Biocarbon - Gorongosa National Park

GORONGOSA NATIONAL PARK

The link to the Gorongosa National Park is an important component of the project. The park management embraced a strategy of constructive engagement with bordering communities and has attempted to encourage communities resident in the park (settlement as refugees during the civil war) to leave and settle in the buffer zone. The park management believes that by effective policing of resources in the park and managed utilisation in the buffer zone, conservation and development can take place simultaneously. By encouraging an approach in which biodiversity is seen as a holistic issue involving both the flora and fauna of the park and the people who live in and around it this project will contribute to this “human fence” vision for the national park.

The Gorongosa National Park is situated in the province of Sofala in central Mozambique. Its establishment can be traced back to the declaration of a controlled hunting area in 1920 and it was formally designated as a National Park in the early 1960’s. Because of its physical structure, relief and associated changes in vegetation, the area between the coast and Gorongosa Mountain comprises possibly the region of highest biodiversity in Mozambique . The ecosystems are characterised by enormous variety. There are some seventy four different vegetation systems, fifteen geological formations and forty recorded soil types found in the region.

This diversity of habitats has given rise to an extraordinarily rich flora and fauna with thousands of different species. There is a high species diversity of reptiles, frogs and fish, with at least one endemic species (a mountain minnow); an avifauna of 500 or more species (with endemic species); 25 wild ungulate species including seven miniature antelope; six primates and three galagos.

In 1920, part of the Gorongosa (Vila Paiva de Andrade) District was set aside as controlled hunting areas to serve as the main source of animal protein to feed labour in major sugar and coconut plantation being established at that time in the region.

By 1935, the initial 1000 Km2 of hunting area was turned into Game Reserve and the area increased to 3 000 Km2. The first park headquarters was established in the early 1940´s near the river but, a year later it was abandoned due to floods and in the late 1950´s the Chitengo site was selected and a new headquarters erected. In 1960 the game reserve was upgraded to a National Park with a surface area of 5, 300 Km2. Until the breakout of the civil war, Gorongosa National Park had two major tourist camps - Chitengo and Boa-Vista - and visitor numbers peaked in 1973 with some 20 000 visitors.

The Park was closed in 1983 due to instability in the region and several attacks and all management and tourist activities ceased during the Civil War. The entire Park’s infrastructure was destroyed and the diverse and abundant wildlife dramatically reduced due to systematic killing by the combatants. In 1995, an emergency program funded by the European Community, and implemented by IUCN-ROSA was designed to establish an anti-poaching holding team and initiate the rehabilitation work.

In October 1996 this program ended successfully and GERFFA ( Forest and Wildlife Management Project) of the National Directorate of Forestry and Wildlife (DNFFB) took over. Today a provisional Park’s HQs has been established in Chitengo after rehabilitation of some ruins of the old camp and management activities have been re-established including anti-poaching operations which are been carried out from 13 ranger posts established on the perimeter of the Park.

A New Direction

An innovative project drawing on the latest thinking regarding climate change mitigation, sustainability and enterprise-driven conservation has been launched in Mozambique . The Nhambita Community Carbon Project situated in the “buffer zone” of the Gorongosa National Park in the central Sofala Province , is a collaborative venture between the Nhambita Community Association, the Gorongosa National Park , the University of Edinburgh , Envirotrade Limited, the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management (ECCM) and ICRAF with grant funding from the European Union and DFID.

Over the next five years a ten thousand hectare portion of the land adjoining the national park will be rehabilitated through a project that brings together land-use change carbon “sink” initiatives, sustainable livelihood creation and resource utilisation by a forest community in the Miombo biome. A unique feature of this project is the combination of funding from the European Union, private sector investment by Envirotrade Ltd (UK) and the sale of carbon offsets. It aims to bring real benefits to the community and the national park by translating the carbon property rights into social capital.

The management of the Gorongosa National Park, supported by the Resilience Alliance have embarked on an ambitious programme to rehabilitate the park after combatants in Mozambique’s protracted civil war destroyed the infrastructure and all but exterminated the larger animal species in the park. The park became a haven for refugees fleeing the fighting and the break down in authority enabled communities removed from the park following its establishment by the Portuguese colonial government to return to ancestral lands with the in the boundaries. The presence of these communities in and around the park pose challenges for conservation authorities attempting to reconcile their objectives with a resource starved human population. The programme to rehabilitate the park is centred on five objectives;

Conservation of ecosystems, biodiversity, historical and cultural values.
Provision of cultural and natural resources based opportunities to society,
Opportunities for scientific study, education and information exchange to be provided,
Resource utilisation in such a manner that it does not undermine conservation, information, recreation and income generation objectives,
Income generation to contribute to the maintenance and development of the GNP.

The Nhambita Community Carbon Project falls within the ambit of the first objective in particular it addresses the detailed objectives of contributing to the habitat integrity of the park, conserving the aesthetic quality of the parks resources, involve communities utilising the resource base in benefit sharing, minimising man made fires and raising community awareness of conservation issues.

The project seeks to minimise opportunity costs associated with conservation by creating sustainable resource utilisation patterns and livelihood creation. It aims to generate meaningful equity for forest communities by translating carbon property rights into social capital. It is premised on the recognition that historical methods of conserving resources in protected areas through rigid exclusion have met with limited success and are subject to enormous pressure from impoverished rural communities who need to see real benefits from conservation.

The project concept also recognises that donation driven conservation efforts in Gorongosa are unable to meet the shortfall in resources faced by the park management and that an income generating model of habitat rehabilitation is required if consumptive resource utilisation is to be effectively managed. The sale of carbon offsets linked to habitat rehabilitation of Miombo forest and agroforestry offers an opportunity to bring additional resources to the communities living both in the buffer zone and within the park as well as to the park itself.

The vision of a park with human boundaries is a bold one; it requires effective regulation of consumptive exploitation in the boundaries of the park and stimulation of sustainable utilisation in the buffer zone of the park if it is to be successful. This project will seek to demonstrate that resource utilisation by forest dwelling communities can be adapted to ensure the survival of the habitat and indeed its rehabilitation were unsustainable utilisation has degraded it.

Recently the US based Carr Foundation has entered into an agreement with the Mozambiquen Government to bring significant investment into the park and has signed a management agreement that will lead to a major restocking of the park and an improvement in the infrastructure. A vision for the Gorongosa National Park restored to its former splendour seems increasingly achievable.