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Building Livelihood Security and Reducing Conflict in Freshwater Ecoregions
| KEY FACTS | Project
Strengthening Aquatic Resource Governance (STARGO)
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Project leader
Blake Ratner
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Location
Start
1 Apr 2011
End
31 Mar 2014
 Lake Victoria, Omena boats returning. |
The freshwater ecoregions of Lake Victoria, Lake Kariba and the Tonle Sap Lake are characterized by persistent poverty, high dependence on aquatic resources to provide food security and livelihoods, and intense resource competition. Moreover, significant new pressures have the potential to lead to broader social conflict if not addressed adequately, such as a further increase in the number of local resource users (through population growth, migration and displacement); commercial exploitation of limited resources; competition over water for agriculture and hydropower; and climate change.
Nine countries are directly affected by the status of fishery resources in these lakes: Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania around Lake Victoria; Zambia and Zimbabwe on Lake Kariba; and Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand in the Mekong River Basin, with the Tonle Sap Lake as its most productive fishery.
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Strengthening Aquatic Resource Governance (STARGO)
The STARGO project aims to build resilient livelihoods among poor rural producers who depend on the highly contested natural resources in these freshwater ecoregions, with the intent of improving nutrition, income, welfare and human security, while also reducing the likelihood of broader social conflict.
The project will develop and pilot new tools to assess the linkages between environmental resources and conflict, and also identify opportunities for peace building through collaborative resource management. This will build on related assessment work done at higher spatial scales, such as the first global map detailing conflicts over renewable natural resources, produced by adelphi research, one of the project partners. The map focuses on land, water, biodiversity and fish, and covers conflicts of varying degrees of escalation, from protests to systematic violence, and provides an invaluable reference source for the project.
However, such tools have yet to be sufficiently adapted or applied within the context of the contested aquatic resources. To date, they have mainly been used by external agencies. STARGO will focus on closing these gaps, by actively involving local stakeholders in not only assessing but also collaborating to address the sources of local resource conflict.
The future
At the project’s conclusion, conflict assessment and innovations aimed at improving resource governance will have been conducted in contested freshwater environments in each region. There will also be in place a network of practitioners and researchers committed to information exchange and learning. The long-term goal is to build a forum that can continue to support stakeholders to manage competing uses of resources equitably and effectively, and in a way that minimizes the likelihood of social conflict. This capacity is fundamental, as it is a key determinant of livelihood security and social-ecological resilience.