The Albertine Rift is an incredibly important region for global conservation, harboring more species of vertebrates than any other region on the African continent. It shelters more than half of continental Africa’s bird species and nearly 40 percent of its mammal species. There are more endemic mammals, birds, and amphibians found in the Rift than at any other site in continental Africa. However, the problems of high population density, few alternative economic opportunities, and weak natural resources governance are becoming acute and threaten biodiversity assets by causing deforestation, unsustainable forest management, and habitat loss. Unless these problems are addressed, continued over-harvesting of natural resources will further erode biodiversity assets, reduce productivity of the natural resource base, and reduce the potential economic returns to communities.

With the goal of reducing threats to biodiversity in the Uganda portion of the Rift, while sustainably and equitably integrating the region’s economy and people into the global economy, DAI PRIME/West staff used three approaches that systematically aimed to bring biodiversity conservation/natural resource management and economic development together into a practical and sustainable model. These approaches included landscape analysis, community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), and competitiveness.

The impact of PRIME/West lay not in the soundness or application of these individual approaches but in their creative combinations that yielded sustainable solutions in participation with local partners. Thus, landscape principles drove the analyses and informed program participants on the productive potential—both economic and ecological—of the land. The CBNRM approach provided communities with use-rights of the natural resources concerned, along with the ability to decide when and how to use those resources. The competitiveness approach turned economic and environmentally sustainable solutions and secure tenure and use rights into action within the private sector.