Description:

In order to achieve robust community-based sustainable wildlife management, six key components are needed. These focus on understanding the environments and the resources they contain, community rights, governance, management, and reducing rural dependency on unsustainable natural resource use. These components represent the minimum prerequisites for sustainable wildlife management actions. If one of these is missing, sustainable use is unlikely to be achieved. These components are as follows:

• understanding the environment and its use
• devolution of exclusionary rights
• local-level management by a competent authority
• social cohesion to manage as a community
• effective governance systems
• sustainable solutions for growth and increasing aspirations.

The Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme is developing innovative solutions based on field projects in 15 countries. It is a seven-year (2018–2024) Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS) initiative, which is being funded by the European Union with co-funding from the French Facility for Global Environment (FFEM) and the French Development Agency (AFD). It is being implemented by a dynamic consortium of four partners with expertise in wildlife conservation and food security:

• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
• Center for International Forestry Research(CIFOR)
• French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD)
• Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).