Tanzanian withdraws World Heritage Site nomination for the Eastern Arc Mountains Forests

The Tanzanian President has nullified the nomination of the Eastern Arc Mountains Forests to UNESCO for inscription on the World Heritage List. The president has taken this decision despite a 14 year long consultation and planning process, and the inscription of the site on the Tentative List in 2006, because he believes that it because the mountains are needed by the people of Tanzania for various economic reasons, see eTurboNews report.

According to information on the UNESCO World Heritage website, “The area has been identified in all the major analyses of global biological priority. Starting in the 1970s, the ‘Eastern Arc Mountains’ were identified as a component of the Afromontane archipelago-like regional centre of endemism by White (1983). The Eastern Arc Mountains are also a Global 200 Ecoregion of WWF (Olson and Dinerstein 1998), part of a biodiversity hotspot of Conservation International (Mittermeier et al., 1998; 2004) and an Endemic Bird Area of BirdLife International (ICBP 1992; Stattersfield et al., 1998). It is also one of the regions of the world facing the most urgent threat in terms of potential species extinctions (Brooks et al., 2002; Ricketts et al., 2005). These studies all indicate the extreme biological importance of the area in global terms.” It is also noted that “In most Eastern Arc mountains the local populations respect the reserve boundaries (where they are clear), but forest resources are used locally for fuel and building materials and some forests are heavily degraded. Fire is also a problem as it enters and can destroy these forests during the dry season.”

The website of the Campaign for the Eastern Arc Mountains Forests provides some information on the background to the nomination process and the president’s subsequent instruction that this be withdrawn. “The process to seek World Heritage Status was first proposed by the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, the Honourable Mrs Zakia Meghji (MP) in 1997. In 2004, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism launched the Conservation and Management of the Eastern Arc Mountains Forests project with financial support from UNDP / GEF. An indicator for the success of the project was the inclusion of the Eastern Arc Mountains on the World Heritage List. There followed five years of awareness raising and detailed stakeholder consultation with community members, local government authorities, private sector and civil society organizations. The proposal was endorsed by the 5 Regional Commissioners and 15 District Councils whose lands include parts of the Eastern Arc Mountains. In 2010 the Nomination Dossier was submitted to UNESCO signed by the Director of Antiquities, the Designated National Authority for the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Earlier this year Tanzania’s application for the Eastern Arc Mountains Forests to be included on the World Heritage List was accepted by the World Heritage Centre and was sent for external evaluation. The external evaluation is the final step before a nominated site is inscribed on the World Heritage List. The proposal highlights the significance of the Eastern Arc Mountains Forests as an area of outstanding universal value. On March 31st this process was brought to an abrupt end when the President called for the nomination to be withdrawn during a routine meeting to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism. “We cannot ask for UNESCO’s permission in everything we do. There are things that we can decide ourselves,” the president stressed when he visited the ministry headquarters in Dar es Salaam.”

The Tanzanian Forest Conservation Group argues that the country needs the forests because they “sustain the lives of millions of people living in Eastern Tanzania by providing a clean and reliable supply of water and protecting fragile mountain soils. The forests are a vital source of non-timber forest products including fuel and food for millions of rural people. The forests are also a biodiversity hotspot home to hundreds of species found nowhere else on earth and store as much as one hundred million tons of carbon which might otherwise be released into the atmosphere to contribute to climate change.”

The relationship between conservation and economic activity is often fraught with tension, but it need not always be so. In some cases, heritage resources have been compromised as site managers exploit them for economic gain. In other cases instances funds generated through economic activity on site are used to conserve and protect the resource. In many cases, especially in the so-called developing countries, authorities have achieved a balance that provides for the protection of vulnerable heritage sites and the need of associated communities to access natural sites and resources on which they depend for their livelihood or traditional ceremonies. What is required in Tanzania is that all parties concerned, the conservationists, communities and government find a way to manage the resource in a way that is sustainable. This is possible. What is at stake here is the loss of an irreplaceable resource, and that is something that humankind can ill afford.

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