USAID/Guinea: GDA Promotes Forest Conservation, Community Development

APRIL 20, 2004

GDA Promotes Forest Conservation, Community Development

A new Global Development Alliance between USAID, Conservation International and Rio Tinto will promote both local community development and forest conservation in one of the world's hotspots of biodiversity.

USAID/Guinea announces the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a Global Development Alliance (GDA) among USAID, Conservation International (CI), and Rio Tinto to promote economic development while ensuring protection of one of the biologically richest places in the world. Within this area, the Simandou Range, Rio Tinto is carrying out advanced exploration programs with a view to defining extractable iron ore resources.

Rio Tinto exploration base, two employees there. Photo by John Hansen, USAID/Guinea.

Exploration has begun ... the Rio Tinto base camp adjacent to the Pic de Fon Forest, in the Simandou Range of Forest Guinea. The GDA will ensure that as the region develops, financial resources will also go toward community development.

All mineral exploration and potential mining activities will be accompanied by complementary local community development and forest conservation activities in targeted regions throughout Forest Guinea. The parties in the alliance share the common goals of helping local community and regional authorities effectively manage regional biodiversity and natural resources, and to foster sustainable economic development in the area.

Says John Hansen, Natural Resource Management Team Leader for USAID/Guinea, "It may seem ironic that USAID and CI enter into an alliance with a major world mining concern to protect the environment. However, it is precisely by joining forces that we can leverage resources to promote development in a cutting edge manner, halt other more ecologically destructive practices, and in the long term ensure a more equitable allotment of financial resources toward community development."

USAID hopes that through early intervention, the alliance can promote forest conservation, community development and local economic growth through commercial development that will also allow local communities to reap economic benefits. Says Hansen, "A farmer will be less likely to trespass into a national forest to clear the land for agricultural production, or for firewood, if he has alternative sources of income." Community members like Hansen's hypothetical farmer may even become direct beneficiaries of the alliance partners, Rio Tinto in particular, as business and development both pick up in the region.

The GDA partners share the goals of strengthening the capacity of local community and regional authorities to effectively manage regional biodiversity and natural resources, and to foster sustainable economic development in targeted regions throughout Forest Guinea. The partners will collectively aim to carry out the following activities:

Support local institutions to develop an integrated regional landscape strategy for the overall landscape. This plan will include a combination of land use practices that are compatible with economic development and long-term persistence of biodiversity and ecological processes.

Foster innovation in community economic development. This will focus on developing conditions suitable for local economic growth within the context of the integrated regional landscape strategy, and will include the promotion of agricultural intensification, crop diversification, technology extension, business planning and development, and/or microfinance, among others, as appropriate.

Mentor and strengthen local government institutions such as the Centre de Gestion de l’Environnement du Nimba, the Direction Nationale des Eaux et Forêts, and the Centre Forestier N’Zérékoré in implementing field based environmental and natural resource management adhering to their institutional mandates.

Foster communication and collaboration among regional stakeholders and increase community self-governance capacity by developing community forums and opportunities for institutional collaboration within the landscape strategy.

Help local institutions and communities develop management plans for protected areas and community/ co-managed forests. This will promote improved conservation practices to reduce encroachment and forest fragmentation.

Support and enable enforcement agents in the region, by providing training and capacity building to local community enforcement agents, including conducting a study of the enforcement chain to better understand its functions.

Seek opportunities for long-term land use agreements. This will be done within governmental frameworks in an effort to resolve existing land tenure conflicts.

The agreement is also of acute importance to the environment since the Guinean forest ecosystem of West Africa, one of 25 hotspots extending from Guinea to Cameroon, is an area considered to be one of the biologically richest and most endangered terrestrial regions in the world. The part of the Guinean forest ecosystem that extends from southern Guinea into Sierra Leone, through Liberia and southern Côte d’Ivoire, into Ghana and western Togo, is known as "Upper Guinea."

The Upper Guinea forest is estimated to have once covered as much as 420,000 km2, but centuries of human activity have resulted in the loss of nearly 70 percent of the original forest cover. What remains is restricted to a number of isolated patches of exceptionally diverse ecological communities, distinctive flora and fauna, and a mosaic of forest types that provide refuge to numerous endemic species.

The Simandou Range in Forest Guinea is one of the top priority conservation areas within the Upper Guinea Forest. The Simandou Range offers a variety of habitats from humid Guinean savannah, to Western Guinean lowland forest, to Guinean montane and gallery forests, and includes the rare and exceptional habitat of montane grassland. West African montane habitats are especially endangered -- the Simandou Range is one of few places montane habitat is found in West Africa.

The Pic de Fon classified forest, for example, is an area of approximately 25,600 ha. in the Simandou Range that is still relatively intact and contains many flora and fauna typical of the Upper Guinea ecosystem. This forest hosts several threatened species including the Nimba otter shrew (Micropotamogale lamottei), West African chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus), the Diana monkey (Cercopithecus diana diana) and the Sierra Leone Prinia (Schistolais leontica), a bird with a very limited distribution in the West African highlands known from only three other sites in the world. A recent survey funded by Rio Tinto also recorded three new amphibian species potentially endemic to the Simandou Range.

In addition to the unique assemblages of ecosystems, the Upper Guinea forest also harbors potential mineralogical wealth, and in particular extensive deposits of iron ore. Rio Tinto is currently exploring within four contiguous exploration licenses along the Simandou Range.

With both important commercial and environmental interests at stake, creating an alliance in a transparent manner between public and private partners even before mining work begins is perhaps the best way to ensure that private sector commercial activities are carried out in a way that promotes rural economic growth and does minimal damage to this unusual and unique local habitat. It is important to note that through this GDA agreement, Rio Tinto has committed to carrying out all future mining and exploration activities in accordance with recognized standards for environmental best practices

To date, relative isolation has provided some degree of protection for these areas, but their biodiversity is increasingly threatened by a combination of agricultural encroachment, illegal and unregulated bush meat hunting, logging, uncontrolled bush fires, road development, potentially destructive mining operations, and human population growth.

Performance monitoring workshop coming up with a plan for the GDA. Photo by Jessica Donovan, Conservation International

Formulation of a performance monitoring plan for the GDA. Actors affected by activities in the area include the Guinean Government, researchers, donors, NGOs, conservation projects, logging concerns, as well as those in riverside and rural communities such as farmers, hunters, beekeepers and fishermen.

Lack of capacity within government agencies to enforce environmental laws also increases the threat to local biodiversity, as do low managerial capacity within local institutions, land tenure conflicts between landowners and local communities, and poverty. Ecologically destructive (i.e., slash and burn) agricultural practices used by subsistence farmers are also a threat to biodiversity. Greater community knowledge of the importance of resource governance, the use of appropriate production technologies, as well as local stakeholder coordination and involvement in land use are key to limiting destruction, and promoting protection of the environment.

With these issues in mind, USAID, CI and Rio Tinto have each agreed to contribute cash and/or in kind resources toward fulfillment of GDA goals (See Sidebar). USAID, whose GDA contribution will be $920,000, will be responsible for conducting an environmental assessment for forestry co-management, and baseline socio-economic studies for the expansion of USAID's natural resource management activities into Forest Guinea. Based upon the results of these studies, USAID will extend appropriate natural resource management activities into Forest Guinea.

CI, who will contribute $420,248 to the GDA, will be leading the process to assess the environmental conditions of the Greater Nimba Highlands (extending through northeast Liberia, northwest Côte d'Ivoire and southeast Guinea), with specific emphasis on Forest Guinea, and will then develop an integrated regional landscape strategy. In addition, CI will promote the development of a network of protected areas, assist local authorities to review and update existing wildlife laws and regulations, and support the design and implementation of an information, communication, and education strategy to increase local understanding of landscape planning and biodiversity conservation.

Gallery forest in the Simandou Range.

As the large commercial mining interest represented in the agreement, Rio Tinto will contribute $501,517 to the GDA, with which it will seek to use best management practices, including internationally recognized standards for health, safety, community and environmental responsibility. The company has also agreed to give biodiversity issues the same importance as technical and economic factors, and integrate them into all management and decision-making processes. It will also strive to make a positive contribution to local communities through economic development and environmental protection.

Rio Tinto is now in the advanced stages of developing a corporate biodiversity strategy, which is being produced in collaboration with external audiences such as CI, Fauna and Flora International, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the Smithsonian Institution and Birdlife International. In line with the goals of the newly-formed alliance, the principles and objectives contained within the biodiversity strategy will be applied directly to Rio Tinto's Simandou iron ore project.

By improving the capacity of local communities, financial institutions, and representatives of the public, private, and non-profit sectors (Alliance “Partners”), the alliance hopes to make strategic decisions that in the long run will serve to both protect the area's unique ecological environment, and promote economic growth for the local population.

Global Development Alliance actors in Guinea. Photo by Jessica Donovan, Conservation International

Government and private sector actors in the Global Development Alliance.

Article by Laura Lartigue.