Communities as First Line of Defence against wildlife crime

The project is working with local communities, conservation organizations and other stakeholders to identify key success factors and constraints in effective community engagement in fighting IWT. As a guiding framework, the project implementers are using a dynamic Theory of Change (ToC) developed by SuLI and partners to help understand how to best strengthen the engagement of local communities in combating IWT. This ToC outlines four main pathways that are necessary to engage local communities effectively: (A) Strengthening disincentives (social and legal) for illegal behavior (B) Increasing incentives for stewardship (C) Decreasing costs of living with wildlife and (D) Supporting non-wildlife related livelihoods. The lessons learned from the project will be used to generate and disseminate case studies and guidance for conservation organizations, policy-makers and donors on strengthening community engagement in combating IWT in Kenya and beyond.

To implement this project the IUCN ESARO Conservation Areas & Species programme, the IUCN SSC CEESP Sustainable Livelihoods Specialist Group (SuLi), the IUCN SSC African Elephant Specialist Group (AfESG) and the Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) have partnered with the Big Life Foundation (BLF), the Cottar Safari Service (CSS) and the Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association (KWCA) to assess existing community engagements in the Amboseli Ecosystem and the Olderekesi Conservancy adjacent to the Maasai Mara National Reserve. The project is also sharing lessons and methodologies with the Southern Rangelands Association of Land Owners (SORALO), which works with Maasai communities in a large swathe of southern Kenya with a mission to help develop and enhance a network of conservancies and to strengthen its community-based approaches to reducing IWT.

From the 23^rd to the 27^th of May 2016 the project partners held an inception workshop at the IUCN Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office in Nairobi Kenya. The workshop was designed to help understand the local context at the pilot sites and to develop a methodological framework and work plan to guide the next stages in the project. The participants benefited greatly from guidance provided by Professor Wendy Rowe of Royal Roads University in Victoria, Canada on how to engage communities in collaborative learning and practice using action research principles and processes.   Good progress was made in the development and testing of a prototype situation assessment tool, structured along the main pathways of the ToC, which proved extremely useful in helping the participants to quickly gain insights into the main challenges and opportunities at site level through a highly interactive and participatory approach. The workshop was also extremely useful in helping to validate and refine the over-arching ToC, particularly in the context of a mixed livestock-wildlife economy, which is a common feature of the Kenyan pilot sites participating in the project. The next steps in the project, following the roadmap developed at the workshop includes collection of more detailed baseline information and honing of the tools and methodologies ahead of the field work scheduled to begin in the second half of August 2016.