6. 3. Implications for WWF and other conservation organisations.
- Enabling local researchers and village analysts to plan, implement,
manage and evaluate integrated conservation and development is
a challenging frontier for WWF and the Punjab Wildlife Department.This
will imply major reversals in roles as well as changes in organisational
culture, funding, staff skills and in practice. The points made
in Annex 3 need to be carefully considered by the Punjab Wildlife
Department and WWF in this context.
The challenge for external institutions and professionals
promoting wetland conservation in the Ucchali complex is to become
more enabling in their relationships with local communities living
in and around the lakes. In this more enabling context, outside
organisations such as WWF could usefully facilitate community
wetland management by providing:
- Support for the claiming by communities of legal rights to make
use of natural resources in and around wetlands
- Assistance in developing national legal and policy frameworks
that support tenure and usufruct rights, equitable distribution
of benefits, and local management structures.
- Space and incentives for pragmatic approaches that build on
indigenous systems of local knowledge, natural resource use and
locally recognised decision making structures and inititiatives.
- Strong commitment to the institutionalisation of participatory
approaches and methods in conservation through the transformation
of formal sector organisations and NGOs into enabling institutions
- Flexible, field based training programmes in participatory
methodologies for professional staff, an organisational culture
in which it is safe to experiment and learn from mistakes, and
appropriate rewards and incentives to encourage professional reorientation
away from top down conservation interventions
- Incentives for collaboration between government (local and national
departments), NGOs and local communities in joint wetland management
schemes, research and the development of appropriate technologies
and processes e.g. identification of suitable salt tolerant
grasses with the Pakistan Agricultural Research Institute; villagers'
selection of suitable of fodder and fuel wood tree species for
social forestry around Ucchali lake with the Pakistan Forest Institute.
The preparation of wetland management plans should be the beginning
of a long partnership between external institutions and local
communities. The most difficult and complex task will be implementing
the wetland management plan by assisting communities to establish
or strengthen local institutions and providing them with the required
legal, technical and scientific tools. To be sustainable, the
whole process should empower local communities to manage natural
resources in the context of modern realities.
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