Sustainable wildlife management

The European Commission held on 6th September 2021 an onsite-only event titled “Sustainable wildlife management: the food, biodiversity and health nexus”. The Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme focuses on wildlife use by local communities in the perspective of food security in a One Health approach.

The SWM side event, held at the European Union Pavilion, illustrated the specificities of the SWM Programme as a unique large scale programme focusing on wildlife uses, and presented flagship achievements and innovations so far, including its contributions to building back forward in a post-COVID-19 world. The side event involved speakers and representatives from the donors (Organisation of Africa, Caribbean and Pacific States, and the European Union) and technical partners (FAO, CIFOR, CIRAD, and WCS). More information about the SWM Programme is available here.

Mr. Arnaud Goessens, Senior Manager at WCS EU presenting at the SWM event

Mr. Arnaud Goessens, Senior Manager at WCS EU and WCS focal point in the SWM Programme legal and institutional result team (R1) presented how leveraging different sources of laws can help secure sustainable community-based wildlife management. The R1 team developed a toolkit for comprehensive cross-sectoral legal analysis of all laws that govern the sustainable management of wildlife. This toolkit includes 5 legal diagnostic tools and relevant associated methodologies. Those are being used by nearly thirty national experts of different disciplines (including lawyers, anthropologists, and sociologists) across all the thirteen countries where the Programme operates, to develop comprehensive legal baseline studies. 

The legal analysis resulting from the use of these tools have been shared with government counterparts, in order to gather their contributions and feedbacks. This step has allowed consolidating findings into dedicated Country Legal Profiles that are being used to further raise awareness of officials and other stakeholders on gaps and weaknesses of sector specific legislation. For two countries where the programme operates, namely Madagascar and Zimbabwe, those legal Country profiles have also been displayed into a Legal-Hub, which is a public and user-friendly section of the Sustainable Wildlife Management Programme web Portal. 

The Legal-Hub contains information that will be valuable for all development actors as well as for scientists, private companies, policy makers, and civil society. The aim is to provide a single and easy access point to legal texts and analysis that will increase public awareness and encourage informed and participative law reform processes to improve sustainable wildlife management. 

Speakers

Welcome – Mr. Philippe MAYAUX, Team Leader Biodiversity, DG INTPA, European Commission

Introduction – Ms. Cristelle Pratt, Assistant Secretary-General Environment & Climate Action, OACPS

Moderator – Ms. Cindy CÔTÉ-ANDREETTI, Communication Advisor, SWM Programme, FAO

Panelists

• Dr. Sandra RATIARISON, Forestry officer - Regional Coordinator, SWM Programme, FAO
• Ms. Nathalie Van Vliet, Guyana site coordinator, Representative of the SoS team, CIFOR
• Mr. Arnaud GOESSENS, Senior Manager, EU Policy,  WCS
• Mr. Alain BILLAND, Directeur, Impact Marketing de la Science,  CIRAD