Rwanda is well-known for its rich biodiversity. Despite its small size of 26,338 km2, the country is covered by diverse ecosystems consisting of protected natural reserves, gallery forests, savannahs, agroecological systems, wetlands, and other aquatic ecosystems. Rwanda has advanced in many aspects of mainstreaming and implementing climate adaptation initiatives such as forest landscape restoration and ecosystem-based adaptation initiatives, biodiversity conservation, and biodiversity integration into EIAs and policy instruments. However, the initiatives come with various technical and resource barriers and degradation challenges, and this is the case in Eastern Province. Some of them are:
a) Landscape degradation and little consideration for biodiversity in forest landscape restoration initiates
b) Lack of incentivization frameworks, monitoring mechanisms, and financial inaccessibility for the promotion of biodiversity conservation
c) Inadequate knowledge and technical capacity of communities and institutions for the integration and monitoring of biodiversity conservation
The Eastern Province covers an area of 9,813 km² (37.2% of country’s territory) and includes seven districts: Bugesera, Ngoma, Kirehe, Rwamagana, Kayonza, Gatsibo and Nyagatare). The province is characterized by diverse ecosystems including savannah, swamps and montane, moreover the Akagera National Park is located in the province. The Province is the most populated in Rwanda with an estimated 3,051,454 people (24% of total population est. 12,663,116) in 2020. One third of this population lives in poverty (37%) and 15% live in extreme poverty.
Despite the country's conservation efforts, the ecosystems in the eastern province of Rwanda that host the biodiversity are experiencing threats from climate change effects and unsustainable use of natural resources. Nevertheless, to alleviate those barriers, the importance of biodiversity for the country at large is evidenced by several national policies, and strategies as well as international conventions on biodiversity, which Rwanda has signed and ratified. Hence, to supplement these initiations, the COMBIO project supported by SIDA will address some of the inadequacies of information available on biodiversity and its conservation for use in the Eastern Province.
To this end, among many other planned activities under the COMBIO project, IUCN is collaborating with the Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management at the University of Rwanda on biodiversity baseline assessments and establishment of a monitoring system across the intervention landscape, and research on biodiversity and its impact on ecosystem functioning, agroecosystems, and human wellbeing within the study area.
Expected Outcome
At the end of these activities, the documents for biodiversity and threatened species from the Eastern Province will include a report of the survey, distribution maps, and the data made available in the database (in RBIS) to update the country’s IUCN list of threatened species, to support long term monitoring of the ecosystems, and for their in and ex situ conservation and protection in the country.
20 сен 2024
