WCS Fact Sheet for Zambia: Community Markets for Conservation and Rural Livelihoods - COMACO

Fact sheet #4, 26 January 2004

Background

Hunger and poverty are the two most important threats responsible for the degradation of wildlife and other natural resources in and around Zambia?s national parks. Over the past decade, law enforcement agencies have generally failed to control the harmful impact of these threats. Wildlife numbers, for example, have shown dramatic declines in many parts of the country, creating much despair and anxiety for the future of tourism in Zambia.

Over the past four years, WCS has undertaken a large-scale experiment of linking agriculture, conservation and rural markets through a strategic alliance of cooperating partners to address these threats. Results from this pilot work demonstrate how this alliance has transformed large numbers of rural households with land use practices compatible with wildlife production and watershed protection. Its success comes from its capacity to involve not just hundreds of households in a limited locality but thousands of households across entire geographic landscapes in a way that makes it possible to preserve biodiversity and support ecosystem functions.

Results clearly show the enormous opportunity legal markets could play, if structured properly, in building community commitment to better farming practices as a basis for achieving conservation of natural resources. The potential value of this approach for galvanizing community attitudes toward conservation has also made these results among the most important WCS has achieved in Zambia over its 22 years of service in this country. The particular model that has emerged from this pilot work builds stable and prosperous trading relationships with urban-based trading partners who seek fair trade in rural areas but who lack the capacity to support the transaction process that ensures fair trade results. The model also establishes an important entry point for private sector to support conservation in rural Zambia.

The Model

The model, referred to as Community Markets for Conservation and Rural Livelihoods or COMACO¹, is a network of producer depots that offers low-cost, high-value transaction opportunities for households who organize themselves as producer groups and who comply with land use practices that increase the production of key natural resources in their respective areas. A regional community trading centre (CTC) provides a hub for marketing, input procurement and technical extension services to producer groups through their respective depots. The CTC operates as a registered limited company with shares offered to participating communities. Any household can participate and access these services by forming a producer group and registering it with the CTC, but conditions for registration require households to undergo improved livelihood skills training, especially in the production of farm-related commodities or non-timber products. This approach creates increased opportunities to participate in legal markets as alternatives to poaching or over-fishing.

Entitlement to ownership shares in the company is conditional on a development agreement signed by the community. The agreement requires producer groups to adopt production technologies that minimize conflicts with natural resources and to adopt group by-laws that commit group members to conservation. Such by-laws, for example, might require group members to practice conservation farming to maintain productive soils, restrict land clearings in accordance to community-based land use plans, abandon the use of snares and poaching to meet household needs, and so forth. Producer groups are obliged to comply to their by-laws in order to access markets, inputs and services offered through their local depot.

COMACO?s Progress to Date: Building an Alliance of Partners for Rural Markets and Conservation

The CTC currently operates as a trading hub for 10 producer depots in the Luangwa Valley, serving over 450 producer groups or about 6500 households with an annual growth rate of registered producer groups at about 25%. Both the CTC and its depots were established by WCS since 2001. The CTC is staffed with a team of extension people who work closely with 61 community trainers, who in turn work directly with producer group members to become food secure and adopt improved skills to develop marketable goods (rice, groundnuts, poultry, goats, honey, etc.) or income-making services (tourism, small shops, road work). Where appropriate these goods and services are marketed or facilitated through the CTC. Cooperatives of Producer Groups make up 20% of the ownership shares and Community Resource Boards make up another 20%. 52% is owned by WCS as a ?Not-For-Profit? business partner and two local District Councils, Chama and Lundazi, own the remaining 8%. The District Council share is especially strategic because of the legal mandate District Councils have to formulate land use plans and develop improved strategies for rural development. WCS has agreed in a ?Social Contract? to relinquish majority shares as and when the community shareholders meet various benchmarks of good governance, conservation compliance and business management skills.

The impact of this approach has significantly decreased key threats affecting wildlife production, namely snaring and illegal hunting, in a major area of the Luangwa Valley. WCS believes these results represent a strong cause and effect relationship. For example, four independent indices for measuring change in snare use by local residents suggest a 50 to 70% decline in the use of snares. In addition, significant numbers of local hunters have surrendered their firearms (110) and have joined producer groups to benefit from the CTC. Correlated with these results is an active engagement of about 6500 households in the program, of which approximately 60% are members of producer groups and are actively trading with the CTC through their local Producer Group Depots. From these same households, approximately 15,000 snares were voluntarily surrendered to the CTC from 2001 to 2002. By March 2004, this figure is expected to exceed 20,000 snares as well as over 200 illegal firearms, representing an annual saving of wildlife in access of 2000 animals. A high percentage (68%) of these participating households in COMACO have become food secure in maize production and have clearly given up their reliance on snares as a substitute for farming. These same households are now seeking new livelihood skills to produce commodities which can be marketed through the CTC at fair producer prices to reduce the level of conflicts that poverty can often aggravate.

These efforts by WCS² to organize large numbers of relatively disadvantaged households into better trained and better organized producer groups to participate in legal farm markets has created the necessary volume of trade to make the CTC a serious partner with large-scale commercial buyers in Lusaka. CTC has negotiated much improved sales contract with major grain buying companies in Lusaka for groundnuts and rice with agreements to assist in transporting and storage of CTC commodities in transit to Lusaka. These cost saving and increased purchase prices are passed on to the producer. CTC will offer a 40% increase in purchase price for rice and a 50% increase in groundnut price as compared to prices offered in 2003, thus increasing the incentives for thousands of farmers to cooperate with improve land use practices and efforts to increase wildlife production.

COMACO?s growing impact on wildlife production through improved land use practices has attracted the interest of the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources (MTENR), which awarded the CTC ZMK150 million through its tourism credit facility to establish three community-based tourism camps. The initiative represents a joint-venture between the CTC and the local wildlife management authority called the Community Resources Board (CRB). The CTC will own a 35% share and will provide marketing and logistical support. Individual CRBs will own the remaining 65% share for their own tourism camp. This initiative provides a direct link between efforts to promote conservation through improved farm-based markets and additional revenue spin-offs resulting from improved land use practices.

¹ A CD-ROM self-automated powerpoint presentation with narration about COMACO is available through the WCS Head Office at 254887/256564. COMACO?s official logo is shown above.

² Wildlife Conservation Society is legally registered in >Zambia as the Foundation for the Conservation of Wildlife. Email: wcslusak@coppernet.zm (WCS office), wcszam@coppernet.zm(Country Director)