In the Southern African region significant wildlife and other natural resources are frequently situated on either side of one or more international boundaries. At the same time, communities living within these border areas have tended to be remote from national centres and thus marginalized by national development processes.
The problem analysis of the area benefitted from a DSS application providing an integrated ecosystem approach and resulting in the development of a holistic answer to the challenges of development in the transfrontier area.
Partnership: Funding: Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development
Duration: 2009 - 2014. Total budget: 5.566.988,00 Euro.
Target area: Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP): Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
PROGES contribution: methods, tools and expertise for applying an integrated ecosystem approach and implementation of a decision support system to provide a holistic answer to the challenges of development in the transfrontier area (PROGES budget: 249.262,00 Euro).
Overview
The project fostered trans-national collaboration and co-operation among the Parties facilitating effective ecosystem management in the Transfrontier Conservation Area and supporting an integrated planning process between the countries involved. Key principles of the project included an integrated approach to natural resource management; a participatory approach to resource inventory and planning; and the linking of natural resource management with development planning based on sound information. Pulling together the technical expertise and the institutions operating in the transboundary area the project was able to make an effective use of a DSS tool to identify sustainable and appropriate development frameworks and strategies, focusing on the tourism and livestock sectors.
Main Activities
The project provided strong support to consolidating and developing new methodologies for improving data collection and data management. In order to achieve this, the project supported the consolidation and development of new methodologies for improving data collection and data management. A key strategy for achieving this was the development and application of a systemic tool for planning purposes in the form of a DSS, the development of which was carried out in conjunction with PROGES Consulting and the University of Sapienza, Rome. The DSS was based on the use of objective data in a systemic framework analysis where the system is seen not as overlapping layers of different sectors such as the society, the economy and the environment, but more in terms of the interactions, feedbacks and loops that each system has on the others. This provides a better understanding of the overall system leading to more integrated and holistic planning.
The DSS was tailored to and made user friendly in order to support non-technical decision makers to access data and information relevant for their planning and decision-making. It was based around a graphical and spatial representation of the system of interest and provided a simple platform for the graphical representation of the key elements of the system and a tool for depicting and, through linking to spatial databases, analysing interactions between different system components. It also enabled presentation of results in a visual form either as graphics or in the form of maps, in a manner that non-technical people can easily relate to.
The DSS was developed and built up in a participatory manner; captured and incorporated the best available information about the system; provided a tool for integrating data from different sources and integrating the different forms of interactions between different elements of the system; so, providing a holistic analysis and thus serving to bring and apply the best available scientific data in the decision-making process.
The project enhanced the institutional and technical cooperation among the different institutions operating in the transfrontier park. Sharing information and knowledge was a critical area to ensure suitable planning to take place based on data and objective information. The project contributed toward an integrated planning and building a shared vision about the priorities and the destiny of the natural environment shaping the transfrontier area. This activity was mainly achieved relying on the DSS to incorporate and share information across a varied range of institutions dealing with technical planning and long-term management.
The DSS was used by the project and the main partner institutions of the region to gather a better understanding of the problems underlying the management of the transfrontier area, and to support the planning of the actions to be implemented by local institutions to promote the sustainable use of resources to the benefit of local populations. By using objective data from the DSS, the project supported the definition of an integrated planning for the area. The DSS supported the identification of the interventions that the project supported to benefit livelihoods of the population living in the transfrontier area. In this regard, two major interventions stand out for their transboundary impact: management of livestock movement and transboundary tourism.
Main Outcomes
The DSS was tailored to and made user friendly in order to support non-technical decision makers to access data and information relevant for their planning and decision-making.
The DSS was based on the following main sectors:
• General Framework
• Crops
• Wildlife
• Livestock
• Rangelands
Based on the identified sectors simple indicators were identified to describe the state and trend of the components constituting each sector, and to form a basis for subsequent monitoring of the state of each component. All indicators were linked to a spatial unit such as village, ward, district, province, country or region, so that these could be represented in map form.
Existing data for the main indicators were assembled, and where necessary gathered. This entailed a high level of collaboration, particularly with national and district level stakeholders in each of the three countries. The result was the rapid development of large and complex databases relating to different aspects of the system.
With the support of the data gathered and based on the systems identified a participatory work, involving technical staff operating in the different institutions assigned to the management of transboundary resources, was carried out. A series of cause-effect analyses, these comprising rigorous structured analyses as a means to identify possible interventions in support of natural resource management, were carried out ranking the proposed different interventions in terms of local priorities. This provided a sound and integrated guidance in the selection of potential project ground activities that can provide benefits and enhance livelihood for local communities. The selected ground activities were discussed with decision makers of the identified institutions to prioritize those key activities that, based on the available budget and offering the best synergies and potential outcomes, should be implemented locally.
Although the selected activities comprise standard development actions, the intention was that rather than achieve stand-alone results these should be catalytic of a wider sustained development process.
There are two areas where the project action was vital to tackle the challenges and harvest the opportunities of transboundary resource use and management. One was the set-up of institutional and technical cooperation among the different institutions operating in the transfrontier area that, using objective data from the DSS, were able to define a more integrated planning. The second area is more on the practical implementation of the interventions identified with the support of the DSS to benefit livelihoods of the population living in the transfrontier area through the sustainable use of resources.