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Winners of Equator Prize 2002 Announced for Outstanding Achievements in Sustainable Development in the Tropics

Nature Conservancy pledges $600,000 to support community efforts

Johannesburg, South Africa — August 30, 2002 — The Equator Initiative today announced the winners of the Equator Prize 2002 at an awards ceremony held at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). These international prizes, each accompanied by an award of $30,000, recognize community initiatives throughout the tropics for their extraordinary work to reduce poverty while conserving and sustainably using biodiversity.

Selected from 27 finalists, themselves drawn from over 420 nominations from 77 countries, the recipients of the seven Equator Prizes were chosen by a panel of renowned world leaders.  They represent outstanding examples of the types of community-led partnerships that are best able to tackle the planet's most pressing development challenges, including poverty and biodiversity loss.

The upbeat mood of the awards ceremony reached its pinnacle when Steve McCormick, president of The Nature Conservancy, announced that the Conservancy will award the remaining 20 finalists each with a $30,000 cash award to match that received by the winners.

“These groups have dedicated themselves to improving their communities through sustainable use of their biological resources,” McCormick said. “We wanted to recognize their innovations and give them additional needed resources.”

This tremendous gesture reflected the enthusiasm with which the audience received the remarkable success stories of the finalist communities.

"Demonstrating how powerful partnerships between individuals, communities, governments and civil society can reap huge dividends for both local livelihoods and the environment, these communities are models of the kind of sustainable future UNDP believes is possible," says its Administrator, Mark Malloch Brown.

Six of the Equator Prizes were presented to outstanding community initiatives in recognition of their efforts to reduce poverty and conserve biodiversity. These winners of these prizes are:

• Associação Vida Verde da Amazônia (AVIVE) in Brazil. AVIVE was founded in the city of Silva to preserve the local environment and culture while also improving the quality of life of local people, especially women. Focusing on developing techniques for sustainable extraction of the pau-rosa plant and on the home production of natural medicines and cosmetics, AVIVE has helped to generate income for local women while protecting the endangered pau-rosa.
• Fiji Locally-Managed Marine Area Network. Since its inception in 1999, the Locally-Managed Marine Area Network has grown to include communities in six districts and cover 10 percent of the inshore marine area of Fiji.  As a result, incomes have increased 35 percent over three years, catches have tripled in size, and the government has incorporated many of the network's approaches into national policies to protect coastal resources.
• Toledo Institute for Development and Environment in Belize. Through the Maya Mountain Marine Sustainable Livelihoods Initiative, TIDE works to promote poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation in some of Belize's poorest areas.  By focusing efforts on guide certification programs, skills training, and ecotourism, as well as conservation, TIDE has been able to raise incomes while reducing the poaching of endangered manatees and illegal hunting and logging.
• Uma Bawang Resident's Association in Malaysia. The Uma Bawang Resident's Association has successfully used blockades, and now innovative mapping techniques, to defend customary land rights and guarantee their access to traditional forestlands. UBRA now teaches these mapping techniques to other communities and helps them learn the skills needed to earn sustainable incomes while protecting traditional forests.
• Il Ngwesi Group Ranch in Kenya. The Il Ngwesi Group Ranch on Kenya’s Laikipia Plateau has had great success in reducing local poverty and conserving biodiversity by promoting ecotourism and establishing a community trust to manage local lands. In addition to redirecting tourism revenues back into the community, collaborative management of natural resources has successfully promoted local livelihoods without compromising the integrity of the natural environment.
• Suledo Forest Community in Tanzania. Harnessing their knowledge of the species-rich Miombo forests of Tanzania’s Arusha region, the Suledo Forest Community has established an effective system of village-based forest management.  As a result, local food production has increased and people now have access to sustainably harvested timber and a greater range of forest products, including fruits, nuts, mushrooms and medicines.

A final prize was awarded to a community initiative associated with a World Heritage Site for successfully reconciling biodiversity conservation with local livelihoods. This prize was awarded to:

• Iniciativa Talamanca in Costa Rica. Iniciatia Talamanca is a partnership of three community-focused organizations and has worked since 1983 to integrate biodiversity conservation with socio-economic development. In addition to establishing a National Wildlife Refuge and developing Central America’s only permanent raptor migration monitoring program, the initiative’s efforts to promote crop diversification and 13 ecotourism ventures have brought a six-fold increase in local incomes.

"The passion, dedication and courage with which these communities have adopted the cause of local sustainable development are a source of inspiration to the entire global community," United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in hailing the recipients of the inaugural Equator Prizes.

Representatives of each of the 27 inaugural Equator Prize finalist communities are sharing their experiences at the WSSD with representatives of other communities working towards local sustainability as participants in the Ubuntu Community Kraal, an innovative forum for local dialogue sponsored by the Equator Initiative.

"The lessons that these communities identify during the Summit will form the basis for the Equator Initiative's continuing work," says Programme Manager, Sean Southey of UNDP's Bureau for Development Policy. "It will also lead to the development of a learning and exchange strategy that will expand the programme's growing global movement for poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation."

The other finalists that will receive support from the Nature Conservancy include:

• Support Group for Conservation and Sustainable Development Initiatives in Cameroon.
• Mohéli Marine Park in Comores.
• Honey Care Africa Ltd. in Kenya.
• Association of Manambolo Natives (FITEMA) in Madagascar.
• HASHI Soil Conservation Project in Tanzania.
• Kerala Kani Samudaya Kshema Trust in India.
• Medicinal Plants Conservation Centre in India.
• Tribal Communities of the Jeypore Tract of Orissa in India.
• Community Based Integrated Rural Development Center, Sub Tai in Thailand.
• Bolsa Amazônia in Brazil.
• Amazon Life Project in Brazil.
• Cananéia Oyster Producers Cooperative in Brazil.
• Inter-institutional Consortium for Sustainable Agriculture on Hillsides/River Cabuyal. Watershed Users Association (CIPASLA-ASOBESURCA) in Colombia.
• Bayamo Whole Forest Company in Cuba.
• Management and Conservation Organization in Guatemala.
• Café de la Selva in Mexico.
• Campesino to Campesino Programme of the Municipality of Siuna (PCaC) in Nicaragua.
• Ese'eja Community of Infierno in Peru.
• Association of Forest Communities of Petén (ACOFOP) in Guatemala.
• Mosquitia Pawisa Agency for the Development of the Honduras Mosquitia in Honduras.

Information about all 27 finalists is available at www.equatorinitiative.org.

The Equator Initiative is a partnership of United Nations Development Programme, the UN’s global development network, with BrasilConnects, the government of Canada, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), IUCN – The World Conservation Union, The Nature Conservancy, Television Trust for the Environment (TVE), and the United Nations Foundation. The Equator Initiative focuses on the area +/-  23.5 degrees the Equator, the area with the world’s greatest concentration of human poverty and biodiversity wealth, and is a global movement committed to identifying innovative community partnerships that reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. For further information, visit www.equatorinitiative.org.

For press queries about the Equator Initiative, contact Sean Southey at (212) 906-6206, sean.southey@undp.org. For information about the Nature Conservancy and its work, contact Mike Horak at (703) 841-8105, mhorak@tnc.org.