Over the last decade the things have changed drastically in the conservation world. Impoverished populations bordering the limited resources of a reserve have grown dramatically, funding has dried up, and climate change is an existential threat. Meeting these challenges has required an integrated and proactive approach that leads to projects that are audacious, innovative, resilient, and sustainable.
The Alliance
Our approach is different as we form alliances with like minded, values driven, organisations and experts to ensure that each pillar has a champion and decisions can be made with the best interest of the whole, not just the parts. At its most basic the alliance has an environmental organisation (Ubuntu Wildlife Trust), a community organisations (AL-Org), and a social business (Impact4A) working together on projects. For each project we then bring in other partners or collaborators, when required, to represent any additional roles or expertise. This prevents projects being conducted within silos and that each pillar of sustainability is equally accounted for.
This has further benefits of driving creativity through different approaches and ideas, shared expertise, shared resources, shared funding, and constructive debates from different perspectives to drive change in the most sustainable and effective direction possible. This allows for smaller teams at lower overheads to do greater work, meaning more funding for the projects.
The People
However, sustainability does not work without the active involvement of the people living within the area. The Environmental, Social, and Economic pillars must also be informed by Culture and must be needs driven. We believe that a cross section of the community should have active involvement and equal say within the power structures on projects that have any impact on their lives. Projects should ideally also have long lasting sustainable benefits to the community – motivated by the needs and the wants of the people – with a long term impacts vision as part of its structure.
The projects themselves need to follow this pathway to sustainability. As the environmental focused partner, we drive the importance of habitat restoration and protection, healthy soils, ecosystem services, carbon sequestration, local climate resilience, rangeland management, and regenerative agriculture. But we do this in conjunction with our partners from the other pillars.
The Approach
We believe in an all encompassing approach that is based on a systems view of the three Pillars of Sustainability and a broader view of the One Health concept as described by the United Nations and associated organisations. These concepts neatly align with the ancient African philosophy of Ubuntu. In each project we aim to achieve as many of the UN Sustainability Development Goals (SDG’s) as possible.