Maravi

Use natural resources to fight poverty - Brown

Use natural resources to fight poverty - Brown
By Edwin Mbulo in Livingstone
Fri 22 June 2012, 13:25 CAT

POVERTY reduction, education and health care needs to be enhanced by fully utilising the natural resources that are in abundance in Zambia, says a conservation director.

In an interview in Livingstone, Mathew Brown, who is African regional conservation director for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) based in Tanzania, said when communities felt they were not deriving the benefits out of the natural resources, they resort to abusing the source for their own gains.

"Africa still has a lot of natural resources that are of commercial
interest and we are encouraging communities to get involved, a lot of threats to forests and wildlife comes from the communities, so what TNC aims to look at is how these resources can be utilised to the benefit of poverty reduction, education and health care," Brown said.

He said TNC works in 33 countries worldwide while in Africa it has operations in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Namibia and Gabon.

Brown said the TNC got involved in supporting Community Based Resource Management (CBRM) because of the realisation that when communities got benefits from the natural resources, they got involved in their management.

"Mulobezi Game Management Area (GMA) still has great opportunities to manage natural resources for the benefit of the community and during the Mulobezi Community Conservation Action Planning workshop held at Protea Hotel we saw great political will from the district commissioner Pascalina Musokotwane," Brown said.

He added that TNC would continue to operate in the Kafue National Park and Mulobezi as long as there was need to help sustain the natural resources for the benefit of the community.

"We should not only focus on anti-poaching and forestry preservation, doing so leads to poaching," he said.

Labels: CONSERVATIVES, WINDFALL TAX

posted by MrK @ 2:50 PM