People and wildlife need land and natural resources, and conflict often results. The density of people in Rwanda is 15 times greater than it is in the state of Iowa. Most visitors to Rwanda think that there isn’t a square inch of unused land. How then will we acquire the 10,000 acres of land needed for the corridor?
Great Ape Trust is committed to socially just ways of acquiring land for the corridor (view map), which means that owners and users of the land must be adequately compensated. There must be assured livelihoods for the long run for present owners and their children. But, since the present forms of subsistence farming in Rwanda are unsustainable anyway (in the judgment of the Rwandan government itself,) there is common interest in new land use options that mitigate conflict between wildlife and people.
The current value of rural land in Rwanda is about $2,000 per acre, so we might be able to buy the 10,000 acres for $20,000,000. Even if we had $20,000,000 (we don’t, yet), this would still not be the best solution because if people were asked to leave the land, they would have no sustainable way to feed their families after the initial windfall was spent. A generations-old tradition of land inheritance would be broken. This would not be a just economic or social outcome.
But we could lease the land on a long-term basis, and ask the owners to plant trees instead of cabbages and potatoes. They and their children could remain in their home, have a kitchen garden and a few chickens, and even plant a few trees of a type that would provide fruit and firewood. But they could not cut the native trees that would make up the corridor, and they could not hunt or chase wildlife. They would learn to coexist with the chimpanzees and other wildlife that move through their “fields” of forest. The tree farmers would probably have to be paid enough each year, probably $250 per acre, to buy some potatoes and cabbages in the market. This arrangement would be like the conservation easements that are used so successfully to conserve wild places in the Americas. It would cost about $2,500,000 per year, and would have to be paid indefinitely, or until other income sources, e.g. from ecotourism, kicked in.
Perhaps we could combine features of the purchase and the lease mechanisms, but either way it will cost a lot of money to acquire land for the corridor. Where will the money come from? This leads us back to why conservation should matter to Rwanda and to the rest of the world. The international donor community can be asked to help because the international community will benefit from the ecological services, biodiversity, and political stability that a healthy forest and improved livelihoods can provide. The idea is to “monetize” the intangible value of Gishwati Forest and the new corridor. Great Ape Trust is trying to broker supporting arrangements between the Rwandan “sellers” of those services and international “buyers” who see their value to a healthy and peaceful world. Taxes on greenhouse gas emissions by developed countries could be applied. The corridor is an ambitious, even audacious, idea but may be the only chance for a secure future for the people of the region and for the Gishwati chimpanzees.
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Background Information
Great Ape Trust is a scientific research facility in Des Moines, Iowa, dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence, and to the preservation of endangered great apes in their natural habitats. Announced in 2002 and receiving its first ape residents in 2004, Great Ape Trust is home to a colony of seven bonobos involved in noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities. To learn more about Great Ape Trust, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, go to GreatApeTrust.org, BonoboHope.org, www.facebook.com/GreatApeTrust or www.twitter.com/GreatApeTrust.
