Seven Groups Get UNDP Equator Prize 2002

By Toye Olori

Seven indigenous communities from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia and the Pacific have been awarded the U.N. Development Programme’s Equator Prize 2002 for outstanding and sustainable projects that ensure the survival of their communities.

II Ngwesi Group Ranch in Kenya and Suledo Forest Community in Tanzania took home the two prizes awarded Africa. Uma Bawang Association (UBRA) in Malaysia and Fiji’s Locally-Managed Marine Area Network won the prizes in the Asia and Pacific region. For the Latin American and Caribbean region, Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE) Belize and Green Life Association of Amazonia (AVIVE), Brazil were winners. And the Talamanca Initiative from Costa Rica won the award for World Heritage Sites.

Each of the winning communities received 30,000 dollars.

II Ngwesi Group Ranch won for its success in reducing local poverty and conserving biodiversity by promoting ecotourism and establishing a community trust to manage local lands. By limiting poaching through community patrols and leading efforts to manage local resources, the trust has helped to secure a more certain future for wildlife on II Ngwesi and neighbouring reserves.

Members of the Suledo Forest Community harnessed their knowledge of the species-rich forests of the Arusha region to establish an effective system of village-based forest management. Local food production has increased and people now have access to harvested timber and a greater range of forest products.

UBRA used blockades and innovative mapping techniques to defend customary land rights and guarantee its members’ access to traditional forestlands. It now teaches the mapping techniques to other communities and helps them learn the skills needed to earn incomes while protecting traditional forests.

The Locally-Managed Marine Area Network project, which was set up in 1999, has grown to include communities in six districts and cover 10 percent of the inshore marine area of Fiji resulting income increases of 35 percent over three years while catches have tripled in size.

TIDE won the Equator Prize 2002 for promoting poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation in some of Belize's poorest areas through the Maya Mountain Marine Sustainable Livelihoods Initiative. It has raised incomes while reducing the poaching of endangered and illegal hunting and logging.

AVIVE promoted the local environment and culture while also improving the quality of life of local people, especially women. Focussing on developing techniques for sustainable extraction of the pau-rosa plant and on the home production of natural medicines and cosmetics, AVIVE has helped to generate income for local women while protecting the endangered pau-rosa.

The Talamanca Initiative, a partnership of three community-based organisations, has worked since 1983 to integrate biodiversity conservation with socio-economic development. In addition to establishing a National Wildlife Refuge and developing Central America's only permanent raptor migration monitoring programme, the initiative's efforts to promote crop diversification and 13 ecotourism ventures have brought a six-fold increase in local income.

''By highlighting ''win-win'' situations, where communities are able to benefit from biodiversity while ensuring its survival, the Equator Prize 2002 helps meet the urgent need to learn from local partnerships, point the way forward for other communities, and empower them to implement their own solutions,'' said Mark Malloch Brown, head of the UNDP.

Simon Nakinyanga from II Ngwesi Ranch told Terraviva: ''I cannot express myself. I am very happy. I have to put in more efforts to my community to go further for more ecotourism and biodiversity. The UNDP and other organisations should continue to support local community groups every year so that the whole world can see what we are doing from the grassroots.

The Equator Initiative is a worldwide movement to reduce poverty and sustain biodiversity by identifying and rewarding innovative local partnerships, fostering community-to-community learning and contributing to knowledge generation for advocacy and policy impact. It focuses on the region between 23.5 degrees north and 23.5 degrees south of the Equator as this zone holds the world's greatest concentrations of both human poverty and biological wealth.