WCS Fact Sheet for Zambia: Fire management practices and opportunities for carbon sequestering for carbon-based markets

Fact sheet #10, 30 May, 2006

Introduction

Unregulated, unmanaged fires in wildlife management areas reduce opportunities for maintaining favorable conditions for wildlife production. Fires are typically started deliberately or carelessly by people living in and around wildlife management areas. Often these fires spread into protected areas and contribute to lowered water retention in surrounding watersheds, degraded wildlife forage and habitat, and increased CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere. COMACO applies household-level market incentives to influence land use behavior, and in particular, behaviors related to setting fires.

Though greatly over-simplified, COMACO's field-based experiences suggest four primary reasons why people fires start in rural areas:

?? ? ?Burning of agricultural fields to remove weeds, kill insects and add ash to the soil. These fires are not managed and spread into adjacent wildlife areas.

?? ? ?Use of fires as a way of hunting wildlife by local hunters.

?? ? ?Use of fires when collecting wild honey. Often these fires are left burning after collecting honey and they sometimes spread by wind.

?? ? ?Careless or deliberate setting of fires along footpaths to increase visibility and reduce risks of dangerous animals.

COMACO is an approach that addresses resource management threats with innovations in land use practices and household-based incentives to adopt these practices. For each of these four primary causes of bushfires, COMACO has developed specific interventions to reduce the need or motivation for people to set fires and thus contributes to improved fire management. This paper provides an overview of work carried out to date on these interventions and their predicted influence on fires generally caused by local residents. Research planned for 2006 dry season will utilize MODIS satellite data to compare the incidence of fires in areas with varying levels of compliance to land use practices promoted by COMACO to address fire threats.

Fire management interventions supported under the COMACO program

1.? ?Burning of agricultural fields: Traditional farming practices burn crop residues left after harvest. Dry windy conditions increase the likelihood these fires will spread into adjacent wildlife areas and such fires can reduce important cover and forage for wildlife species. COMACO has worked with over 30,000 households throughout Luangwa Valley and surrounding catchment areas to help introduce an alternative way of farming, referred to as conservation farming or pot-holing, that promotes non-burning of crop residues. To maintain high levels of adoption of this farming practice, COMACO provides trade incentives to farmers who prepare their field soon after harvest by re-digging pot holesand covering the ground with maize or sorghum stalks as way of building up organic particles in the soil, reducing rain water run-off and impeding weed growth. A farmer that commits several days of work to prepare his field in this way demonstrates an understanding of the value of conservation farming to improve soil quality for improved crop yields. As an indirect consequence, it also leads to reduced fires that might otherwise spread to adjacent areas. Trade incentives include a K30/kg of rice or groundnuts sold to the COMACO trading centre for farmers certified as compliant with required field preparations. Estimated percentage of households adopting these field preparations in game management areas in the valley vary from about 30% to over 60%. COMACO will assess frequency of fires around farming areas and between-year patterns to determine the influence conservation farming and market incentives are having on fire control.

2.? ?Burning as a hunting tool: Local hunters, sometimes referred to as poachers, use fires for various reasons, such as clearing grass to make animals more visible or to shift animals to areas where they can be hunted with reduced risks of being detected by wildlife scouts. To date, COMACO has addressed this threat by engaging 221 hunters from Luangwa Valley in a program that offers training in alternative skills with sufficient inputs and market incentives to encourage them to adopt these skills as an alternative to hunting. An assessment of bush fire distribution and their frequency in relation to areas with relative numbers of hunters transformed will provide a basis for COMACO's approach to mitigating this source of bush fires.

3. ?Fires associated with honey gathering: Wild honey collectors use fire to smoke the bees as a way of reducing bee stings. Often the fire is not put out and the fire spreads to surrounding areas. While not easily quantified, COMACO regards this source of fires as potentially important and has embarked on a large-scale effort to promote the use of bee hives and offering high market value for honey collected only from bee hives. To date, COMACO has supported the introduction of approximately 10,000 bee hives, of which about 10% are bar hives and the balance are log hives. The latter are made from dead, hollow trees and do not increase tree loss,though the practice does remove potential breeding sites for species that nest in tree cavities. An analysis of bee hive numbers in relation to frequency and distribution of fires will provide a basis for assessing COMACO's efforts to use trade incentives to produce honey from bee hives as a basus for reducing bush fires caused by wild honey gatherers, since COMACO only buys honey from bar hives or log hives. Bee-keeping groups that form apiaries are offered a cash bonus per 20 kg of honey produced if they establish firebreaks around their apiary with a minimum radius.

4.? ?Careless or deliberate setting of fires: Bush burning is almost a cultural norm with little incentive not to burn prior to interventions introduced by COMACO. People often burn along paths or roads to increase visibility to reduce risks of encountering a hidden wild animal. As areas around national parks become potentially valuable tourism destinations for communities who aspire to develop their own tourism facilities, communities will recognize the critical need to maintain the aesthetics of their areas. Such aesthetics include keeping vegetation unburned where tourists are likely to visit and possible view wildlife. Three communities in the COMACO program area have established tourism bushcamps that they own and manage. COMACO will assess community success in keeping their area attractive to tourists who visit these camps by monitoring the incidence of bushfires at varying distances away from their bushcamps as well as other efforts to prevent fires, such as construction of firebreaks or community awareness campaigns to prevent fires.

On-going educational efforts to build community understanding about fire management control and potential impact on CO2 emissions

WCS, through its collaborating partners (ZAWA, Forestry Department, Community Resources Boards), provide public learning events at what COMACO refers to as "field days", when farmers gather at selected venues, usually a COMACO trading depot, to engage in public discussions about lessons learned from practices that producer groups have adopted. Such field days also offer venues for outside expertise to visit with the community and to share knowledge. In this regard, results from the monitoring of fire control and the various interventions developed will be shared with community members to promote community support for more active compliance with the various interventions introduced and supported by trade incentives. On-going community collaboration and refinement of interventions that community members can accept and support will be critical for COMACO to succeed in mitigating fire-related threats. As these efforts progress, WCS will utilize scientific methods to assess relative impact on CO₂ release into the atmosphere and will promote opportunities for carbon credit financing among participating communities as another source on incentives to maintain community compliance to fire control management practices.