and female heads of household participating in the goats-as currency banks.
This objective became necessary because the new banking program involves lending to families, rather than solely to women. Women are often culturally (but not legally) prohibited from owning livestock in Zimbabwe, but equally important, they generally have little say in the matter of when animals are to be sold, and how the income will be used. Women now head a growing number of families in Zimbabwe, a trend that is likely to continue due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
A diagnosis of HIV-positive is essentially a death sentence that leaves behind orphans who must assume the roles of adults, and grandparents who must again become parents. The stigma of the survivors and those who contract the disease further compounds the issue and highlights the social dilemma of multiple families now headed by females—many of whom constitute the membership of our goats-as-currency village banks. All bank members receive gender empowerment training and HIV awareness and stigmatization training in monthly bank meetings.
Elephant-Proof Crop Fields
In 2005 the Africa Centre initiated another, smaller pilot project to address the loss of crops in the Hwange Community due to elephants, which can consume a family’s entire food supply for the year in a single night. In recent years a number of elephants have been shot in an effort to prevent raids on large, poorly protected fields that in fact yield very little. One village farmer agreed to work with our Africa Centre staff on a promising alterative, that has already attracted the attention of other farmers:Elephant Proofing. A trench, one meter deep by one meter wide has been dug around the field, which deters elephants, which cannot jump. A row of chile plants, also a deterrent, has been planted in the trench. Finally, a fence of woven twigs has been constructed between the trench and the field.
Enhancing Crop Yields.
The area to be planted is about a quarter the size of most crop fields in the community, which made an easier job of the elephant proofing. To increase crop yields, a herd of cattle was brought onto the field, moving around each section in high concentration, chipping the sealed soil surface, trampling down brush, and depositing dung and urine as fertilizer. The result: an ideal seedbed for the farmer’s crops, which should gradually increase in yield in the coming years.
Contact:
Peter Holter
Holistic Management® International
1010 Tijeras Ave. NW
Albuquerque, NM 87102
Tel: (505) 842-5252
Fax: (505) 843-7900
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The Africa Centre for Holistic Management®
The Africa Centre for Holistic Management® - Staff
Dimbangombe Ranch Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
Dimbangombe College of Wildlife, Agriculture and Conservation Management