The Lake Victoria conservation project

Since 2014, FFI has been working to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable resource use through supporting the establishment of Community Conservation Areas (CCAs) in the Lake Victoria Basin, Uganda. The project is located on the western fringes of Lake Victoria including sites at Sango Bay and Musambwa Islands in Rakai District.

Threats to the lake and surrounding areas of wetland and forest have included unsustainable natural resource use where little management has been in place to address this. Specifically this includes the clearance of wetland areas, unsustainable fishing practices and the overharvesting of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and reliance on public forests for timber. The local communities are heavily dependent on the area’s natural resources, and the threats to the area are exacerbated through a rapidly growing population and local people having limited capacity to take up other, more sustainable, livelihood options.

FFI has worked to establish CCAs at project locations, in order to facilitate community engagement in natural resource management and to provide a mechanism for community involvement in decision making. Further to this, FFI will continue to support the implementation of natural resource management through implementing capacity building from the ministerial to local community level, to enable all stakeholders to have the capacity, ability and will to implement management of the area effectively and enforce and implement the national regulations and policies which are in place at a local level.

The long-term project goal is to maintain the supply of ecosystem services identified as essential for well-being by communities living in and around priority Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) in the Lake Victoria watershed.