A desk-based review of the treatment of indigenous peoples' and social issues
in a sample of 14 biodiversity projects

Emily Caruso
March 2005

1            Purpose of the briefing

As part of a wider FPP review of GEF biodiversity policies and projects [1] , this briefing analyses the project documents of 14 of the GEF’s biodiversity projects in Central Africa to evaluate how social and indigenous peoples’ issues were treated in project design. The evaluation examined the treatment of 6 criteria in the project documents: indigenous peoples, traditional knowledge, safeguard policies, restrictions on resource use, relocation and baseline studies. The following section of the briefing provides a short analysis of these and a more in-depth analysis of 5 selected current projects. Annex 1 contains a table of the data used in the analysis. Annex 2 contains a list of current GEF biodiversity projects in Central Africa.
 

2            Desk-based analysis of selected GEF projects

Quantitative analysis of some GEF Central Africa biodiversity projects [2]

A quantitative analysis of 14 Central African GEF project documents [3] was carried out in order to understand how GEF project documents for Central African biodiversity projects treated social and cultural issues, and, where the data was available, what broad proportion of the budget was allocated to addressing such issues (See Annex 1). Initial findings were as follows:

·       Indigenous Peoples: Although all projects have the potential to impact indigenous peoples living in these countries, 8 project documents did not mention indigenous peoples or pygmies, while 8 project documents did not invoke any human rights.

·       Traditional Knowledge: Only 3 out of the 14 project documents examined mention traditional or indigenous knowledge, and each of these 3 documents mention it only once. One of the 3 project documents notes that it should be “promoted” within the project, while the other two note that it can be taken into account in project implementation.

·       Safeguard Policies: The World Bank is the implementing agency for 8 of the projects reviewed, and yet safeguard policies are only invoked in 4 of these projects, with only 2 of these having prepared Indigenous Peoples Development Plans. Only one of the UNDP-implemented projects refers to the UNDP’s Policy of Engagement with Indigenous Peoples.

·       Restrictions on resource use: The majority of the project documents reviewed promote the ‘alternative livelihoods’ approach, which indicates that restrictions on resource use will be implemented and some refer directly to restrictions being placed on communities with regards to access and resource use.

·       Relocation: Three of the project documents reviewed refer directly to relocation of communities in relation to protected areas, and another two do not rule it out (i.e. note that measures will be taken should resettlement occur). One of the projects notes that a resettlement plan will be prepared for the affected communities (Uganda Protected Areas and Sustainable Use project).

·       Baseline studies: Only one of the project documents reviewed specifically notes the preparation of baseline studies, including social assessments, prior to project implementation.

Budget analysis was not possible for many of the projects reviewed below, since the project documents do not disclose detailed budgets.

Specific analysis of some GEF Central Africa< projects (see Annex 2 for project details)

Cameroon: FESAC [4]

The Cameroon Forest and Environmental Sector Adjustment Credit (FESAC), approved in May 2004, is the new version of the original Programme Sectoriel Environnement et Forêts (PSFE). The development objective of the FESAC is to “strengthen public and private efforts to achieve socio-economically and ecologically sustainable use of national forest and wildlife resources”. Five programme components will be implemented under the FESAC [5] :

1.     Regulation and environment information management: to deal with updating and refining the sector’s regulatory framework, and with creating instruments for environmental monitoring.

2.     Management of Production Forests: to enact management plans and monitor their implementation in all commercial forests

3.     Management of Protected Areas and Wildlife: will include, amongst others, biodiversity planning and zoning, participatory protected area and hunting zone management, design and implementation of PA management plans, legal and institutional reform of protected areas and hunting zones management, etc.

4.     Management of Community Forests: will include management of community forests, “revenue generating tree planting schemes (…) in particular (…) to attract potential carbon finance partners”, and organisation of community-based fuelwood cooperatives & fuelwood markets.

5.     Institutional strengthening, training and research: will include restructuring the National Agency for Forest Development, and strengthening the Ministry for Environment.

The FESAC project document (PD) notes that Pygmy peoples are an important and often marginalised section of society in Cameroon, and that their issues require specific attention. It contains a full half-page section on the “special case of the Pygmy populations” and that it will strengthen their “customary and modern rights and the voice of Pygmies in the decision-making and forest management process”. This is not followed up by specific measures or mechanisms to ensure this, and it is unclear how this claim will be implemented in practice. The PD contains a strong section on the importance of participation, and yet the only measures taken so far have been to carry out 10 regional workshops. These cannot be sufficient, given Pygmies’ lack of representation, and the weak capacities of their support organisations, and cannot be considered culturally appropriate in most cases, in light of Pygmy communities’ forest-based livelihoods, lack of access to formal education, and their socio-political marginalisation. Specific measures to enable indigenous participation in decision-making are necessary.

Under the original Programme Sectoriel Forêts et Environnement, an Indigenous Peoples Development Plan was prepared [6] . According to the IPDP, it is clear that “only the full implementation of the IPDP and all its components fulfils the requirements of the OD 42.0, guarantees that the PSFE respects the rights, dignity and culture of the indigenous people, offers them equal or better opportunities to participate in the benefits and achieves the development objective of the PSFE”. Without specific safeguard measures established under the project, there is a serious risk that Pygmy peoples will be by-passed by the programme, and not consulted about forest management plans to be elaborated under FESAC. This will contribute to their increasing marginalisation and impoverishment, especially for the vast majority who rely upon forests for their livelihoods. The IPDP includes provisions for legally recognising indigenous settlements, establishing community forests and/or communal hunting zones for all IP communities, ameliorating forest law to ensure IP land use is legally settled, and establishing a national policy on indigenous peoples. Future processes linked to the IPDP should be based upon consultation with indigenous communities from all over the southern forest zone in line with existing safeguard policies as well as the spirit of IPDP proposals.

Despite some positive language of participation and sustainable development for forest dependent communities in project documents, the PD shows that the GEF has not moved away from a ‘the people are the problem’ position, and that the progressive language found in the descriptive portion of the document and the IPDP is barely echoed in the sections dealing with concrete activities. Thus, despite there being a substantial section on the importance of including indigenous peoples in project design and implementation, a lengthy table in Addendum 9 A of the PD have placed poaching and ‘subsistence resource use’ as among the most important pressures on the ecosystems of Cameroon [7] . According to the project, the main solution to this ‘pressure’ exerted by local communities is, as ever, to put in place alternative livelihood options and ‘economic incentives’ to take people away from allegedly ‘unsustainable’ practices. This approach is also reflected in the choice of “results and indicators” for project monitoring for tranche release [8] , which revolve entirely adoption of management plans, PAs gazetted, number of illegalities detected, etc. There is not one real community or people-based indicator in the entire table. This reflects a general trend in conservation projects elaborated in Central Africa over the past decade, often resulting in increased forest law enforcement. This is harmful to the livelihoods of indigenous communities relying upon forests, and it is often accompanied by the introduction, without consultation or community participation, of inappropriate alternative livelihood schemes that almost always fail to deliver benefits to communities.

As mentioned above, the GEF has started to emphasise the importance of the landscape approach in its recent projects. The FESAC project document, for example, notes that South Cameroon’s zoning plan (which was established under the auspices of the GEF’s Biodiversity and Management Plan 1993 – 2000) “…facilitates the implementation of a landscape approach integrating biodiversity conservation, forest and wildlife sustainable use and agriculture into ‘Ecosystem Units’. These integrate ZIC and ZICS (privately or community-managed game reserves), UTOs (units comprising forest concessions and adjacent parks) and UFA (Forest concessions to me managed as indivisible units).” [9] Efforts to involve local communities in the elaboration or management of these zones in other GEF projects in Cameroon have failed because they have completely marginalised Baka Pygmy communities, even when they were in the majority population in the forests being zoned [10] . The fundamental design applied by the project document, masked by progressive language, thus appears flawed, despite the assertions of participation and empowerment.

DRC: Support to the Rehabilitation of Protected Areas

In 1997, the UNDP/GEF project “Rehabilitation of Protected Areas in the DRC” was approved but its implementation was stalled from 1999-2004 due to political instability in the Democratic Republic of Congo [11] . This project is now due to be revived, alongside the implementation of another GEF project entitled “Support to the Rehabilitation of Protected Areas in DRC”, which was approved in April 2004. The latter project is to be implemented by the World Bank (whose contribution is USD 10M) with additional funding from other international donors for support to the Biodiversity Sub-Programme of the National Forest and Biodiversity Sector Programme (PNFC).

The project preparation (PDF B) component for “Support to the Rehabilitation of Protected Areas” was set in motion in mid-2004, and is expected to start soon.

The overarching objective of the World Bank/GEF project is to “rehabilitate long-term institutional capacity to manage and monitor DRC’s national network of protected areas” (p 6 of the 2004 project concept note). The project’s 2 components are:

A.    To support institutional rehabilitation through, amongst others: training; equipment and infrastructure; revitalisation of the personnel; improving capacity to manage staff, financial resources and physical assets; guide policy and communicate with outsiders; and establish a harmonised system for planning, monitoring and evaluation of activities and outcomes.

B.     To provide support to selected sites – the project will support 5 priority areas for the next five years.

According to the information available in project documents, no social or poverty assessments have been carried out, nor have proper social, economic, environmental and cultural baseline studies been undertaken with indigenous and forest-dependent peoples. Furthermore, there is no detailed budget available for the project, so community development budgetary provisions are not known at this stage.

This project also promotes the adoption of a landscape approach for all conservation activities in the DRC. It notes in one instance that the target situation in the DRC with regards to site level protected area management is to have, amongst others, protected area buffer zones “under participatory community management in consistency with the landscape approach” [12] . This suggests that in this case, the landscape approach closely resembles more traditional approaches to protected areas, where core zones are reserved for strict protection, while buffer zones can be managed in a ‘participatory’ manner with the communities.

The project document also notes that the ultimate objective for the restoration of protected areas in the DRC is to ensure that protected areas can provide national and international environmental services [13] such as tourism, scientific research and others. It does not specifically note that carbon sequestration is among such environmental services, although region-wide forest initiatives such as the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (see above) do promote such initiatives in the region.

Although the project document mentions the need to integrate conservation activities with poverty alleviation and community development activities, there remain worrying elements for indigenous peoples. There is no mention of indigenous peoples, let alone provision of safeguards for the recognition or respect of their rights. Local communities get a brief mention in the context of participation.

As noted by an Office Memorandum of the 14^th of May 2004, “one of the key activities and outcomes of the GEF alternative [under this project] is the setting up of partnerships with private operators for sustainable management of game reserves and forest concessions adjacent to parks” [14] . This reflects a growing trend in the privatisation of conservation, which is likely to become increasingly common in the developing world, where innovative financing systems are sought for conservation. Once a protected area is privatised it is not at all clear what mechanisms for accountability and indigenous peoples’ rights will exist.

The project is now underway, and on paper appears to lack many of the fundamental requirements to ensure forest-dependent peoples do not lose out from the imposition of conservation priorities.

Rwanda: Integrated Management of Critical Ecosystems

The Rwanda Integrated Management of Critical Ecosystems project aims to “promote the conservation and sustainable management of ecosystems that play a critical role in rural livelihoods and harbour a variety of biological resources of high global value”. Its four main activities will be: (i) development of a sound policy and regulatory environment for sustainable integrated ecosystem management; (ii) capacity building and institutional strengthening at the central and local levels, including the creation of a Biodiversity Information System (BIS); (iii) development and implementation of community-based integrated ecosystem management plans, and (iv) monitoring and evaluation of the activities and dissemination of lessons learned and best practices.

Although the project initially seems to focus on conservation of wetlands in order to sustain the livelihoods dependent on them, its key performance indicator for the project is the number of “critical wetlands that are designated as protected areas”. This is followed by the various project components which would promote alternative livelihood and income generating exercises which would create an “incentive system” to keep them out of the wetlands. As indicated by the budget, 25% of which will go to the “promotion of commercial agriculture”, the underlying design of the project is therefore seemingly geared towards removing people from the land they live on and derive a livelihood from.

Similarly to the other projects reviewed, there have been no social or poverty assessments, and there appear to be no social, economic and cultural baseline studies to understand who uses these wetlands and how, in order to understand potential consequences and impacts on local communities.

The project does, however, seem to take participation of local communities more seriously, and it would be important to follow up its implementation in Rwanda to understand whether the communities feel they have genuinely had a voice in the decision-making concerning the project.

Uganda : PA Management & Sustainable Use (PAMSU)

The main objective of the Uganda Protected Area Management and Sustainable Use project is the “sustainable and cost-effective management of Uganda’s wildlife and cultural resources”. This is to be carried out by four implementing agencies, each of which has a different role:

1.     Uganda Wildlife Authority: Maintain cost-effective and efficient wildlife management inside & outside Protected Areas

2.      Uganda Wildlife Education Center: Public awareness and knowledge in environmental and conservation issues created

3.      Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Industry: Develop the framework for the tourism sector of the economy to the maximum extent possible, consistent with the protection of environmental and cultural values

4.      Department of Antiquities and Museums: The Cultural Heritage of Uganda preserved

The project has a resettlement component. Although the Protected Areas System Plan, which is the result of a project-funded PA assessment in Uganda, “avoided significant issues of resettlement” in 22 out of 25 protected areas, the redrawing of boundaries of the Mt Elgon National Park, Katonga Game Reserve and the Pian Upe Wildlife Reserve will entail resettlement. Although the PAMSU project will “provide funds to engage a team of consultants to review and design appropriate plans to address the specific issues of people resident in the protected areas”, the resettlement component will not be financed under this project though, but under a separate Bank-funded activity. According to the project document it will be “fully consistent with World Bank Safeguard Policies”. This component of the project goes against international law and best practice in protected areas management [15] . It is disturbing that the GEF is considering providing funding for such a project considering the negative social impacts that have resulted from previous resettlement exercises elsewhere.

Under the social component of the project [16] , the project document states that the Protected Areas System Plan will be beneficial to communities living in and around protected areas through the “[reduction in] conflicts between park authorities and local communities over boundaries and resource use”. This will be put into effect by establishing the “Parliamentary approved and agreed boundaries for the protected areas estate”, which will allow for clear demarcation of where the local population can and cannot legitimately use the resources. The only reassurance given by the project document with regards to the above is that the “process for establishing the new [protected area] system was a highly participatory process”. [17]

The project purports to benefit a great many diverse entities, and among them, communities feature, as they will benefit from “greater exposure to income generation opportunities, particularly for women’s groups who can sell crafts and cultural experiences”. The project aims to provide capacity building to local and indigenous communities “through innovative mechanisms to involve them in protected area and wildlife management” (emphasis added). As mentioned above, the loose terminology of involvement is not satisfactory to ensure genuine and meaningful participation of affected communities. Nevertheless, the project document states that a department for community conservation has been established under the Uganda Wildlife Authority and that collaborative management pilots will be funded under the project [18] . There is no project budget available in the project document, so scrutiny of the proportional expenditure on community development was not possible.

The project document contains a few other worrying aspects. There have been no social or poverty assessments done under the project, even though the risks are high. It maintains that no World Bank Safeguard Policies apply to the project, despite the contrary being asserted elsewhere concerning the resettlement component. Furthermore, it does not mention indigenous or local communities in the section entitled “Possible Controversial Aspects”, even though past GEF projects in protected areas in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa have been highly controversial.

Regional: the TRIDOM Project

The Tri-national Dja-Odzala-Mikébé project is a protected area project to be implemented in the area (“Inter-zone”) shared by Gabon, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo [19] . It has been selected as one of the eleven priority areas of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (see below for further information). The specific objective of the project is “to maintain the ecological functions and connectivity of TRIDOM, and ensure long-term conservation of its protected area system through integrated, sustainable and participatory management in the interzone between the protected areas”. This project will also implement a ‘landscape approach’ to conservation and sustainable use.

Similar to the majority of GEF projects in Central Africa, the project’s rationale is still based on the premise that people are the problem, and the provision of “alternative livelihoods initiatives to ease the pressure on natural resources” (p.6) is, as ever, the golden solution. One of the main thrusts of the project is the “enforcement” of legislation concerning hunting and resource use. The project will even support mobile teams to carry out law enforcement throughout protected areas and forest concessions. This carries serious risks for indigenous peoples who rely on forest resources for their subsistence, and who have in the past been victims of repressive and violent law enforcement at the hands of protected area and forest concession staff. This is especially true for Pygmy communities, whose cultural attachment to their forests and their dependence on subsistence hunting and gathering makes them extremely vulnerable to the enforcement of hunting control measures established to target commercial operators.

Another important element of this project, which highlights an increasing trend within the GEF, is that of promoting ecotourism as a financing mechanism for protected areas. This, despite the complete failure of other conservation and GEF projects to deliver the results expected from the key assumption that ecotourism will help protect biodiversity (eg, the Biodiversity Conservation and Management Project in Cameroon, implemented in Campo Ma’an and Lobéké national parks – see footnote 10). This, alongside the use of carbon forestry [20] (a feature of the Cameroon FESAC project and also increasingly discussed within COMIFAC), shows an increasing interest by policymakers and project managers in the financial value of ‘ecosystem services’, and how to capitalise on them. These commercial components of the project have not been agreed by communities who will be directly affected by them in Cameroon, Gabon or the Republic of Congo. This push for privatising or commercialising natural processes and areas thus threatens to exacerbate further the marginalisation of indigenous and forest-dependent peoples, since their territories and resources will be put on a market where actors are much more powerful than them, and even less accountable to them than their own government.

The project document notes that TRIDOM will seek to address the needs of indigenous peoples in particular “by (1) encouraging increased participation of pygmies in the decision-making process regarding natural resources, in particular during land-use planning exercise and (2) ensuring the recognition and protection of their rights, systems and knowledge, especially in terms of natural resource management”. This is one of the few available GEF project documents which refers to the rights of indigenous peoples. The project documents state that activities relating to indigenous peoples will build upon “the successful experiences catalyzed by WWF in implementing a collaborative management agreement on control of hunting with the Association of Baka pygmies of Minvoul (Northwestern of the Minkebe Forest Block), which aims at strengthening the legal and social status of the Baka and promoting benefit sharing from their ecological knowledge.” It is now clear, however, that WWF’s success at involving Baka Pygmies in their work has been grossly exaggerated – in most cases Pygmies are not involved in project activities, this has resulted in increased threats to their livelihoods [21] .
 

3.           Conclusions

The GEF has a significant biodiversity portfolio in Central Africa. In the past few years there has been a trend towards incorporating conservation initiatives with other, productive systems, in the landscape approach. This has the potential to cause problems for indigenous peoples and communities affected by conservation, if their land, territory and resource rights are not recognised and respected in practice within such large-scale approaches.

Although many of the project documents of the projects reviewed state that processes have been participatory, that communities have been consulted, and that project affected people will only receive positive outcomes, it is essential that these assertions are tested in the field. In fact, findings from the FPP GEF critical study [23] show that these assertions are often unfounded (eg. the TRIDOM project).

The project documents reviewed have also often, directly or indirectly, used language suggesting a persistent view of local communities being the cause of unsustainable biodiversity loss. As a result, most projects reviewed have promoted the adoption of “alternative livelihood” approaches to reduce “pressure on the environment” exerted by communities who rely on natural resources. The GEF appears to have not progressed from the out-dated “the people are the problem” stance in many cases, and this is a fundamentally flawed basis upon which to construct successful and rights-based conservation projects.

Recent reviews of GEF projects and approaches, such as the Forest Peoples Programme’s critical study and the GEF’s own review of Local Benefits in biodiversity projects have shown that the GEF must update and review its approach to conservation as soon as possible. FPP’s critical guide and review also recommends that the GEF draft, in a fully participatory manner, and adopt an indigenous peoples’ policy, in line with the rights and needs of indigenous peoples, in order to ensure that its projects and programmes fully benefit its supposed “beneficiaries”. The GEF’s Local Benefits study has yet to be published, but initial findings suggest that the GEF requires a major change in approach if local people are to derive more genuinely sustainable benefits from its operations.