Eastern Africa Coastal Forest Programme: Regional Workshop ...

Opportunities exist for improved forest conservation: there is strong will from
partners in the subregion, WWF and its partners have long experience and capacity to
undertake forest conservation, there are supportive national environmental policies in
place, and there is great potential for revenues and to contribute to the national
economy. There is community support and respect for coastal forests for cultural and
traditional reasons, biological and socio-economic data is available, and WWF is
committed to scaling up its coastal forest activities to a programme level.
There are a number of challenges facing forest conservation. These include a number
of countries with different policies towards forests and land use, difficulties with
defining coastal forests and determining their extent and boundary, the fragmentation
of coastal forests and numerous players involved, how to identify key threats, gaps
and programme interventions as well as how to identify national priorities and action
plans targeting coastal forests. Other challenges include attracting and maintaining
donors and partners interest, identifying major stakeholders and determining their role
in the planning and implementation of the programme and sustaining and integrating
WWF’s and others existing coastal forest projects in the EACFP.
Lessons from work that has been done in the region have shown that work at sitespecific
project level resulted in limited impact on the broad ecological problems of
the coastal forests. Linkages between site level interventions and landscape level
forest services were not made, and there was limited understanding on how to forge a
common vision that builds on linkages between and within different projects and
forest components. There is a lack of an institutional framework that addresses crossborder
conservation and policy issues, and relatively limited capacity to address
community participation issues. There is an absence of an initial baseline survey and
other data, which makes planning and monitoring difficult, and a lack of frameworks
where conservation and development practitioners debate common and crosscutting
issues.
In discussion, it was emphasized by Neil Burgess that the process of conserving the
EACF will need to be a collaborative effort between countries, agencies, NGOs and
other bodies. Gezahegn emphasized that the workshop objective was for potential
partners to develop a common vision for the resource that they share a common
concern and responsibility for, and to develop a shared action plan to ensure that the
actions of all agencies contribute to achieving the vision. One participant pointed out
that agriculture is a key stakeholder, and needs to be drawn in to the process. Another
participant felt that UNEP/GEF and IUCN should have been part of the workshop. It
was pointed out that they had been invited but had been unable to attend. However,
they would receive a briefing and workshop documentations after the workshop.
6. COUNTRY REPORTS
TANZANIA REPORT
The lowland coastal forests of Tanzania are represented by a few remaining patches
of reserves and unreserved forests. These forests harbour a unique diverse of flora and
fauna which show much endemism. Pressure on these forests is severe due to
unsustainable human livelihood activities such as shifting cultivation, illegal timber
extraction, forest fires, hunting, encroachment for farming and residence.
Based on Frontier surveys (Frontier-Tanzania 1989-1995) and Burgess and Clarke
(2000), forest sites can be roughly prioritised based on their biodiversity potential and
Eastern Africa Coastal Forests - 10 - Workshop Report, Nairobi February 4-7 2002