African Biodiversity Network/The Gaia Foundation

SwedBio supports The African Biodiversity Network (ABN) through the organisation The Gaia Foundation. ABN is an informal network growing since 1996 that aims to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, and protect local communities and ecosystem services in Africa. It seeks to achieve this through biodiversity-related rights, policy and legislation, and supporting viable ways forward for diversity based livelihood systems. The ABN was created out of the perceived need to strengthen Africa's participation and capacity at key international fora and to defend its interests in equitable and sustainable management of biodiversity. Since its origin, the ABN has combined activities at the international, regional and national levels, and strengthening linkages with local and community-level initiatives.

The ABN aims to increase African civil society and government commitment to the protection of biodiversity and diverse cultural livelihoods through the development and implementation of related policy, legislation and practice. This is being done by capacity building, research and sharing of information, to catalyse action in a growing number of countries in Africa.

The Gaia Foundation is an international non-profit organisation (NGO), based in the UK. Its purpose is to work with those protecting and enhancing biological and cultural diversity, ecosystem services and governance systems that will ensure intergenerational equity. The Gaia Foundation (Gaia) has played a key role in the development of the ABN, through the provision of coordination facilities, information and research, support to key partner organisations in Africa, strengthening international alliances, fundraising, capacity building and providing a European base/embassy for the network.

SwedBio currently supports ABN through The Gaia Foundation for the project "Strengthening the African Biodiversity Network and its International Alliances; Developing and Implementing Biodiversity-Related Policy, Legislation and Practice in Africa" during January 2004 to December 2007.

Specific objectives of this programme are:
1. Network development: to consolidate and expand a broad based, active and informed network of concerned Africans engaged in biodiversity issues and common strategies.

2. Capacity building: to build capacity in Africa to protect biodiversity through promoting sustainable practices.

3. Catalysing wider action: to catalyse African civil society and government to take action that will protect and enhance biodiversity, diversity based livelihoods, and ecosystem services.

During the programme period the Network Development and a Rapid Response Fund for biodiversity initiatives will also be developed further. The fund has been developed to enable small grants (seed money) to be made quickly available for biodiversity related activities, to a range of NGOs or projects across different regions.

Outcomes so far:
During 2004, the ABN/Gaia implemented activities where key leaders from NGOs and CBOs participated in innovative and community based learning processes, focussing on initiatives that alleviate poverty and restore ecosystem services. An important conclusion drawn by ABN/Gaia from the project activities so far is that community rights and responsibilities in relation to biodiversity and traditional environmental governance systems are inseparable. Similar to local and indigenous communities elsewhere in the world, Africa's traditional environmental knowledge and practices are centred on enhancing biodiversity and retaining ecological integrity, from generation to generation. The focus of this customary ecological knowledge and practice is to maintain a healthy balance between the needs of the human community and the 'environment'. However, these ecological traditions have been severely eroded through the colonial process. Memoirs of settlers give numerous accounts of the richness and abundance of nature they found on arrival in Africa. In order to regenerate this biodiversity, protect ecosystem services and reduce poverty, ABN / Gaia consider it is much more efficient to build on Africa's traditional ecological practices than to impose external environmental ideas and values- to revive and enhance an African, endogenous response to poverty, environmental degradation, and good governance.

Here you can find links to summaries of the work in two of ABN's four thematic areas:

"Strengthening Cultural Biodiversity Practices for Sustaining Ecosystem Services"
and
"Community Ecological Governance"