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Summary
of findings and conclusions of wildlife, habitat, environment protection,
business enterprise and community integration action meeting
Zimbabwe
Conservation Task Force (ZCTF) - participant
Bulawayo, January 24, 2004
It is most disconcerting
to have a mass of voices expressing huge concerns and recommendations
by telephone and email for action through the efforts of this group,
yet have a turnout that contradicts these supportive sentiments.
To those who did make the effort and confirmed their commitment
to addressing the problems by attending, especially those from as
far as Harare and Beit Bridge, a special thank you.
A mere one hundred
years ago, Zimbabwe might have been able to sustain her natural
biodiversities without so much as a plan in place. The population
in those days was less than a million, something like 3 people per
square kilometre, today its more than 40 people per square kilometre,
an increase of some 1,350%.
The demands
on natural resources in those by-gone eras were far less and the
impact on habitats was to say, almost nil. Today however, the negative
exponential as an unsustainable effect in compounding format, would
probably equate to something like 222 people per square kilometre,
an overall impact increase of 7,400% in 100 years. In a natural
environment as sensitive as ours, that is clearly unsustainable,
if not catastrophic. Any thought that this is and unrealistic comparison,
might warrant a national environmental impact assessment to substantiate
the estimation.
As time evolved
over the past 100 years, when the experts say the world moved into
the Age of Aquarius, the age when populations exploded all over
the globe; when cures were found for killer diseases; when two vicious
world wars were fought; when great lakes were built; when the age
of flight came into being, when the motor car took to the streets;
when natural habitats were ripped apart for the necessary agriculture
to feed the burgeoning millions; when atom bombs and nuclear war-
heads were invented; when man landed on the moon and then scuttled
back to earth after seeing the desolate moon surface and adjudging
that modern man had probably already been there; when millions of
tons of gold and billions of litres of crude oil were greedily extracted
from the bowels of the earth; when Professor Chris Barnard transplanted
a human heart into another; when radio and television took pride
of place in our homes; when the pill and the condom became as common
as a bedside lamp in the bedroom; when computers started to tell
us how to think; when cellular-phones took the place of our spouses;
when living creatures were cloned and when cloning wasn't extended
into our wild animals, our wild habitats; our precious environments;
our natural resources and certainly not into critically needed methodologies
to sustain the cultural lives of our rural communities; of our forex
earning tourism and hunting industries; of the creation of jobs
and income; of our roles as a responsible people blessed with natural
assets hardly surpassed in the world and most important of all,
when cloning has failed to replace what we're rapaciously destroying.
In days gone
by, man lived comfortably off the bush. Today, man and the bush
do not and cannot co-exist sustainably without very careful and
methodical management techniques in place.
No natural environment
or wildlife habitat anywhere in the world has survived, or is surviving
without an appropriate process in place to ensure the continuity
of natural resources on a level adequate for fair and equitable
utilisation, and certainly not for the successive maintenance of
man's cataclysmic population explosion tendencies in Africa.
No wise choice
has ever come about by chance, we've had to achieve those choices.
In saying this, through you, this forum of qualified, experienced,
respected and caring delegates, January 2004 should mark the beginning
of an era that will, we pray, see in the profound senses of responsibility
that we know exists amongst us, to be the active catalyst in defining
an appropriately constructed methodology for presentation to the
relevant authorities in a non-confrontational manner and in a cooperative
fashion that lodges heads of argument to work fastidiously for ultimately
ensuring the safe conservation and propagation of our wildlife,
natural habitats, environments and the quality of life for dependent
communities and the wildlife enterprises that depend on them to
succeed for the universal benefit of the nation.
Without a strategic
and determined endeavour on our part, there will be no tourism,
there will be no hunting, there will be no job creation, there will
be no rural contribution to education, health nor capacity building,
there will be no critical progress and development by wildlife and
natural habitat business enterprises; there will be no contribution
from us to specific regional economies and sociological needs; there
will no role for us as a people of responsibility for the sake of
our children and grandchildren's futures and for the sake of mankind's
dependence on the values of our bio-diverse riches. Heavens alive!
Its where we all came from comfortably and enriched, but its where
the definition of destiny says we will end up decrepit and sickly
poor if we continue to allow its abuse.
You, the custodians
of Zimbabwe's wildlife, pristine habitats, natural resources, the
environment and as key role players in developing the progressive
quality of life for our adjacent rural communities, should not be
prepared to be an idle part of the problem that accepts unsustainable
utilisation. Instead, you should be exacting exponents of critically
needed solutions.
We are not saying
we'll solve our world's problems, but we are saying we'll dam-well
going to try. For better or for worse, the future of Zimbabwe's
wild areas and natural environments will be determined in large
part by the intensity of our aspirations and the strength of our
struggle to make them a reality. One could say the price we pay
to achieve the results will be proportionate to the value we get.
We have the
creativity, we have the compassion, we have the intelligence, we
have the people …… otherwise none of you would be here
today …… and we have the determination, we have the strategy
in thought concept, we simply need to pool these resources and launch
them intelligently to challenge the clearly daunting obstacles that
lie ahead.
One of the most
significant outcomes of the World Summit on Sustainable Development
in 2003 in the context of the biodiversity agenda, was the mandate
to negotiate an international system to promote and safeguard fair
and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilisation of
genetic resources.
This outcome
was not derived at simply because someone was looking for something
to do. It was derived at by the worlds experts through deep analysis
of global biodiversities in terms of what they are, what they were,
where they're heading as a severe need in mankind's future, what
needs to be done to preserve these life-forms, and who will be tasked
with that responsibility. But they are not going to come to Zimbabwe
and do the job for us; we have to do it ourselves.
The WSSD are
calling the process, Access and Benefit Sharing or ABS,
which is a key issue in addressing the important linkages between
biodiversity conservation, continuity of use, the alleviation of
poverty, the development of sustainable sources of revenue/income
as economic concerns and the preservation of cultural integrity
befitting sociological concerns.
There are a
number of initiatives on the ABS process around the world, and in
principle, they are absolutely no different to the concerns we are
tabling in this forum. Except they are in different parts of the
globe, in different environments, run by different people, yet common
for the exact same reasons …… to sustain life for all
and everything.
The Ramsar Convention,
under whose auspices World Heritage Sites are proclaimed, is universally
accepted as an important component of, and a tool for worldwide
action to conserve biodiverse ecosystems. Mana Pools, the Matobo
and Victoria Falls ladies and gentlemen, are not the only Heritage
Sites we have, for in universal definition, Zimbabwe in a holistic
sense, is a Heritage Site of very sensitive bio-diverse ecosystems.
Again, just
as in the WSSD concept, this forum is no different to the Ramsar
Convention in its drive to apply appropriate management techniques
in sensitive biodiversities. As actively participating custodians
of Zimbabwe's biodiversity, we should in fact, and rightly so, consider
ourselves an extension of WSSD and Ramsar Convention efforts to
establish a far more coherent framework for joint action on both
sociological and natural resource issues.
In one part
of the world, such as in the Saloum Delta Biosphere Reserve in Senegal,
where severe restrictions are imposed on local communities in their
natural resource use, some 80% of the population actively supports
the work of the Biosphere, and the operative word here, is 'actively.'
The balance of the population is the aged and those who work and
live in surrounding business enterprises.
The Saloum process
to develop and implement a management plan for this area of such
bio-diverse value started 14 years ago. The Government of Senegal,
local communities, a host of NGOs and research institutes, the Government
of the Netherlands and the IUCN, all agreed on a long-term package
of research, policy and action, which today, is seen internationally
as a model example of success in appropriate management of sociological
needs balanced with sensitive biodiversity demands that deliver
continuity of equity.
Across key areas
of Zimbabwe, 14 years is just too unrealistic in terms of the severe
demands being placed on our needs. On the contrary, time as a resource,
is the one thing we simply do not have. Perhaps this should be a
measure of the extent and rate of destruction our biodiversities
are being subjected to.
It could be
said that we would have to start with a primary term strategy that
requires immediate address; a short-term time-line that takes our
concept into a workable and approved mode; then into a medium-term
strategy from date of approval, that embraces launching the initiative
after concept modifications, then through to a long-term strategy
that is audited to sustain progress and inclusion of on-going developmental
input.
In summary ladies
and gentlemen, Zimbabwe's wildlife, natural habitats, environments,
dependent communities and interactive dependent businesses, need
our immediate attention and assistance to secure not only their
futures, but the dependence of the future of mankind on Zimbabwe's
severely threatened biodiversity.
As responsible
citizens tasked with measurably contributing to our conservation
related economies and sociological needs, we would be committing
the greatest evil against our fellow man in Zimbabwe, if we did
simply nothing but sit back and accept the widespread and compounding
decimation of that which we love so much and desperately need for
mere survival.
Dr John Fulton
Facilitator
Visit the ZCTF
fact sheet
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