#6: Conservation for Participatory Development?

Supplementing blog #4, I will be delving into the role of conservation organisations in increasing water access through participatory development sanitation schemes (PDSS)!

This week I began researching protected areas across the world to evaluate their conservation governance for one of my university courses. Notably, conservation stakeholders have historically been known to force traditional owners from their native lands through fortress conservation (listen here). These have a 'humans out!' view and are the reasoning behind some of the world's first national parks, Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks, and many others following.

More recently, as mentioned in blog #2, the Maasai tribe of Kenya have been victim to forcible removal due to tourism developments - all under the name of conservation... 'The world's most vulnerable people are paying the price for today's conservation' (IUCN 2000), commonly leaving women most affected, considering their limiting role predominantly in the reproductive domain and, in some societies including the Maasai and Samburu tribes, in charge of reconstructing the home if the tribe moves.

Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Among the critically endangered and endemic Kordofan giraffe, Garamba contains the last largest stronghold of elephants in the world. However, they are being poached at alarming rates by rebel groups occupying the region.

Nevertheless, I researched how African Parks Network (APN) enabled GNP's villages to have access to safe drinking water through their Sustainable Development Strategy drawn from SDG 5 and SDG 6 in addition to SDG 13, SDG 15, SDG 16 and others. This strategy is an example of PDSS through AFN's efforts to conserve GNP (not through fortress conservation, however!) and give locals access to safe water through educational schemes.

GNP's anti-poaching rangers!

This was a significant step in development and empowerment especially because GNP is in the DCR, sharing a border with South Sudan in north-eastern DRC. Both countries are suffering from Government instability and various other products of colonial legacies. Therefore, governments simply cannot implement sufficient water infrastructure in this wet climate to rural communities, including GNP's villages, that are terrorised by rebel groups massacring villages and raping women (UN 2009; Raghavan 2012). 

 

Young women in a school of the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve, in Malawi, an additional protected area APN is committed to in providing conservation and opportunities for locals.

What did APN do (2017; 2018; 2019)?

• APN supported 3 schools in giving needed education on sanitation, the environment, and women's menstrual health.
• Implemented women's-only programmes on how to construct and, most importantly, maintain the 26 spring water collection systems (shown below) APN constructed/rehabilitated.
• This benefitted all the 7,350 residents of the 24 villages such systems were in, and, most significantly, the women, who would have had to risk their lives travelling for contaminated water across this rebel territory.
• These women not only have access to safe drinking water and reduced time poverty, they have a stronger political positioning in society because they are the individuals possessing the skill of these essential water systems.

Above is a spring water collection system!

In this week's blog, we've seen how PDSS from rather unlikely companions can aid the development and empowerment of women through recognising their specific needs towards increasing water access, assisting SGD 5 and SDG 6. This was especially significant as DRC's instability and rebel presence affects women of rural villages most.