Rwanda to host World Environment Day; Forest of Hope among green initiatives cited

Des Moines, Iowa – February 23, 2010 – Rwanda’s commitment to a green economy and the environment, including support for the Gishwati Area Conservation Program, led the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to select the African nation as the global host of World Environment Day 2010. The theme of this year’s World Environment Day (WED) is Many Species. One Planet. One Future. Rwanda’s capital Kigali will be the venue for the June 5 event billed as the biggest global celebration for positive environmental action.

“WED has become a dynamic and global grass roots expression of humanity’s desire to realize meaningful and positive environment change,” said Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director and UN under-secretary-general. “And Rwanda is an African nation that, despite big challenges, is seizing the multiple opportunities possible from green economic policies.”

In selecting Rwanda as the host nation for World Environment Day, UNEP cited several of the country’s efforts to restore and protect the environment, including the Gishwati Area Conservation Program. GACP began in late 2007 when H.E. President Paul Kagame and Great Ape Trust and Earthpark Founder Ted Townsend pledged at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting to found a “national conservation park” in Rwanda to benefit climate, biodiversity and the welfare of the Rwandan people. Great Ape Trust is a scientific research center in Des Moines, Iowa dedicated to ape language studies, and Earthpark is a proposed national center for science-based ecological literacy and immersive learning for students, educators and visitors.

"Great Ape Trust, Earthpark and the Gishwati Area Conservation Program are proud that our work contributed to the selection of Rwanda to host the UNEP World Environment Day for 2010,” said Dr. Benjamin Beck, director of the Gishwati Area Conservation Program. “The prominent mention of our chimpanzee conservation corridor, the first step of which is currently being planted, is international confirmation of our vision and accomplishments to date.”

The Gishwati Forest Reserve’s history of deforestation extends over 50 years, in part because of ill-advised large-scale cattle ranching projects, resettlement of refugees after the genocide, inefficient small-plot farming and the establishment of plantations of non-native trees.  As a result, the area has been plagued with catastrophic flooding, landslides, erosion, decreased soil fertility, decreased water quality and heavy river siltation – all of which aggravate a cycle of abject poverty.

Beck added that in 2010 GACP will fund the reforestation of 647 acres (262 hectares) in the Kinyenkanda area of Rutsiro District in Rwanda’s Western Province. Those efforts will increase the size of the Gishwati National Conservation Park by 21 percent from 3,018 acres (1,222 hectares) to 3,665 acres (1,484 hectares) and stabilize steep hillsides in an area that has been plagued by landslides and severe erosion into the Sebeya River.

“Since we began our work, the size of the Gishwati forest has increased by 67 percent, the chimpanzee population has grown, and support for biodiversity conservation has swelled measurably among our neighbors in the Gishwati community," said Beck. “Gishwati is a model for new conservation approaches and has become a ‘Forest of Hope’ rather than being the place ‘beyond hope’ that it was just short two years ago.”

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