NatureUganda: News & Views


Communities empowered in Biodiversity Conservation
	Biodiversity conservation is a human endeavor: initiated by humans, designed by humans, and intended to modify human behavior to achieve a socially desired objective. (Mascia et al. 2003) Wetlands conservation comes with opportunity costs, both economic and social. But development and conservation are not necessarily tradeoffs, and the two can co-exist as objectives to provide long-term benefits for communities.
	In September 2011, *Nature*Uganda led a team including a district environment officer, a district wetlands officer and members of Conserve Uganda to a sensitization exercise for communities in Kapir and Magoro about sustainable fishing and wetland edge gardening respectively. The training aimed at raising awareness about wetland biodiversity values and ensuring that better attitudes and practices towards biodiversity conservation are achieved. The team found that the communities were eager to learn more about conservation and were very enthusiastic about the environment.		NU file photo: Participants at Kapir, Ngora district during the community sensitization about sustainable fishing.
		They also realized that it only takes training to save our resources before they are completely cleared by the communities that depend on them. The local communities that were trained have been able to oppose the conventional view that wetlands are simply a source of income through selling the wetland resources. That is the core of this approach – training the communities to learn the long-term benefits of conserving natural resources. Generally, it is believed that communities that directly depend on these resources will conserve them more compared to communities
	NU file photo: Magoro community members, Katakwi district during the sensitization about wetland edge gardening.
	that don’t directly depend on. The facilitator from *Nature*Uganda asked the communities to be involved in wetland conservation because they stood to gain the most compared to others.