African Biodiversity Network (ABN)

From TrustAfrica wiki - African Regional Organizations

ABN Network Administrator
Simon Mitambo
ABN Secretariat, Kenya
Tel: Office: +254 6722373
Mobile: +254 733 523 80
Email: smitambo@africanbiodiversity.org; smitambo@yahoo.com

Community Resilience Coordinator
Gathuru Mburu
Tel: Office: +254 6722373
Mobile: +254-722 250 55
Email: mburu@africanbiodiversity.org; gathurum@yahoo.com

Advocacy Coordinator
Anne Wanjiku
Tel: Office: +254 6722373
Email: annenjiku@yahoo.com

Website: http://www.africanbiodiversity.org

Description

The African Biodiversity Network (ABN) was initiated in 1996 to protect African biological and cultural diversity, and promote culturally appropriate and ecologically sound development on the continent. Formally established in 2002, the ABN has now grown into a network with approximately 36 members and partners ranging from small community-based organisations (CBOs) to large coalitions of CBOs and non-government organisations (NGOs) covering 12 African countries.

ABN’s vision for Africa is of vibrant and resilient communities rooted in their own biological, cultural, and spiritual diversity, governing their own lives and livelihoods, in harmony with healthy ecosystems. Its purpose is to ignite and nurture a growing African network of individuals and organisations working passionately from local to global level, with the capacity to resist harmful developments and to influence and implement policies and practices that promote recognition and respect for people and nature.

More specifically, The ABN seeks to:

• Consolidate and expand an active and informed network of concerned Africans engaged in biodiversity-related issues on the ground.
  
• Increase local and national capacity in Africa to protect biodiversity and community rights, and promote sustainable ecological practices.
  
• Catalyse African civil society and government to take action that will protect and enhance biodiversity and local livelihoods, accountable local and national governance, and control that respects our responsibility to past, present, and future generations of all life.

Four inter-related thematic areas provide the focus for ABN activities:

(1) Seed Security is the basis of food sovereignty and a critical factor in preventing dependency, vulnerability, poverty, hunger and famine. ABN is piloting a programme to strengthen the capacity of communities to maintain their agricultural diversity and sustainability through conservation and use of their own indigenous seed varieties.. We are working together to ensure that regional and national policies enable seed security.

(2) Genetic Engineering, Intellectual Property Rights, and Agrofuels are examples of inventions to promote industrial agriculture and other globalisation policies. Genetic Engineering (GE) erodes seed security and farmer independence, as well as impacting negatively on biodiversity. ABN seeks to strengthen the capacity of civil society, small-holder farmers, consumers and other stakeholders in African countries to lobby for a seed diverse and GE free Africa.

(3) Cultural Biodiversity is concerned with the knowledge and customary practices embedded in African cultures that enhance and protect biodiversity and community wellbeing. This knowledge is being lost to western education. The ABN targets young people and schools to rebuild and recuperate the relationship between the youth and elders to ensure that the new generation values their cultural knowledge and puts it into practice.

(4) Community Ecological Governance addresses local and indigenous governance systems, norms and practices that have evolved to secure the integrity of local biodiversity, livelihood options, and community cohesion. These are increasingly affected by threats to community land rights, privatization of water, biodiversity, and the disregard of local and indigenous knowledge in maintaining a balance between human beings and the wider Earth community. ABN supports the recuperation, strengthening and recognition of community ecological governance systems.

Track Record

The success of the ABN in network development, capacity building and catalysing action can be seen in the following areas:

1. Network development

• Network growth: Partner organisations are now active and linked in 10 countries: Benin, Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda.
• Nurturing African Organizations: Seven local NGOs have been born out of support and collaboration with the ABN, to focus on areas that no other NGOs in-country are working on at the time. These include: Institute of Sustainable Development (ISD) in Ethiopia; Biowatch in South Africa; Centre for Development Initiatives (CDI) in Uganda; Participatory Ecological Land Use and Management Kenya (PELUM); Porini Trust and Institute for Culture and Ecology (ICE) in Kenya; Movement for Ecological Learning and Community Action (MELCA), and Eco Yeshemachoch Mahiber (ECOYM) both in Ethiopia.
• Long-term core funding: The ABN has successfully raised funds for core support for the network from a broad range of funders. This has allowed the initiation of the network itself as well as support for its continued development: Funders include: SwedBio, Comic Relief, Dutch Biodiversity Fund, African Women’s Development Fund, Restore-UK, Hivos, European Commission and SDC.
• Regional linking: The ABN has supported regional collaboration between partner organisations in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. These partner organisations have developed regional strategies and action plans based on an ABN developed campaign; the “Seed-diverse and GE-free Africa”.
• Rigorous monitoring and evaluation: The ABN has developed an alternative monitoring and evaluation system that is easy to use, relevant to its partners and periodically reviewed to ensure its usefulness. It is successfully being used to assess whether the network is achieving its objectives.
• Influencing international policy: On average, 4 ABN partners per year have been supported to attend and directly input into negotiations at international fora. Most notably, the CBD meetings 2004 (Malaysia), 2005 (Canada), 2006 (Brazil), and the IUCN World Congress (Spain) in 2008.

2. Capacity Building

• Baseline studies: Since 2002, the ABN has supported 21 case studies on the four thematic areas, across 12 African countries. Such studies have been fundamental for building motivation and capacity of NGOs and CBOs to monitor developments and to advocate on issues of concern.
  
• Training: Since 2002, the ABN has supported 30 training activities with an average of 20 people per event. This has taken the form of workshops, courses, and learning exchanges covering fundraising; proposal writing and financial management; sustainable agriculture; genetic engineering; globalization; agrofuels; and participatory methodologies (including ecological mapping). To date an estimated 100 people have been supported to visit programmes that are successfully promoting and protecting biodiversity and sustainable livelihoods. This includes learning exchanges in Botswana, Colombian Amazon and India. Such training has created the foundations for further development of the network and catalyzing wider action.
  
• Information sharing and dissemination: The ABN has disseminated information to a broader audience through periodic newsletters, mail outs, briefings and resource materials. To date the ABN has produced 8 newsletters, 300 mail-outs and briefings (distributed to 300 addresses), and sent 250 resource materials to key ABN learning centres.

3. Catalyzing Wider Action

• Funding: The Microprojects Fund has been successfully used to encourage innovation, especially pioneering intergenerational learning processes and endogenous methodologies. To date approximately 100 initiatives have been supported by the Microprojects Fund since 2002.
  
• Influencing policy: The ABN drafted model laws for the Protection of Local Communities and Farmers, and on Access to Biological Resources, which were later endorsed by the African Union.
  
• Coalition building: Coalitions calling for GE moratoriums have been formed by ABN country partners in 6 countries: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia and South Africa. These coalitions are a direct result of ABN capacity building activities such as baseline studies, multi-stakeholder workshops and the provision of ongoing networking, fundraising and facilities to support their continued growth.
  
• Supporting innovative processes: Cultural Biodiversity clubs are now active in 100 schools across Ethiopia, Kenya, Northern Ghana and northern South Africa, facilitating the intergenerational transfer of traditional ecological knowledge. This has been facilitated through the organisation of annual cultural biodiversity celebration. In Ethiopia, approximately 10,000 people have attended each year including government officials, civil society groups and the wider public.
  
• Local consultation of policy frameworks: The ABN supported consultation and participation by local communities in Kenya on the national review of the Kenyan Constitution. The aim was to strengthen the section on environment, and to include a chapter on culture and community governance. Although the constitution was rejected in the referendum in 2005, the ABN is continuing to monitor the situation to ensure local community input gained during this process is not lost.

Challenges

During the last decade, neo-liberal economic development policies have spread across Africa, leading to increasing inequality and poverty. Globally, human induced climate change has become ever more visible as severe weather (floods, cyclones and drought) have wrought havoc on people and nature. In the midst of these changes many African rural communities are struggling to protect their livelihoods and their customary rights to use and control their territories.

Historically, indigenous knowledge and practices in rural African communities promoted a balanced use of natural resources so that a healthy ecosystem was maintained. These traditional practices protect microclimates and ensure that such areas have more resilience in the face of climate change. However these African communities, which have maintained some of their traditional ecological practices are under ever-greater threat from economic “development” and investment projects.

The beginning of the 21st century has seen a rapid spread of global values that have focused on economic growth, consumption and individualism. This economic model of development drives land privatisation, commoditisation of all aspects of life, and industrialised agricultural production systems that are heavily dependent on chemicals and corporate control. More recently, there has been a huge surge in land grabbing for growing agro-fuels, one of the perceived solutions to climate change. These trends are often at odds with African values of the common good, and those rooted in traditional cultures that encourage people to show some collective responsibility for their natural environment.

These changes are disconnecting people from their primary sources of livelihood and resilience; their environment, culture, values and community cohesion. People’s ability and right to meet their needs individually or collectively outside of a globalised market economy is being eroded. The ability of rural communities to be self-sufficient and to grow their own food is being taken away as seed, knowledge, land, water, and biodiversity are privatised and local control is lost. Biodiversity and local ecosystems is being destroyed as traditional values, norms and practices for their protection are undermined by governments across Africa, which give precedence to laws that protect private and corporate interests rather than customary laws, traditional knowledge and community rights that evolved to protect and maintain healthy ecosystems and communities.

Increasing climate instability is also a growing challenge to the African continent. It is now widely recognized that Africa will be especially hard hit by climate changes, and scientists are warning that the most critical and urgent need is to assist Africa with adaptation strategies.

Opportunities

Firstly, there is increasing recognition of the rights of local and indigenous peoples, their ecological governance systems, and the contributions that their knowledge and practices can make to find the most appropriate solutions to challenges such as climate change and food insecurity. For example, communities best equipped to adapt to climatic instabilities and extremes, are those with a wide diversity of crops and land use practices, and associated traditional ecological knowledge.

Secondly, the rising number of extreme weather events has increased the debate among people everywhere about the effects of human activity on the environment, and how changes in the environment are affecting the climate. As environmental awareness increases, spaces to speak about biodiversity and traditional systems for its protection have widened. Funding opportunities to identify, support, and communicate alternative solutions that promote human and ecological wellbeing have increased. In addition, the recent global financial crisis has caused widespread questioning of the sustainability and fairness of free market global capitalism resulting in greater consideration of alternatives.

Thirdly, within Africa there are a growing number of networks collaborating and forming alliances on issues related to promotion and protection of the wellbeing of people and nature. Working together, these networks are becoming strong advocates for change, providing opportunities to raise the profile of issues of common concern from African communities. Many of these networks have links with partners in other parts of the world and access to information, strategies, and support to raise African voices.

The current crises in the world financial systems, the large fluctuations in food and oil prices, the land grab by rich countries to safeguard their food supply, and growing evidence of climate change, challenge the economic system and provide an opportunity for alternatives that are more just for people and nature. These conditions also provide opportunities to challenge the solutions proposed to perpetuate this failing economic model, such as genetic engineering, high input chemical agriculture and large-scale agro-fuels investment.

This is what has inspired ABN to prioritize working with Africa’s marginalized and threatened rural communities — so that they are able to build constituencies at national and regional levels. They can thereby advocate to exercise their rights and responsibilities as African citizens, according to their own priorities and have their voices heard. In this way a movement to foster a critical mass for change can be built.