At Care for Nature, we believe that we can’t conserve Nature without improving livelihoods of host communities who depend on the same ecosystem for their survival; that is why we put people at the forefront of our conservation strategies. We believe that we must work hard to improve human livelihoods, empower local people and improve biodiversity productivity if we are to successfully manage preservation of the threatened ecosystems.
We appreciate that people are an integral part of the ecosystems as they deeply depend on nature for their food, fuel, water and medicine. Many traditional agricultural, forest management and cultural practices have evolved in harmony with nature and are based on a wealth of indigenous and local knowledge. But changing circumstances including high population growth rate and climate change have increased pressure on nature and decreased the capability of traditional livelihoods strategies. Host communities, while making a living and often struggling to survive, put pressure on environment through clearing up forest lands for cultivation, overgraze grasslands, and encroach protected areas and wetlands. At Care for Nature, we are building strategies to work in partnership with host communities to achieve effective, long-term nature conservation while improving the dignity of the host communities.
The rural and poor communities suffer the most when ecosystem decline as they directly depend on ecosystems for their immediate survival. This is why our conservation approach incorporate in measures to support their livelihoods. We support poor and marginalized communities like the Ik, Batwa, rural women to sustainably benefit from protecting Nature. We believe that man can sustainably harvest Nature’s goods and services while recognising its production rate and the re-forming capacity of each species. We believe that man can carefully improve nature’s value if we choose to live responsibly and this is the basis our alternative livelihoods.