When Nepal began wildlife conservation in 1973 with the establishment of Chitwan National Park, the emphasis was on species conservation and research. However, with growing park-people conflict, WWF worked together with Government of Nepal and National Trust for Nature Conservation (then King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation) to design and establish the first community based conservation area. In 1986, the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP) marked a watershed in Nepal 's conservation drive.
After the success of ACAP, the early practice of vigorous law enforcement in conservation gave way to a more conciliatory and cooperative approach. The lesson learned was that effective conservation was impossible without participatory involvement of the local people and addressing their basic livelihoods issues.
Integrating Sustainable Livelihoods Approach
The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) enables to understand and analyze the complexity of poverty and its interlinkages to conservation in a comprehensive way. Further, the SLA also guides to integrate the people's livelihoods priority into different stages of project cycle management with a clear and succinct change monitoring happening in community's quality of life.
The positive impacts and benefits of implemented development interventions have been influenced by different socio-cultural and political root causes like exclusion and vulnerability. Besides these, on the other hand, people's lives have also been influenced by changes in magnitude of natural capital, policy and environmental changes. These have always affected mostly poor, excluded and disadvantaged communities. All directly, indirectly or unknowingly creating pressure on biodiversity are WWF's prime target audience. WWF focuses to change their quality of life through three basic ways - diversification of livelihoods strategy, enabling policy and environment support to change behavior, and enhancing the understanding of linkage between natural resources and livelihoods through prescribed advocacy and capacity building methodology.
We have recognized livelihood issues as a crucial factor in the sustainability of conservation. Some critical issues interlinked with conservation and people's lives are land conversion due to agriculture expansion, encroachment of habitats, wetlands and forests due to internal displacement, rapid migration, open border, land insecurity and political instability, grazing pressure, poaching, illegal wildlife trade, human wildlife conflict, unsustainable consumption and harvesting of natural resources, unemployment and lack of economic opportunity, social exclusion, weak governance and social injustice in resources.
Our programs are designed with a focus on livelihoods issues interlinked with forest and other natural resources. Community participation in conservation and different community services is encouraged through income generation and capacity building opportunities.
Our major interventions are income generation through natural resource based enterprises, and improved access and governance to community services. The overall outcome of integrating livelihoods issues into conservation is to improve the well being of people living in and around the landscapes to reduce the pressure on biodiversity and natural resources.
Recently more than 125,000 households through more than 1,300 different resource management user groups are directly benefiting in the three landscapes from WWF project support programs financially and technically supported by Kangchenjunga Conservation Area Project (KCAP) in Kanchenjunga, Koshi River Basin Management (KRBM) in Sallery, Solukhumbu, Langtang National Park and Buffer Zone Support Project (LNPBZ SP) in Rasuwa, Northern Mountain Conservation Project (NMCP) in Dolpa, Terai Arc Landscape Critical Bottleneck and Restoration Project (TAL - CBRP) and Terai Arc Landscape Protected Area and Buffer Zone (TAL - PABZ) in Terai.
WWF together with like-minded organizations works to address other livelihoods priorities such as environmental health, community infrastructures, scholarship and education to increase community participation in conservation. WWF also works with Amchis, local traditional healers in upper mountain areas, which helps to respect local cultural sensitivities and promotes community participation in their health care.
Our future priority remains in the increase of equitable influence and access of community people on existing resources and services without undermining the natural resource base. This practice will help maximize livelihood benefits with increasing understanding of conservation practices and its livelihoods linkages.
