Story
Uganda
World Bank/GEF Project Protects Mountain Gorillas in Uganda
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frica’s tourism potential will continue to grow by attracting new markets and developing new products. Safari tourism, nature tourism, and cultural tourism are all booming and generating employment and significant revenues. The World Bank has many successful stories engaging with the tourism sector in Uganda, South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Namibia, and Botswana. In most of these projects, evidence shows that by improving protected area management, economic benefits can result from nature-based tourism activities that take place in the bettermanaged parks. Since the mid-1990s, wildlife conservation projects in the mountainous regions of Uganda have played a pivotal role in protecting the mountain (eastern) gorilla and its habitat, and in the process have created thousands of new conservation and tourism jobs. Prior to that time, poaching was rampant and institutional capacity was weak. Beginning in 1995, with the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and Mgahinga National Park Conservation Project, and continuing in 1999 with the US$35 million Protected Areas Management and Sustainable Use (PAMSU) Project, the World Bank and the GEF provided the financial foundation for a long-term program of sustainable biodiversity conservation. The Bwindi Trust is now considered a model of innovative conservation finance and management. Its original endowment of US$4 million has generated income that assisted communities with alternative livelihoods and has underwritten core operating expenses of the mountain gorilla’s
protected areas. Thanks in large part to the Bwindi and PAMSU projects, poaching has been all but eliminated in Bwindi. Gorilla populations, tourist visits, and revenues have all climbed steadily. Across Uganda, the 1,300-member staff of the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) is well trained and equipped for the first time in living memory. PAMSU has delineated park boundaries in all 23 of Uganda’s protected areas. It has also provided critical infrastructure, such as roads and staff housing, to the priority areas. PAMSU has been instrumental in helping communities form comanagement partnerships with UWA that promote conservation and provide alternative livelihoods and social services such as education and health clinics. The PAMSU Project left a legacy of successful partnerships among World Bank, GEF, and Ugandan stakeholders. A new project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has just begun to support management in the neighboring Mikeno sector of the Virunga National Park, an important habitat for mountain gorillas. Since some of the gorilla groups cross back and forth from the DRC to Uganda and Rwanda, protecting this charismatic species in each of the three countries has positive externalities for the other countries, driving economic growth in otherwise remote areas. The effective enforcement has led to the resurgence of the mountain gorilla in Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC. Web site: www.worldbank.org
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