WINDHOEK – There is a call from grassroots leaders who are attending the gathering at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) for more funding in community-led initiatives.
The call was made during a dialogue by the World Indigenous Network (WIN), a recently launched initiative to connect local and indigenous communities working on the frontlines of sustainable development. Francis Gomeb from the N≠ajagna conservancy in the Tsumkwe constituency feels strongly that local communities should be involved in decision-making processes. “Sometimes there are challenges communities are facing. We address these concerns to the government, especially land grabbing, where people come and fence off our indigenous plants that locals use for their traditional medicines, as well as our wildlife. These areas become protected areas and now we can’t access natural resources on our own land. The government is always ignoring us,” he complained. Gomeb further stressed that information sharing is vital and has called on the 11th session of the Conference of Parties (COP 11) underway in the capital to be more involved in capacity-building at local levels.
Gladman Chibememe, another WIN participant from Zimbabwe, said good best practices come from local people and can be used to influence national and even global level decisions. “Whoever is participating at the UNCCD COP 11 should know that the old school of thought that communities are backyards should know that it is history,” he said.
The outspoken Zimbabwean delegate Chibememe called for greater investment in empowerment learning, saying communities learn best and fastest from each other, and any efforts to get sustainable development right on the ground need to prioritise peer-to-peer learning. “Even with mopane worms found in southern Africa, there is no arrangement for locals to harvest them. There is no sustainable way and in that way you are impoverishing the community.” He also noted that science cannot provide answers to everything, and that is why people should embrace one another, including those at local level with their indigenous knowledge. “Indigenous knowledge is key to sustainable land management,” he said.
Another delegate Ally Coe of the Wiradjuri Condoblin Corporation in Australia, said community-based approaches are often on the cutting edge of effective responses to environmental and economic challenges. “These successes need not happen in isolation. We can teach each other, but we need to provide support through initiatives like the WIN,” Coe said. The idea of WIN was launched by the government of Australia at the UN conference on Sustainable Development in June 2012, and its next phase of development will be overseen by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Equator initiative. The Equator initiative is a partnership that works to recognise and advance local sustainable development solutions for people, nature and resilient communities. The partnership has more than a decade of experience organising community dialogues and facilitating community-to-community learning. Eileen de Ravin, the manager of the Equator initiative, said it has been their experience at UNDP that community-to-community learning reduces the amount of time needed to replicate success and that it can be an effective way to speed up the transfer of sustainable development solutions. WIN’s vision is a global network of indigenous and local community land and sea managers connected not only virtually, but through an ongoing series of learning exchanges and site visits that will be designed to help spread local best practices in ecosystem management, the production of nature, and sustainable livelihoods. “We are seeing too much success in isolation. And that is a shame. Communities need support to share with each other and spread good practices,” Revin added.
By Albertina Nakale