World Wildlife Fund

Conservation Gives People a Future
By Phillip Goeltenboth

The poorest of the world's poor live on the edge of survival every day with many of them entirely dependent on natural resources for food, health, shelter and livelihoods. While poverty leads people to use nature, it also forces them to abuse it. Even those who know this often have no choice. When your children are dying from hunger, the only thing that matters is finding away to feed them.

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries on the poorest continent in the world. The people struggle to get from one day to the next. The Zambeze River is drying up as Africa's largest dams block the natural flow. Mangrove deltas are dying, and industrial trawlers destroy the sea grass beds. Local fishermen who once sold or traded their catch for income no longer bring home enough to feed their own families.

But there is hope, and progress, in the kinds of conservation solutions that WWF has brought to the area.

Salmo Jakubu is a chief in the town of Ibo on Ibo Island, the main island of the archipelago included in Quirimbas National Park.
© WWF

Solving both sides of the problem. Protecting critically threatened marine life is the first step to solving some of the problems in Coastal East Africa. Unless we do, human life will fail as well. Our study of marine ecosystems along the coast helped us determine where spawning occurs. By saving the areas where currents take the delicate fish eggs, we can benefit marine life in other areas all along the coast.

To create a sustainable future, we must help people find ways to make a living that do not deplete their precious natural resources in the first place. We are teaching communities about conservation, and supporting them with the tools and skills to practice it. Ecotourism and the jobs and income it provides, sustainable agriculture, and the creation of markets for local crafts: All are part of WWF's comprehensive effort that is having remarkable success in Coastal East Africa.

End with the beginning. Each place where we work is different, and we must always be prepared to invent solutions to problems as we encounter them. One thing, though, is inevitably the same. We begin our work with an exit strategy - to empower local communities to take over the management of their own resources and their own lives. Our job is to create a system that they can run, a way for them to create their own prosperous future. In the end, that's the only lasting solution.

WWF IN COASTAL EAST AFRICA :
THE RESULTS ARE EXTRAORDINARY

A young fisherman in Tanzania's Mafia Island Marine Reserve, created and managed with the support of WWF.
© WWF

WWF facilitated the creation of Quirimbas National Park, and extended the reserve into what is the largest marine protected area in the Indian Ocean and Africa.

FOOD AND HEALTH The marine protected areas produce more and bigger fish, provide much-needed income and food for locals, and form the basis for sustainable fisheries.

With improved conditions, farmers have had a full harvest for the first time-corn, vegetables and beans for protein. The bloated bellies of young children, caused by malnutrition but in many places thought to be a normal stage of development, are disappearing.

PROSPERITY Quirimbas National Park is in Cabo Delgado, once the most isolated and poorest province in Mozambique. It now has the country's highest growth rate, with income that has tripled over the last three years, thanks to the park.

In Tanzania WWF has helped to transfer ownership of wildlife to local communities, and is helping them establish ecotourism as a source of income.

EDUCATION WWF supports a rangers' school, where local men can train to be come guards in the new protected areas.

News of the success in Quirimbas has traveled to other communities, inspiring them to ask WWF to help them set up their own marine protected areas.