Ongoing and Past Projects
Highlights of key Activities, Achievements and Plans
The knowledge of biodiversity, socio-economic conditions and key threats affecting natural resources is crucial to guide conservation action, national planning, policy change and public awareness. The loss of many species and the breakdown of ecosystems and ecological processes that could result has worrisome implications for human wellbeing. There are many frameworks used in environmental reporting indicators. ARCOS will use a simple adapted model from the “State-Pressure-Response” approach, one of the best to link pressures on the environment and of human activities.
ARCOS has concentrated its Environmental Monitoring Programme on the Albertine Rift Montane Forests. Albertine Rift montane forests are ecologically important being a watershed for two main hydraulogic networks of Africa (The Nile and Congo basins). The forests of the Albertine Rift play an important role in local and regional climate regulation and anti-erosion control as well as providing various resources to local communities. While the importance of the Albertine Rift montane forests and the threats facing them have been mentioned at various occasions, the exact status of these forests remain unknown. With funding from the Tropical Rainforest Programme of the Netherlands Committee for IUCN, ARCOS initiated a pilot project to assess the status of Albertine Rift montane forests, to promote a network of existing initiatives on the conservation and sustainable use of montane forests in the region and build linkages with other initiatives has been initiated (Tropical Montane Cloud Forest Initiative, the African Node of Mountain Forum).
As part of an integrated framework to help compile data on the Albertine Rift region, ARCOS in collaboration with Makerere University Institute for Environment and Natural Resources (MUIENR) and other organizations in the region has been facilitating a better regional monitoring and information sharing. The idea is to explore possibilities by first amassing the scattered geographically-referenced data into a usable electronic system that will allow the dissemination of information to help in conservation decision making in the countries of the region. These data can then be used to identify geographic areas where information is most limited or lacking. These initiatives would help to promote conservation on the ground with the identification of areas of particular conservation importance.
A more solid framework on biodiversity assessment is needed, mainly promoting a regional exchange with different actors in the region, and to extend interest to other ecosystems (e.g. aquatic, agricultural landscape) and different sectors. A pilot study conducted by ARCOS on the impacts of civil conflicts on biodiversity and institutional framework in the Albertine Rift region for example showed that this issue has not yet been well understood.
Future plans on environmental monitoring during the period 2006-2010:
- Enhance Resource Centre through collation of research findings and conservation initiatives
from partner institutions, - Facilitate efforts for biodiversity monitoring, natural resource management and biodiversity
information management, - Promote collaborative research on biodiversity and natural resource management in the Albertine Rift and facilitate associated actions.
ARCOS is planning to focus increasingly on socio-economic and political conditions, which affect directly or indirectly conservation efforts in the region. ARCOS will promote exchange of information and regional collaboration in transboundary protected areas system and major threats to natural resources and sustainable development:
- Conversion of natural habitat to human dominated ecosystem,
- Human induced threats (pollution, invasive species, industrial activities),
- Conflicts’ impacts, and
- Macro environmental change (Climate Change, disruption of natural regimes)
