Chapter V. TBNRM Programs and Institutional Arrangements

A. Regional Initiatives

There are relatively few regional TBNRM programs and projects in Eastern Africa—either intra-state or inter-state. There are several reasons for this. The first is that the conservation policies and agencies established by the countries are based around narrow nationalistic and sectoral interests. These interests often invoke artificial boundaries that ignore the ecological foundations and eco-interdependence of neighboring communities. If used as the organizing basis for natural resource management, many current boundaries are inimical to sustainability. TBNRM would require that ethnic communities and nation states search for regimes that enable them to enlarge their cultural and ecological structures. Essentially communities and countries should not restrain their survival around artificial constructs but ensure that they accommodate holistic ecosystem-based boundaries.

Second, natural resource management has not been (at least until recently) at the center of regional cooperation agendas and bilateral arrangements. Natural resource management issues in general and those pertaining to TBNRM in particular have been treated in an ad hoc manner by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and perhaps less so by the East African Community (EAC). Regional bodies and their member states are largely preoccupied with the maintenance of peace (political stability) and economic integration as well as promotion of trade. It is only recently that these bodies have started to integrate TBNRM into their agenda. This has been stimulated by a variety of factors. First are the environmental problems facing such transboundary ecosystems as Lake Victoria. The degradation of Lake Victoria as a result of its invasion by the water hyacinth and overfishing have brought into sharp focus the need to institute regional management measures. Desertification associated with land degradation and the consequent food insecurity in the Horn of Africa have given impetus to IGAD to add natural resource management to its program.

Third, the growth in international environmentalism and more specifically the evolution of conventions on biological diversity and on drought and desertification has created momentum for regional natural resource management programs. The preparatory processes and negotiations for these treaties have brought the countries of Eastern Africa more closely together to discuss and recognize their ecological linkages. For example, during negotiations of Article 5 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, countries came to appreciate how common their environmental problems are and the importance of cooperating to solve them. They also began to appreciate the simple fact that they require common management approaches and activities to manage shared ecosystems.

In addition a number of donors have taken on the role of promoting TBNRM and financing associated activities. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), GEF, SIDA, and the World Bank have given emphasis to TBNRM and have funded many TBNRM activities.

The GEF is financing or has financed a number of TBNRM projects in Eastern Africa. These include the project on “Reducing Biodiversity Loss at Cross-Border Sites in East Africa” (see the case study in this volume on Minziro-Sango Bay Forests). Other projects include “Institutional Strengthening for the Protection of East African Biodiversity (1992–96),” the “Lake Victoria Environment Management Programme (LVEMP)” (see Box 10), the Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi-Nyasa initiatives, and the Nile Basin Initiative (see Box 11).

The extent to which these efforts have contributed to the management of transboundary natural resources and the promotion of regional cooperation (either bilateral or multilateral) for environmental management in general is not easy to determine today given the relatively young age of the processes. What is, however, clear is that the projects have become the loci of organizing meetings to address the countries’ political-cum-economic relationships, as well as to enlarge their cultural linkages. LVEMP has been able to attract the interests of politicians, first perhaps of its financial portfolio and second because of the organizing and mobilizing authority of the problems it seeks to address.

Existing regional TBNRM activities face a number of limitations. The first is the absence of institutional capacity and synergy at both national and regional levels to maximize the impacts of the programs and projects. Many of the existing regional projects and programs are tied to the interests and participation of individuals without strong agency backing. Often it is difficult to acquire overall institutional support to enlarge the impact across agencies and to ensure that implementation is on track across the participating countries and institutions. The limited capacity of one country’s agency will often undermine effectiveness and efficiency with which other partners engage in and implement the project. For example initial delays in the disbursement of funds in Kenya affected the start-up of regional linkages in the GEF project on “Reducing Biodiversity Loss at Cross-Border Sites in East Africa.” In a similar way another GEF regional project on Rift Valley Lakes had start-up delays as one country needed time to examine cross-border water implications. Thus the precondition for effective TBNRM is the existence of a critical minimum capacity and similar patterns of political will within national participating agencies.

Second, the development and implementation of TBNRM projects and programs are largely learning processes. Partners are able to engage in transboundary activities on the basis of prior experiences and capacities. The more they do it the better they get at doing it. Those countries that participate in TBNRM over a longer period of time are the ones that will build up their capacity and experiences and will then be able to transfer such to new similar initiatives.

TBNRM at a regional level requires that each participating state or country be prepared to relinquish some of its sovereign rights to and for the common agenda. LVEMP has been constrained by its institutional arrangement, which fails to mobilize national sovereignty for regional implementation. As we have stated before, the program’s implementation is largely at the national level, with the regional context largely limited to socializing. There are no explicit common environment management activities being implemented by all the participating states at the same time in one locus. In addition, each country tends to apply its own approaches and works at its own pace. Indeed there is an absence of “regional culture”—a pronounced set of routines and values articulated by the three states at the same. This is demonstrated by the lack of synergy in EIA processes for controlling the water hyacinth (see Box 10), with Uganda adopting a different approach from Kenya while Tanzania remained largely passive about it.

B. National approaches to inter-country TBNRM

National initiatives toward transboundary natural resource management have been fairly limited in the Eastern Africa region. This is mainly due to the fact that most perception of national approaches to resource management are through forest and wildlife management authorities, in the case of government or gazetted forest and protected wildlife areas. These departments’ mandates only go as far as national jurisdiction permits. A national wildlife management authority cannot manage the wildlife once the animals migrate into the neighboring country as there they are under the jurisdiction of the neighboring states’ wildlife management authorities. This holds true for all forms of natural resources—be they forest resources, wildlife resources, freshwater resources in rivers or lakes, or coastal marine resources.

However, some efforts have been implemented in the management of protected wildlife areas where national wildlife management authorities come up with specific case-driven initiatives at the institutional level. In the Tsavo West–Mkomazi ecosystems, antipoaching measures are in place as a joint effort between the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) with these institutions engaged in wildlife conservation as well as wildlife disease research activities. The implementing agencies in both countries have to cooperate for an initiative such as that of antipoaching to succeed. Disease control among wildlife (and prevention of disease transmission between wildlife and pastoralist cattle) requires concerted efforts among wildlife managers especially given the migratory nature of plains species in East Africa. The Horn of Africa is not known for TBNRMAs, but we give one brief example here for the Sudan-Ethiopia border (Box 12).

The shared water resources in Lake Victoria also necessitate a transboundary management approach. Exploitation of water resources through fishing activities on the lake requires collaborative efforts among states. From historical times fishing groups have moved around different parts of the lake. This has meant that the three fisheries departments have had to collaborate in order to facilitate fishing activities, controlling destructive fishing methods such as trawling and use of wrong-size nets.

Transportation of goods and people across the lake has led to collaborative arrangements being put in place among inland water transport agencies. In this case the national railway corporations facilitate the smooth running of steamer and ferry services across the lake.

Research also plays a key role in the management of natural resources. Fisheries research institutes have had to cooperate in order to facilitate various kinds of research and experimentation exercises on the lake. Research on control methods of invasive aquatic weeds such as the water hyacinth has required a collaborative arrangement among research institutes from all three East African countries as the problem is transboundary in nature.

Up until the recent developments in the region, there were few formal institutions with the mandate to implement the management of any of the transboundary natural resources within the region. There have been some bilateral initiatives such as those between the Kenya Wildlife Service and Tanzania National Parks Authority in the control of poaching activities in the Tsavo West–Mkomazi ecosystem. Other institutional arrangements have been in the form of MOUs between departments in two or all three countries, or among research institutes.

However, with the recent ratification advancements of the East African Community Treaty, the scope for regional institutions to manage shared ecosystems has been widened and facilitated. Examples would include many nongovernmental and intergovernmental institutions: ACTS, IUCN, AWF, WWF, LVEMP, etc. The Memorandum of Understanding on the Environment may soon be implemented by the three countries. The various sector committees under the East African Community’s environment desk are set out to handle various technical aspects such as environmental standards, which, when adopted by the community shall be binding in the respective countries. This is a crucial focal point for launching transboundary initiatives.

C. International support and actors

There has been an increasing interest in the management of shared ecosystems in Eastern Africa on the part of international actors. Some of this stems from debates sparked off by proposed developments to harness some of these shared resources. There has been a significant amount of interest in shared water resources in Eastern Africa by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in conservation efforts in the Rift Valley lakes. UNDP/GEF also have interests in biodiversity conservation in forest ecosystems in the region through the Cross-Border Biodiversity Project (see the case study on Minziro-Sango Bay in this volume). Table 7 lists these GEF initiatives.

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has various programs working on natural resources within Eastern Africa. Among the transboundary resources, IUCN is engaged in the management of forest ecosystems on Mt. Elgon, an initiative that is trying to encourage and facilitate transboundary resource management at the local level.

UNDP and UNEP in a joint effort with the Dutch Royal Embassy (the UNEP/UNDP/Dutch project) are looking at environmental law and legal institutions in Africa, examining potential reform areas in environmental-related legislation. Through this initiative the management of shared resources could be harmonized through national regimes and policies in respective countries within the Eastern Africa region.

D. Intra-state transboundary programs and fragmented institutional control

In Box 2, we drew attention to the range of TBNRM mechanisms that could occur within a country. The typologies for TBNRM emphasized that the ecosystem approach also included ecosystems that crossed internal administrative borders. There are few detailed examples in the literature, but we present one case where excessive institutional fragmentation has significantly reduced conservation capacity. The last line of Table 2 mentioned the Ruaha Wildlife Conservation Area of south central Tanzania; we now describe that case in more detail.

This conservation area is centered around the large Ruaha National Park and adjacent Game Reserves (e.g., Rungwa), Game Controlled Areas, and village “open” hunting lands—all in the Iringa region. Tanzania, unlike its neighbors Kenya and Uganda (or Malawi, Zambia, or elsewhere in Southern Africa) does not have a unified wildlife sector. Responsibility is shared among several separate agencies—with different mandates, and often very different objectives and capacities. The Ruaha National Park is administered under TANAPA, a central parastatal of great authority; no extractive utilization is permitted. Game reserves are under the Government Civil Service Wildlife Division at the central level, and even though capacities are not high, tourist hunting revenues keep the system working.

Game Controlled Areas (GCA) are under the management of decentralized district officers answerable to district councils, and their capacity is very low. The center controls hunting quotas and allocations, and little revenue (20 percent of total) returns to the district. Village governments control village lands in theory, but wildlife resources on that land are controlled by central wildlife authorities—tenure is complex and a source of conflict. Lessons from community wildlife programs elsewhere (e.g., Campfire in Zimbabwe—see Griffin et al. 1999) have not yet been learned. What does this mean in practice? It means that an elephant or kudu, with a normal home range in the park, habituated and well-photographed by tourists, can in 30 kilometers of walking move through four separate wildlife mandates, and face death in a series of ways. When the animal walks across the Rungwa or Kizigo Rivers tourist hunters can seek the trophy in a relatively well-controlled quota system. Moving into the GCAs, however, brings the resident hunters to the fore—with little control of species or quotas. Meat, not trophies, is more important. Village areas in theory would have village quotas—sellable to tourists, residents, and locals alike. Feeding in cropland could also lead to an animal’s death.

This to us is not “TBNRM” or even the beginnings of ecosystem-based resource management. Unfortunately, the entrenched interests of Tanzania’s diversified sectoral system do not want change. Directors would lose jobs, boards would be dissolved, and opportunities for power and resources would be diminished. This problem needs attention. Five years ago attempts to follow Kenya and Uganda and seek a unified service failed.