A year of innovation and impact for the Sustainable Wildlife Management Programme
“We are now at an exciting and critical stage in the implementation of the Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme.The four SWM Programme partners are working together to complete studies, draw lessons learned, publish innovative findings, and find ways to scale up effective practices.”Philippe Mayaux,(@philmayaux) Team Leader for Biodiversity and Ecosystem services, at the Directorate General for International Partnerships of the European Commission.
Despite the many challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, SWM Programme partners have been implementing a wide range of field activities in 15 countries across Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. The overall aim is to improve the conservation and sustainable use of wildlife, and the food security of local communities, in diverse forest, savannah and wetland environments.
Innovation is a key theme for the coming year. The SWM Programme teams continue to work on innovative approaches to improve how wildlife hunting is regulated; increase the supply of sustainably sourced meat products and farmed fish; strengthen the management capacities of Indigenous and local communities; and reduce demand for wild meat, especially in cities. In addition, during 2022, the focus will be on:
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working with communities and national authorities on the six key conditions for robust community-based sustainable wildlife management (see the SWM technical brief on “What do we mean by community-based sustainable wildlife management?”);
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addressing zoonotic risks ‘from the forest to the fork’, especially by supporting One Health response efforts, ranging from risk assessments along wild meat value chains to behaviour change strategies, to reducing wild meat consumption in urban areas (which builds on recommendations in the SWM Programme white paper and policy brief); and
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accelerating the publication and effective dissemination of results and findings (as recently achieved through the launch of the SWM Legal Hub).
These activities have an important contribution to make on the pathway towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. They are also contributing, in multiple ways, to the ‘Four Betters’ in the new FAO Strategic Framework (2022–2031), namely:
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better production through the One Health approach and promotion of small-scale producers’ equitable access to wildlife resources;
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better nutrition through the promotion of safe food in wild and domestic meat value chains and legal and institutional work;
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better environment through the conservation of wild animals and the protection of ecosystems; and
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better life through the SWM Programme’s Social Safeguards and gender approach (see, for example, the SWM Gender brochure), and its goal of progressively replacing urban demand for wild meat with small livestock production and fish farming.
The SWM Programme is a major seven-year international initiative of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, funded by the European Union with co-funding from the French Facility for Global Environment and the French Development Agency.It is implemented through a consortium partnership, which includes FAO, the Center for International Forestry Research, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
For more information, please explore the SWM Programmeweb portal, video series and latest newsletter.