So What Am I Doing Here?

I came to Guinea to work on the Chimpanzee Conservation and Sensitization Program (CCSP). In addition to an extensive public awareness campaign about the importance of chimpanzees, the CCSP includes a sustainable development component which is what I and my colleague Jim Tolisano are working on along with JGI staff here in Guinea and Sierra Leone. This component has three phases that focus on natural resource management and planning as well as small business development. The areas where we work have high chimpanzee populations that are threatened primarily by loss of habitat from farming and forest fires. The goal is for communities to learn how to collect data and analyze information on the state, use and importance of their resources, and to prioritize them so as to better manage their resources for the long term. Additional activities that reduce the agricultural pressure on the land are encouraged through small business incentives.

The first phase was a workshop training community leaders (aka para-biologists) and other villagers who had a basic reading and writing skills (very very basic) to collect data on their natural resources using surveys and transects. This occurred in two counties in Guinea and one in Sierra Leone. The para-biologists interviewed people from surrounding villages to find out what resources they use and their overall condition, resources that used to exist but are no longer found, socio-economic data, and also info on chimpanzees. They also went into forests and did transects. Last year, I came here for the second phase and lead workshops on how to develop an Eco-Development Plan, which builds on the data they collected and elaborates the natural resource management goals, activities, opportunities, needs and risks of participating communities.

This time around, I am leading workshops in small business development. The project has financing for micro-enterprises and the best projects submitted by the communities will be funded. People working on development or conservation projects are often discouraged due to lack of results, over ambitious projects, lack of funding etc etc. I am very happy and proud to say that I think this project has been successful. In this last workshop, I asked the Para-biologists to tell me what they had done since the last workshop. They elaborated how they had reunited the community leaders of their villages and surrounding villages to discuss the management goals of the community. Having surveyed the land and people, both the para-biologists and the communities had a better understanding of what resources they had and their condition. After discussing the wants and needs of the communities they were able to prioritize the resources important to them and in some cases chose areas to reforest that would serve as chimp habitat. Others talked about how the Eco-Development process was in and of itself a type of public awareness campaign and changed people's attitudes about chimpanzees. Still others talked about how the process reinforced linkages between communities and strengthened intra-personal relations. The para-biologists are all agriculturalists and they either farm or have cattle. They all have a direct impact on the land around them and are the only ones that can initiate and enforce change in land use. I'm happy to say that they are doing so despite confronting difficult obstacles. I am optimistic that with the small business and community projects that this will continue with direct benefits to the community as well as to the chimps.