Breaking the vicious cycle of poverty and environmental degradation in Africa

"Witnessing the extreme poverty in remote parts of Africa can make you feel sad and powerless until you realize how little it takes to change these people's lives fundamentally in sustainable ways" (John Legend)

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Conserve Africa is grateful for the support of The World Justice Project

Conserve Africa (CA) is a UK-based registered charity that aims to promote sustainable development through development education, public awareness, capacity building and the relief of poverty and the environment of the conditions of life in socially and economically disadvantaged communities. CA recognises that these poor communities depend solely on available local natural resources and ecosystems for their survival and that poverty reduction agenda should take into account the growing interrelationship and interdependence between the environment, natural resource and poverty.

Natural Resource Management

We aim to support local communities to sustainably manage their natural resource base through a combination of modern and traditional knowledge, technologies and practices. This include strengthening the local communities' capacity to conserve and manage their natural resource base, training and awareness raising on sustainable land-use systems; securing rights to land, empowering local communities to cope with drought and the harsh African climate. We will organise projects that aims to integrate indigenous knowledge practices and innovations into conservation and sustainable use and management of natural resources.

Wildlife, Forests and Ecotourism

We participate in international and community campaigns and actions (e.g. education, training, research, documentation, community work) to save endangered species from commercial exploitation, habitat destruction, and cruelty. We work with communities to conserve and protect endangered wildlife and ecosystems through grassroots projects and through ecotourism that contributes to promoting sustainable local development and generating benefits for the poor.

Health, Safe Water and Sanitation

We aim to improve sustainable access to clean water and adequate sanitation - particularly the Millennium Development Goal for Water and the equivalent target for sanitation in schools and communities; protecting natural water resources and raising awareness about hygiene and sanitation in schools and villages; and support preventive measures to reduce environmental-related diseases such as waterborne diseases, acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea, measles, malaria, HIV infections and malnutrition, etc.

Climate Change

We aim to empower and help poor communities to act on global climate change challenges through the application of local solutions that generate local benefits including home-grown technologies and practices such as: energy saving, use of solar energy and natural resource development in drought prone areas. We will work with other stakeholders to highlight the potential impact of the current and projected climate changes on African agriculture and to identify ways and means to adapt and mitigate its detrimental impact, including the integration of local traditional and indigenous knowledge in climate change mitigation programmes.

Development Education and Advocacy

Conserve Africa Now We will organise or participate in international campaigning and development education activities to advance the cause of the environment and social justice by highlighting the interlinks between poverty and the environment, and the achievement of the environment and sustainable development aspects of the Millennium Development Goals. We will organise campaign and lobbying work in UK to increasing public awareness and understanding of the realities of African development challenges to mobilise development assistance to facilitate the changes required to promote greater justice.

Please Support Our Work

Without donations from supporters our work would not be possible, and every penny we are given is a great help towards our work.

You can make an Online Donation or by making a cheque or postal order payable to Conserve Africa.

Your donation can make a real difference to the lives of the poorest communities in Africa.

We can assure you that whatever you donate will be put to good use immediately; and that we will use your money as efficiently as possible.

Registered Charity No: 1098921

Your donation will support our efforts to help poor communities to lift themselves and their families out of poverty and hunger through sustainable use of natural resource that increases in farm productivity, food security and incomes.

The following are example of projects that can be supported by your donation:

Education and awareness raising about unsustainable resource use and help communities to find alternatives;
Promoting natural resource-based income generating activities for example, bee-keeping, carpentry, priority high-value agroforestry tree species , ecotourism, sustainable timber harvesting, and fish farming, and the marketing of their produce;
Promoting wild plant foods which can contribute substantially to household food and livelihood security for communities ( e.g cultivation of indigenous fruit and medicinal trees in home gardens, schools and communities.);
Undertaking skills training for farmers and extension workers;
Organising local and international campaign against poaching of wild animals;
Organising community education and awareness about the importance of clean water, management and protection of water resources;
Clean water, sanitation and hygiene education in schools;
Enabling local people to have access to solar lighting and also providing the opportunity for an enabling environment for school going children to study at home using solar electricity; for rural health centres and water supply;
Collection, propagation and conservation of important wild species, with emphasis on economic, endemic and endangered species;
Tree planting and awareness raising about the importance of tropical forests in reducing global warming.

Environmental Justice in Africa

As the international community continues to struggle with issues of climate change and economic crises, it becomes increasingly clear that environmental protection - in both developed and developing nations - is impossible without the supporting framework of the rule of law and good governance. Moreover, a growing world population, especially in developing countries, will place ever greater strains on limited resources of land and water. Effective rule of law can help to mitigate seemingly inevitable conflicts.

The World Justice Project (WJP)' s Environmental Justice program is supporting Conserve Africa to advance Environmental Justice in Africa through the enforcement of national and international environmental protection standards at the local level.

The project being supported by WJP will provide capacity building through training and information dissemination in a multidisciplinary context and use the program as a consultative process for either strengthening existing laws or identifying new ones. The project activities will use the rationale for integrating SD and human rights in law to achieve the MDGs and to reduce poverty. Participants will be better aware of the role of the judiciary in environmental matters, of the existing opportunities in environmental law, as well as of the constraints they face for shaping environmental jurisprudence and for campaigning for environmental justice in the country and at the regional level. The project will emphasize the importance of environmental law to the sustainable future of Africa. The project will aim at encouraging changes in policies, practices and ideas; and will increase leaders' awareness of the national law relating to the environment and their responsibility under that law. The project will result in the creation of the International Network for environmental Justice in Africa (INEJA). For more information about the network, please visit: www.ineja.org

For more information, please contact us at: ineja@conserveafrica.org.uk