Governance and leadership

Community Resources Boards for each
Chiefdom are represented
on the COMACO Board

COMACO is building a culture for conservation in a way that is helping shape entire communities with more effective and transparent leadership through efforts to help forge linkages between rural markets, agriculture and conservation.

Community members are seeing evidence from COMACO that no one has to be poor or hungry if they are willing to learn new skills, work hard, and cooperate as a community to support their land use plans. Their leaders, both Traditional Rulers and elected members of Community Resources Boards, are working with COMACO to develop better markets and improved economic opportunities for their constituencies.

They do this by serving on the Board for the Conservation Farmer Wildlife Produce Trading Center and by helping facilitate the formation of new producer groups and their compliance to land use plans. Rather than being driven by external markets, whose interests sometimes run counter to those of rural livelihoods or local resource protection, rural communities are now able to own shares in their own company and contribute to its growth and prosperity through markets that reward good land use practices.

COMACO'sapproach to ownership, the right markets, trade agreements, partnerships and cooperation is building improved governance and leadership at the community level and a stronger foundation for rural development in Zambia.