Whoa, You Must Be A Pro!

In this week’s post, I present my project’s context and a few reflections on my work here in Rwanda. In my next post, I am excited to reflect on some of the agroforestry and forestry interventions IUCN is undertaking here in Rwanda. I don’t have that many photos which are directly relevant to my project, but I did include a few pictures from my retreat to Lake Kivu last weekend.  Oh and there’s a short blurb about my serendipitous path to becoming a (partial) marathon runner.

A colony of noisy fruit bats on Napoleon Island, Lake Kivu.

Project Context

As most readers of this blog know, forests provide numerous environmental, social, and economic benefits. These benefits include key ecosystem services, such as habitat for wildlife, carbon sequestration, soil formation, water purification, and reduction of soil erosion. These services, along with timber, non-timber forest products (such as food and medicinal plants), and tourism opportunities, among others, support most of the local economies and communities in Rwanda. Currently Rwanda is an agriculture-based economy with over 70% of Rwanda’s population dependent on subsistence agriculture for their livelihoods. Furthermore, only 31% of Rwanda’s population has access to electricity, leaving a large portion of the population reliant on fuelwood and other sources for their principal energy. The necessity for food and fuel are primary drivers of wide-scale forest degradation and deforestation.

View of Lake Kivu a great freshwater lake which shares a border with the DRC and which sits on a rift valley that is slowly being pulled apart causing the release of methane and volcanic activity in the area.

However Rwanda has been making huge strides in meeting socioeconomic development goals which work in tandem with understanding and responding to environmental concerns. The Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS) and Vision 2020, provide a goal and roadmap for increasing forest cover to 30% of the country’s total land area – equivalent to 790,140 hectares (~3,050 sq. miles). In addition to EDPRS and Vision 2020, there are also a number of policies which support restoration, which I won’t get into here but cover agriculture, forestry, food security, rural income, climate change resilience, improved water supply, and reduced vulnerability to landslides and other disasters.

Rice fields in the lowlands of the Eastern province.

However, increasing Rwanda’s total forest area has been a consistent part of achieving these policy priorities for at least two decades. As a result of these policies and countless Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) efforts within the country, Rwanda’s total forested area has grown by about 1% per year for more than a decade. The total forest cover in Rwanda is currently 28.8%, a small distance to achieving its national forest cover goal of 30% by 2020.

The progress to date shows that the people of Rwanda clearly recognize the importance of forested areas to provide ecosystem services, food security, and revenue. However, in order to realize the various FLR goals, the Government of Rwanda has partnered with several organizations including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and their partner the World Resources Institute (WRI) to identify strategies which may help Rwanda meet its commitments. These mainly include interventions which promote agroforestry, woodlots, and better management of protected forests. Check out ROAM (Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology) if you’re interested in a methodology which provides a flexible and affordable framework for countries to rapidly identify and analyze areas that are primed for FLR. It’s a pretty sweet framework that will hopefully save a lot of people from trying to reinvent the wheel.

As Rwanda’s total forest cover approaches 30%, a new, even more ambitious national goal is being targeted – the pledge to restore 2 million hectares of deforested and degraded land through the Bonn Challenge. The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to restore 150 million hectares of the world’s degraded and deforested lands by 2020. Compared to Rwanda’s total geographic area, this 2 million hectare goal represents the highest proportion committed by a country to the Bonn Challenge to date. The Bonn Challenge is overseen by the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration, with IUCN as its Secretariat. In Rwanda, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and its partner, the World Resources Institute (WRI) are responsible for harmonizing FLR efforts and assisting FLR stakeholders in contributing to the Bonn Challenge initiatives.

As part of Rwanda’s commitment to the Bonn Challenge, the nation is required to implement a forest restoration monitoring system which would function sustainably and be employed by the Rwandan government (ministry). The development of the FLR monitoring system is funded by the BMUB (German Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety). Such a system was developed nearly three years ago (2015) in Rwanda which utilized another surveying program as a framework. However the system that was developed for forest monitoring has not been widely adopted by the ministry and other forestry surveyors for a variety of reasons. Some of the known reasons include the tedious and cumbersome data processing and analysis required before and after surveying, the excessive (and perhaps duplicitous) amount of data that is required to be collected by surveyors, and the difficulty of transforming the data into easily digestible indicators and outcomes - basically every part of this system is cumbersome compared to current practices.

As a result, stakeholders involved in FLR in Rwanda convened at the invitation of IUCN and WRI in 2017 to address this issue and discuss the possibility of creating a new national FLR monitoring system which could be utilized by all stakeholders performing and/or monitoring FLR initiatives in Rwanda (government, NGO, private, community organizations, etc). However, due to the variety and diversity of monitoring needs required by each stakeholder and their donors, a consensus on FLR monitoring indicators and metrics could not be reached. At the conclusion of this meeting, stakeholders decided to continue to use their unique monitoring systems but would assist in tracking national reforestation progress by funneling their results into the national monitoring system. Additionally, stakeholders agreed that no new national monitoring system should be developed. Instead the FLR stakeholders present agreed that the existing national system, FMIS, should be adjusted or upgraded to reflect the needs of local and international FLR stakeholders while prioritizing the needs of the nation. This includes the nation’s requirement to report its progress to the Bonn Challenge. So basically the monitoring system need to be super flexible to allow input from a variety of stakeholders and needs to be able to report progress on a variety of scales (local, national, international), as well as needing to communicate progress clearly to a variety of stakeholders.

Fishing boats on Lake Kivu… wish you could hear the rhythmic chant the men use to row in unison.

In order to audit the existing FLR monitoring system and operationalize an upgrade, IUCN and WRI are taking leading roles in the project management tasks, with some financial support, while Enabel, a Belgian development agency and partner in FLR initiatives, has agreed to provide technical assistance, and will help provide knowledge and expertise required for the system upgrade.

A little reflection

As you now know, I am working with IUCN on the FLR team in Rwanda and my role is to take lead on developing and executing the audit of the existing national forest monitoring system providing recommendations for how to improve it. No pressure though…

This week I finally feel like I have a loose grasp on what I’m doing and how I might accomplish it. However the strategies about how to achieve this audit are still basically a tangled ball of yarn… And maybe I’m getting old, but I really like my yarn in those tidy skeins… I tend to be very methodical and strive for perfection. But the team here is much more driven to get things done and adjust as needed. Maybe this is partially due to the overall newness of ‘conservation’ (in its current form) in Rwanda. My coworkers recognize that the nation has major problems and we need to take action now. At first I thought this may be the general attitude of the region but I have heard from others outside of Rwanda that the reputation of IUCN is that they work quickly, all the time, and with a smile on their face and that has proved to be pretty true here in Rwanda as well.

In the next few days I am hoping to work with my UW and IUCN advisors to outline a strategy which will break down this overwhelming project into small achievable pieces I can check off one-by-one to ensure I deliver something meaningful to the team here. I will also have to decide which tasks may be better delegated to someone (likely a contractor or two) with skills and experience more appropriate to some technical tasks.

Breaking this project into manageable pieces will likely do wonders for my confidence and ability to make meaningful progress. Silver lining though, no one on the team seems to really doubt my credibility or ability to accomplish this task (barring the problematic time restraints), and I don’t want to show too much doubt, but I can’t help but think, can I do this? A few moments after these thoughts pop into my head, my wonderfully optimistic inner dialogue interrupts yelling, “You’re a pro! You’re ready for this! You have the skills!”

Also, did I mention that IUCN sponsored a marathon this weekend? At IUCN when you sponsor a marathon, you also run a (partial) marathon. When I showed up in running shorts to the event, it was automatically assumed that I was a pro. Which is an interesting little cultural quirk. Since Rwandans tend to dress conservatively, most adults showed up to the 75°F race in pants. The only people who wore shorts were the serious athletes. So if you’re planning on visiting Rwanda and, somewhat serendipitously, decide to attend a marathon in shorts, be prepared to run. I’m suddenly very grateful for all the hiking, swimming, and walking uphill both ways to work that I have been doing.