The purpose of this block is to assess biodiversity vulnerability to climatic and non-climatic stressors (e.g. land use changes). Assessment is a prerequisite for any action to measure the conservation status of biodiversity and the resilience to climate change. These evaluations also help to better guide the identification of appropriate climate change adaptation interventions.

The assessment of climate change vulnerability and land use was done by touring the park and through desk review. While site visits aimed at obtaining crucial information through observation, desk review was conducted to augment field information. The assessment was led by experts accompanied by park managers, district natural resource experts and elders from the adjacent village who have a better understanding of the park and surrounding areas.

The purpose of this block is to build capacity of park managers on climate change through workshops focusing on topics that are very specific to climate change issues encountered at the park level. 

A series of capacity building workshops were held in Mpanda and Sumbawanga in 2017 to raise awareness on key concepts related to climate change including impacts, vulnerability and resilience in relation to protected areas. The workshops were attended by delegates from Katavi National Park, Lwafi Game Reserve, Mpanda District Council and conservation NGOs working in Mpanda and Rukwa such as LCMO.

The workshops provided participants with key information and knowledge on climate aspects needed in the next steps of integrating climate change in the Park General Management Plan.

27 organizations including experts on machiya preservation, NPOs, NGOs, and Kyoto City gathered to form the Machiya Heritage Network. Their flagship initiative is a matching project called “Match-Ya”. Match-Ya is a platform connecting machiya owners and potential residents or business owners interested in the utilization of machiya. From the supply side, the current situation is that many machiya are already unused and empty, but their owners are not sure what they can do with their machiya and whose advice to seek. From the demand side, many business owners are interested in utilizing machiya for new businesses, often combining traditional values and modern industries. By reaching out to Match-Ya, both owners and potential buyers or tenants can access consultation services and support from the Machiya Heritage Network members in areas such as real estate, law, financing, building regulations, public subsidies, etc. They can further collaborate with designers to create business plans, advertisements, and public relation strategies. If the requirements of the owners and the aspirations of the tenant matches, then the machiya can be utilized for a new purpose. To date, several successful matchings have already been made.

Since 2010, public interest in machiya conservation has surged and banks have begun offering tailored restoration loans for these bygone architectural artifacts. Recently, the Kyoto Center for Community Collaboration created and issued “Machiya Karte”s, imitating the clinical records used in medical care. By documenting the uniqueness and value of each machiya building in a tangible form, the liquidity of machiya as a tradable good increased significantly. As a result, as of March 2018, three local banks have started special loan products for machiya renovation or utilization. For example, Kyoto Credit Bank provides both consumer (accommodation) loans and corporate loans. The former offers 1-100 million JPY at the interest rate of 1.8-2.0%, as opposed to the normal housing loan requiring 2.675%. The latter offers 30 or 50 million JPY at the interest rate of 1.2-2.3%, depending on the period and whether collateral is provided. From 2011 to 2017, the consumer loan product won 123 contracts, and the corporate loan product won 7 contracts.

The aim for designing a marketing plan was to convert customers who used diesel oil to heat their homes and businesses into users of briquettes, firewood or charcoal for energy. The preference during the first stages was given to homes and businesses where the public could witness and try out the new biomass heating system. The document is attached to enable its adaptation to other situations.

The term “dry stone” indicates how the stones constituting the terrace retaining wall are put in place without the use of binders.  The wall has many benefits such as wind protection for some types of crop, while preserving the ecological niche of the numerous species of flora and fauna that colonize the stones, holes and soil of the terraces. It also serves as a passageway for farmers along the strip, interrupting the water runoff flow and favoring water accumulation and infiltration in the soil. It also plays an important role in preventing soil erosion. Abandoned terraces are widely distributed in the western slopes of the site located mainly at altitudes of 1000m to 1200m above sea level. Many terraces are abandoned with significant percentage of collapsed stonewalls that are colonized by natural vegetation forming different successional stages – from small scrub to very dense secondary forest stands. They also act as firebreaks, reducing the risk of fire spread, and providing access and water for firefighting.  

Making charcoal is a rural activity that is gradually being lost and could be of great value for rural employment if revived. Charcoal has a number of uses: it can be burned directly in traditional stoves, as mix for briquettes, or for the popular barbecues. Charcoal has a higher calorific value (about 7,500 kcal/kg almost double the briquettes that are currently being manufactured) and can increase the quality of the briquettes. However, this process should be studied and tested in the production plant before commercial production is started.

Compost production aimed to find alternative sources of organic fertilizer for local farmers. It involved the development of composting units in some central areas of the SBR and in private gardens. This required practical training of landowners and the development of Composting is a biological process by which microorganisms decompose organic matter. It could be done in two ways: anaerobic composting and aerobic composting. Aerobic composting involves organisms that need oxygen for their living, while anaerobic composting involves organisms that can survive in the absence of oxygen. The key condition for any composting design is the type of composting that must be used. The aerobic composting, for example, necessitates the entrance of oxygen to the composting pile. The process adopted in this project is aerobic composting. The raw materials used are remains of pruning forest trees, adding cow and chicken manure from farms in surrounding villages. In addition to making use of the shreds, this activity yields an alternative organic fertilizer. Some educational materials could eventually be developed. It is worth noting that two commercial shredding machines were bought to enable cutting the woody material.

To prevent the excessive re-sprouting of the thinned oak stands, and hence a higher chance of forest fires, the project recommended grazing the area with herds of goats during the years following the cutting operations as a mixture of silvopastoral interventions (oak stand thinning and grazing control) . All of these activities will eventually take pressure off the Cedar trees in the core zone of the Reserve.

Thanks to the expertise acquired in Blocks 1 and 2, the Management Board took an informed decision and asked the French government to regulate jet ski traffic in the Molène archipelago. Given the irrefutable nature of the assessment, based on the knowledge acquired by the Park, the French government has decided to ban Jet Skiing in the archipelago.