What does Rita do in DRC????

We're often asked what we do for a living, especially in DRC. Today you shall know more about what keeps Rita busy everyday. Rita works for the Jane Goodall Institute. This is what JGI does in DRC:

JGI launched a community-centred conservation program in the Democratic Republic of Congo ( DRC) in 2004. This was the result of a historic partnership between the organizations founded by two of the world's leading primatologists — Jane Goodall and late Dian Fossey.

In their separate spheres working on behalf of great apes, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI) and the Jane Goodall Institute had developed the same conservation philosophy: Effective conservation must begin with the needs and priorities of local communities. With that shared approach, the two organizations joined forces to protect great apes and support local communities in an area of eastern DRC that has significant chimpanzee and eastern lowland gorilla populations.

JGI is working with DFGFI in a 7.4 million-acre conservation corridor stretching from Maiko National Park and the Tayna Gorilla Reserve to Kahuzi-Biega National Park. The corridor is home to an estimated 5,000 eastern lowland gorillas and 15,000 chimpanzees. Despite its high ecological and biodiversity value, this region is experiencing a severe conservation crisis due to agricultural/pastoral expansion, high levels of subsistence hunting, bushmeat extraction, exotic animal trade, extensive gold, coltan and other mining, as well as socio-economic depression resulting from more than a decade of civil war.

The Fossey Fund has been working with a community-based NGO — the Union of Associations for Gorilla Conservation and Community Development in eastern DRC (UGADEC), to establish interlinked community forests and wildlife reserves forming the corridor between the two parks. UGADEC member organizations manage the community reserves and work with the local and national governments on natural resource management.

JGI's contribution is to organize and help implement community-centred conservation initiatives modelled after TACARE (Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education Project), a holistic and participatory program supporting locally managed education, socio-economic development and sustainable natural resource management in western Tanzania. The DRC program will improve health care, provide family planning training and methods, and support local people in the development of sustainable and more efficient agricultural and livestock practices. The program also focuses on improving local governance, empowering communities, and the application of information technology to support sustainable practices.

The overarching philosophy of the program is that conservation can become the responsibility of local people and that protection of biodiversity must be integrated with community development.

Current Activities:

Economic Development / Agriculture

• Construction of a hydroelectric plant

• Research and construction of bee hives, chicken pens, and fish ponds

The introduction of cow sheds helps demonstrate alternatives to converting forest into pasture, which is the common practice in the project area. It also reduces the damage grazing cattle can do to crops, reduces cows' exposure to pests such as ticks, helps farmers maximize the use of available land and provides manure for farming.

The chicken and fish-farming demonstration units show local farmers alternatives to bushmeat, which is currently the major source of animal protein. This is intended to reduce pressure on wildlife and the forest.

• Training and provision of improved seeds

Field staff and partners have established seed multiplication plots in the Lubero and Walikale territories to provide a steady source of improved food crop seeds to farmers.

• Initiation of a beekeeping project including training in beekeeping techniques

Health

• Provision of Family planning methods

• Training of Healthcare providers

• Ensure reproductive health training

• Rehabilitation of health structures

Community centred Conservation

The management of natural resources is often viewed by local communities as a means to implement authoritarian policies which go against traditional rights. As local populations are the immediate custodians of natural resources, there is little prospect of improving natural resource management (NRM) if the major users are excluded from participating in solutions for local resource protection. Through the Jane Goodall Institute’s Community-Centred Conservation (CCC) approach to NRM, local communities ultimately become the advocates and caretakers of their natural environment.

Empowering Local Communities

JGI’s CCC approach empowers local communities with the tools needed to manage their natural resources for long-term economic gain and environmental prosperity. By increasing local capacity, responsibility, and participation in the sustainable management of natural resources, communities take pride in the preservation of the natural environment and wildlife of their area. Incentives at the local level to conserve natural resources are necessary if a project is to succeed. Local peoples frequently have no control over access to natural resources and are therefore unable to prevent ‘outsiders’ from exploiting the local resource base. By placing the responsibility of NRM into the hands of the local community and by increasing community participation at all levels of our projects, JGI has been successful in improving livelihoods while concurrently promoting conservation and the need to preserve biodiversity for the benefit of all.

By emphasizing the power of individuals to take informed and compassionate action to improve the environment for all living things, while providing access and opportunity for people to live sustainably, JGI incorporates a holistic approach to conservation, realizing the future of our planet depends upon the actions of its caretakers. All of our programs aim to improve the lives of the human population in the surrounding area of our projects, while promoting conservation and an understanding of the need to preserve the biodiversity of the area for the benefit of all who live in it. By engaging communities in the conservation process, we can create local understanding of the issues while addressing both the root social and economic influences that affect the local communities.

The bushmeat trade – the illegal commercial trade in the meat of wild animals – is the greatest current threat to great apes in the wild and has the capacity to drive all species to extinction in as few as ten years. Recognizing this crisis and the urgent need to address the root issues involved, JGI’s Africa Programs within the Congo Basin region take a unique approach by focusing on community-centred conservation. By engaging communities, particularly the true stakeholders in the commercial bushmeat trade – hunters and especially women buyers and sellers – we can address the root social and economic influences that drive participation. Through our programs, we directly involve local governments and industry, while gearing micro-enterprise and other efforts to local capacity. This approach will ensure long-term effectiveness and sustainability of our programs.

Want to know more? Check this out:  http://www.janegoodall.org

Comments

[apanserdig]

How did you get yourself involved in this extraordinary line of work?

Do you need any formal education, or would the organization be happy for any help they could get?