El clima cambia, cambia tú también : adaptación al cambio climático en comunidades locales de Colombia

In Assam, Northeast India, the Himalayan foothill forests provide essential habitat for the Asian elephant Elephas maximus. The natural vegetation in the region is moist deciduous forest, but this has mainly been transformed and now contains a mosaic of land uses and vegetation. These include rice cultivation, village settlements, commercial tea plantations and protected areas.

In 2004, a pilot project was established between Chester Zoo (then North of England Zoological Society), United Kingdom and EcoSystems – India, a regional non-governmental organization (NGO), to further learn about the conflict and determine the best way towards sustainable solutions with the impacted communities. This pilot phase became the catalyst for the Assam Haathi Project, which worked with local communities to understand the situation further and identify solutions for addressing the issue collaboratively. The project ran for 14 years, from 2004 to 2018, and conducted many activities to address the human-elephant conflict. This case study highlights a subset of activities that have been conducted by the Assam Haathi Project (hereafter “the project”).

The Elephants and Bees Project is part of Save the Elephants’ Human-Elephant Coexistence Programme, based in Sagalla, next to Tsavo East National Park in southern Kenya.

This case study highlights the process undertaken since 2001 to understand the effect honey bees had on elephants and to develop, evaluate and implement beehive fences at several sites in Kenya, from initial research-based studies on the effect of bees on elephants to the establishment of the Elephants and Bees Project.

The presence of forested islands creates edge habitats for many wildlife species, such as jaguar Panthera onca, tapir Tapirus terrestris, capybara Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris, harpy eagle Harpia harpyja, to name a few. The human population density in the region is very low (0.4 people/km2), with communities consisting of predominantly indigenous Makushi and Wapichan people, with mixed populations including Guyana’s nine indigenous groups. The primary livelihoods in the region are subsistence fishing, farming and hunting.

The Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme in Guyana (hereafter “the SWM Programme”) aims to ensure that “wildlife, ecosystems and their services are conserved and the living conditions, food security and cultural identity of rural villages are improved”. Under one component of the programme, local beneficiaries led by the Rupununi Livestock Producers Association (RLPA) had identified that

The programme established a body of work for reducing the human-carnivore conflict by conducting participatory research with the impacted communities facilitated in collaboration with the Department of Wildlife Ecology & Conservation at the University of Florida and the Guyana Conservation Initiative at the Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens. This case study highlights the initial steps taken to understand the situation further to help inform future management.

The way in which forest land is owned directly influences the status of the forest, its condition and the way in which it is managed. The greater the security of local forest tenure, the stronger the interest and will of the community towards its security. One of four papers commissioned by IUCN towards building a comprehensive profile on the subject of community involvement in forest management in eastern and southern Africa, this publication addresses the function of property relations and State-people relations in matters of governance and management. The study is comparative in nature, with a continuing examination of commonality and difference in the handling of property rights in respect of rural communities.