“Through working for the Institute of Applied Sciences, USP and IUCN’s Water and Nature Initiative on the Kadavu Project, I have been fortunate to be part of a team in protecting and restoring my country’s water resources,” says Leigh-Anne.
Leigh-Anne is now part of a large team that aims to maintain and restore watershed catchments in Fiji. Less than 40% of Fiji's land surface is covered in forest, and it is in these areas that most of Fiji's "functional" water catchments are located. In addition to the dry forest, water catchments are amongst the most threatened ecosystems in Fiji. Leigh-Anne explains how rapid shifts in land use patterns has led to accelerated erosion, degraded water quality and loss of critical watershed ecosystem services in her country.
But she is optimistic and sees the unique land tenure system over marine and terrestrial resources as an opportunity to halt and restore this adverse trajectory. “Through pioneering community-based watershed management initiatives, we hope to replicate the approach and successes achieved through the locally-managed marine areas (LMMAs).” This approach to marine conservation, which has become a growing trend throughout the Pacific, blends the application of modern scientific techniques with traditional conservation practices.
The LMMA approach has increasingly expanded to look beyond the marine environment. In Kadavu, an island south of Viti Levu, this approach is being spearheaded for watershed management. The implementation of a ridge-to-reef approach of natural resource management led to the creation of the Kadavu Yaubula (Fijian for ‘living wealth’) Management Team. This team has the mandate for the oversight of all environmental issues affecting the Kadavu province.
“Given the leadership role that Kadavu is playing”, says Leigh-Anne, “it was used as the site for the first phase of the WANI project. Working at three districts within the province, communities were the driving force behind the creation of management plans of the entire watershed over which they have stewardship”. The lessons from this first WANI initiative demonstrated that community-based approaches deliver good project results. “It might eventually replace the generally followed “top-down” approach, which tends to be unsuccessful because people who are directly impacted are typically not involved in the decision making process”, adds Leigh-Anne.
This project will further establish a number of key demonstration sites over a range of ecological and social conditions that will leave a lasting legacy of evidence and lessons learnt of how community-based management can be applied to holistic ridge-to-reef resource management.