Rebuilding volunteering and strengthening local communities to fight illegal activities in natural resources use
The Carpathian Biosphere Reserve has been expanded
January 17, 2022
Why the “Narcissi Valley” should be mowed
January 17, 2022Project title:
With the support of:
The duration of the project:
2021-2022
Background:
Ukraine is very rich in biodiversity and conflict on natural resource use is a huge one. Western Ukraine contains some of the largest remaining tracts of forest on the European continent, home to some of the last viable populations of brown bear, Eurasian wolf, lynx and European bison. But all these sites are in crisis, their health and existence threatened by rampant illegal logging, water management and poaching and related corruption issues. Ukraine remains the most corrupt country in Europe, with a Corruption Perception Index (CPI) score worse than 130 other countries. Corruption also remains the major barrier to democratic development and new investments in the country.
The citizens’ engagement to fight illegal activities (illegal logging, water resource use etc) is one of the vital instruments to stabilize the situation in the many environmental sectors and support the protection and sustainable development for recognised biodiversity hotspots. Local people have a key role in determining the future viability of the area’s resources – both in a negative sense, as underlined by current problems with illegal logging and poaching, but also more positively, in providing the necessary services and infrastructure for sustainable use of resources, e.g. for environmentally friendly tourism and in the protection of outstanding values, which are a background for green tourism development and biodiversity protection. Future success will depend on civil society movement and local communities development through conflict resolving process.
Project objectives:
- Identification, disclosure and coverage of abuses in forestry, water, wildlife as well as land issues linked for the protected areas. In particular, the abuses and facts of corruption cover the priority areas of forestry (illegal logging, violations in forestry, poaching), water (construction of mini-hydro power plants, gravel and sand excavation, pollution of water resources), land, non-compliance with the law on protected areas.
- Restoring the volunteers’ network for identifying abuses and suspicious corruption cases in the use of natural resources.
- Provide legal and experts support for local mountain communities for conflict resolving situations (cases).
- Develop training with different stakeholders (authorities, civil society, forestry, journalists etc).
- Providing mentoring support for groups of volunteers.
- Catalyze media coverage on issues of volunteers network linked to accountability, corruption and other forms of natural resources crimes and abuses.
