Community-based project aims to conserve Kilimanjaro

At least 20,000 people are expected to benefit directly and 200,000 people indirectly from a new initiative to be launched by UNDP and the United Nations Foundation this month to promote the conservation of Mt Kilimanjaro as a World Natural Heritage Site.

The endeavour, to be known as the Community Management of Protected Areas Conservation Project (COMPACT), is intended to promote the involvement of the communities who live and derive their livelihood around Mt Kilimanjaro in conserving the mountain.

"The project will work closely with these communities to ensure that mountain resources are used in a sustainable manner," the UNDP stated in a press release this week.

Peaking at 5,895 m, Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa and home to at least 1,800 species of flowering plants and 35 species of mammals. It is the only ecosystem in Tanzania that has different types of climate, soil, animals and plants. The mountain also has major socio-economic significance, as it is a major source of water supply to some 5 percent of Tanzanians as well as generating a total of 95 MW in hydropower.

Furthermore, up to one million people use the rich volcanic soils and water of Kilimanjaro for agriculture, or earn their living through the growing tourist industry.

Encroachments around mountain resources - through farming, grazing, gathering of fodder and commercial logging - have resulted in increased levels of poverty for resident communities, according to Nehemiah Murusuri of UNDP Tanzania.

Other major threats to Kilimanjaro include land degradation due to soil erosion, littering by tourists and guides, the shrinkage of the water resources, and the melting of the ice cap through global climatic warming. [for more details, go to: http://www.tz.undp.org/]

The new sustainable conservation project aims will offer financial support for irrigation farming, afforestation and agro-forestry, zero grazing, strengthening of extension services, renewable energy technologies, beekeeping, the prevention of bush fires, cultural tourism and awareness raising where these help to conserve Mt Kilimanjaro.

It will also try to demonstrate how communities can reduce the threats to protected areas; increase local and national concern for the conservation of globally significant protected areas; promote partnerships between communities in the management of protected areas; and capture and disseminate lessons from project experiences that can be shared at local, national and global levels.

The COMPACT project in Tanzania, expected to take place (on an as-yet unnamed date) in September, is part of a global initiative with similar projects to conserve listed natural sites in Kenya, The Dominican Republic, Belize, Mexico and the Philippines.

[ENDS]