Background on CCAs and SGP support to them

Iran, like many other countries, has innumerable CCAs that are increasingly being understood, recognized and supported. The lack of such understanding in the past has meant that tribal communities have been facing many problems that threaten the ecological and social integrity of their territory-based CCAs and livelihoods. In recent years, following the national and international efforts for the recognition of CCAs and community rights, as well as the formation of tribal community investment funds and their federations and unions?particularly the pioneering role played by the SGP? conservation cum livelihoods projects have brought about some hopeful results.

The livelihoods of Iranian tribal communities have always depended on the conservation of nature throughout their territories? including its preservation, sustainable use and restoration. In the decades since the Nationalization Decree of 1963 and the resulting encroachment into their territory and irreparable mistakes of externally-imposed management systems have tended to weaken and erode the customary governance of natural resources and indigenous knowledge. One direct result of this intrusion and lack of respect for traditional systems has been environmental degradation that has become a big challenge.

The Council of Elders of some Tribal communities have discussed the problems they are facing, and have empowered representatives to discuss solutions with CENESTA and the UNDP/ GEF/ SGP. Three proposals have been prepared by the tribal units involved for two of the largest tribal confederacies of the country (Qashqai and Shahsavan tribal confederacies) for the ecological restoration of their CCAs, strengthening customary institutions for natural resource management and reclaiming good governance of their territories.

These three projects have been elaborated following the participatory training session on project writing co-sponsored by UNDP/GEF/SGP for indigenous nomadic tribes which was held in conjunction with the Second Workshop on Community Biodiversity Registers/ Community Bio-cultural Diversity Protocols, held in Shibidzar which is a part of the summering grounds on 15 September 2010. The Session was geared to making use of the fact that SGP, in its current fifth four-year cycle, is emphasizing CCAs and intends to devote a significant portion of its resources to projects that strengthen nomadic CCAs and sustainable management of their natural resources based on indigenous knowledge and customary institutions of environmental governance.

Project activities:

Qurt is one of the twenty sub-tribes in Shish Bayli tribe of Qashqai tribal confederacy in Southwest Iran. The summering and wintering quarters of this community are located in Fars and Bushehr provinces respectively. Climate change and following successive droughts during past years have degraded the pastures in some parts of their territory and a considerable part of rangeland plants have dried off. Consequently they confront shortage of forage for livestock and to find new resources of food, they have to change the migration time. All above cases lead to excessive grazing and so gradual rangeland degradation. Meeting this problem, they began to think of forage crops to compensate for the shortage of animal feed and also to prevent the advance of degradation.

Considering the water shortage in this area, traditional water management through Qanat dredging and earth dam construction are the solutions which are suggested by the council of elders and this projects is prepared based on this issue with the help of CENESTA. There are about 10 Qanats in the summering grounds of this community all of which need to be rehabilitated by dredging. As there are suitable plain fields nearby, agriculture would be possible to produce livestock forage as a supplement to rangeland grazing and browsing. They have also determined a proper location for dam construction and agricultural lands in wintering resorts. This project, along with the restoration of water resources will provide better rangeland management through avoiding overgrazing, which will result in the restoration and improvement of other biodiversity resources and sustainable livelihoods.