Call for workshop contributions “Beyond enforcement: Involving indigenous peoples and local communities in combating illegal wildlife trade"

Dates: 15-16 November 2016

Location: Hanoi, Vietnam (exact venue TBC)

Cost: We are pleased to be able to offer funding to cover travel, food and accommodation costs for selected participants, limited to one selected participant per organization.

This workshop is supported by

• the Austrian Ministry of the Environment
• the German Polifund project, implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), and
• the Wildlife Trafficking Response, Assessment and Priority Setting (Wildlife TRAPS) Project, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

MEETING OBJECTIVES

The objective of this meeting is to improve understanding and guidance on how Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities can be engaged as active partners in protecting wildlife against IWT, through collecting and examining regional experiences and case studies.

This regional workshop will further build upon an international symposium on this topic held in Muldersdrift, South Africa, in February 2015, which brought together experiences and case studies of different community engagement approaches. The Muldersdrift symposium highlighted the need for more focused regional exploration of the issues in order to contribute to an international effort toward raising awareness of and attention to the role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in effective and just responses to IWT.

REGIONAL FOCUS

The countries of Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on the Lower Mekong Region.

CALL FOR WORKSHOP CONTRIBUTIONS

We are seeking analyses, case studies, and experiences of efforts to involve Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in tackling illegal wildlife trade. We are particularly interested in exploring approaches that have worked – and the underlying reasons for their success – and approaches that have not been found to be effective. We are also interested in case studies that document the impacts on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities of external efforts to control illegal wildlife trade (e.g. the impacts of government-led (or private sector- led) anti-poaching patrols).

The focus is mostly on international illegal wildlife trade (i.e. wildlife trade that involves cross-border transactions), and less so on illegal use of wildlife for local subsistence or trade. In this context and for the purpose of this workshop, we define wildlife trade as trade in wild animals and plants and their parts and derivatives, with an emphasis on high-value species.

We would particularly like to encourage proposals for presentations from people who are members of Indigenous Peoples and/or Local Communities affected by or engaged in tackling illegal wildlife trade, or community support organisations; and from those with governmental (or inter-governmental) mandates and responsibilities or representing donor commitments for addressing wildlife crime.

We are also interested to hear from people without specific analyses/examples to present, but with direct experience to share or knowledge to gain from the discussion.

Proposals are invited on any aspect of the topic, but particularly in the following areas: 

• Impacts of enforcement on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities: How are current enforcement strategies impacting on communities?

• Understanding and quantifying the negative impact of wildlife crime on sustainable livelihoods and economic development: How is illegal wildlife trade impacting on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities?

• Engaging Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in conservation: Where and how has strengthening community rights to manage and use or benefit from wild resources successfully reduced wildlife crime?

• Involving Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in law enforcement efforts: Where and how are communities actively engaging in enforcement efforts, and what factors underpin success?

• Combating illegal wildlife hunting within Indigenous Peoples' and Local Communities’ territories: How do communities deal with illegal hunting for IWT within their community managed hunting zones and territories more broadly?

Information about your organization's work combating the IWT and a presentation proposal should be submitted via our online application process by 30^th September 2016 before 17:00 Hanoi/Bangkok time. Link here: https://goo.gl/forms/vHC5yowYTSwjWeZ32

BACKGROUND

Globally, poaching and associated illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is devastating populations of iconic wildlife species such as rhinos and elephants, but also a host of lesser known ones. Across Asia, Southeast Asia and the Lower Mekong Basin region specifically, IWT is a particular concern for elephants, big cats, primates, pangolins, reptiles, birds, precious timber species and medicinal plants.

IWT is a major focus of current conservation concern and policy development, including through the EU Parliament Resolution on Wildlife Crime (January 2014) and the high-level Conferences on Illegal Wildlife Trade in London (February 2014) and in Kasane, Botswana (March 2015), the International Conference on Illegal Exploitation and Illicit Trade in Wild Flora and Fauna in Africa (Brazzaville, Congo, April 2015) and the African Union-led Common Strategy to Combat Illegal Exploitation and Illegal Trade of Wild Fauna and Flora stemming therefrom, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders statement from their 2015 leaders meeting, and the 2015 Resolution of the UN General Assembly on IWT.

These conferences and policy statements, alongside several African sub-regional ones, have increasingly recognised the important role of the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities who live close to wildlife in addressing IWT (see Table below).

However, despite this recognition, the emphasis to date in discussions and in implementation has been strongly on strengthening (government-led) law enforcement and reducing consumer demand for illicitly sourced wildlife commodities. Considerably less emphasis has been placed on the role of the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities who live with wildlife. Moreover, some recent commitments, such as the one stemming from the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Johannesburg Action Plan (2016-2018), do mention the need to combat IWT, but do not recognize the strong role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. 

IWT has an enormous impact on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, who are affected by insecurity and the depletion of important livelihood and economic assets, while often being excluded from the benefits of conservation. They can also be very negatively affected by heavy-handed, militarized responses to wildlife crime, which frequently make little distinction between the illegal activities driven by large scale profits (crimes of greed) versus those driven by poverty (crimes of need). Most fundamentally, however, the long term survival of wildlife populations, and in particular the success of interventions to combat IWT, will depend to a large extent on engagement of the iIndigenous pPeoples and Local Communities who live with wildlife populations. Where the economic and social value of wildlife populations for local people is positive, they will be more motivated to support and engage in efforts to combat and manage poaching and illicit trade. But where local people do not play a role in wildlife management and where it generates no benefits, strong incentives for illegal use and trade are likely to exist. Even the most focused and well-resourced enforcement efforts (which few countries can afford or have the political will to implement) will struggle to effectively control wildlife crime in the face of strong incentives for complicity by local people.

There are examples from Africa as well as from Central Asia and from Pakistan of governance models that empower Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to manage wildlife sustainably and generate social and economic benefits. In a number of cases, these approaches have been successful in reducing illegal wildlife use and trade – sometimes dramatically – and incentivising strong community engagement in enforcement efforts. However, there is a clear need to raise awareness of these examples, distil lessons learnt, and ensure this experience influences the ongoing international IWT policy debate and implementation of approaches.

Crucially, the potential of community-based approaches needs to be analysed in the context of contemporary challenges of increasing involvement of transnationally-organized criminal syndicates in IWT, rising profits from illicit trade, increased access to firearms by community members, worsening poverty in many areas, erosion of traditional rights and governance systems, rapid urbanisation and changing community value systems, and large-scale threats from climate change combined with progressive habitat erosion affecting subsistence agriculture.