Socotra Conservation Fund: Ensuring UN’s Bio-diversity Project Continues [Archives:2001/05/Last Page]

The Socotra Conservation Fund is being established to ensure the continuation of the UNDP (United Nations Development Program) GEF (Global Environmental Facility) bio-diversity project.
The current five-year project will come to an end in April this year but the UN is determined to ensure that a local institution is set up to oversee the preservation of the world’s last surviving subtropical island and its unique eco system with more than 800 species of plants and many undiscovered species of insects. Dr Tony Miller of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh recently collected the first specimen of a tiny carnivorous plant which grows on moist tree trunks in the higher reaches of the Haggier mountains.
A Washington based consultancy firm and the Yemeni Environmental Protection Council have laid the legal framework for the trust. It will be managed by a board of directors consisting of representatives of the Yemeni government, the local community, international donors and scientists. The board will appoint an executive director and the trust can start work as soon as the Prime Minister gives the go ahead.
‘We hope the trust will attract financial support from donors in the US and Western Europe who are supportive of conservation’, Dr Salah Hakim the head of the UNPD’s Socotra Office told The Yemen Times. ‘The government has shown considerable interest in the island and the prime minister has visited twice. He has even requested the British ambassador to ask Prince Charles to be the fund’s honorary chairman.
The UNDP GEF project has six main objectives:
* To strengthen institutional and human resources capacity:
* To establish and implement a zoning system and masterplan for the conservation and sustainable use of the terrestrial and marine biodiversity of the archipelago:
* To promote sustainable plant resource management:
* To promote sustainable marine resource management:
* To promote environmental awareness and education:
* To develop and implement an ecotourism management strategy.
Eco tourism is defined by the World Conservation Union as ‘environmentally responsible travel and visitation to relatively undisturbed natural areas in order to enjoy, study and appreciate nature and the accompanying cultural features both past and present. It promotes conservation, has low visitor impact and provides for beneficially active socioeconomic involvement of local populations’.
The overriding concern of the project is to conserve the globally significant biodiversity of the Socotra archipelago in the northwestern part of the Indian Ocean some 400 km south of the Arabian peninsula. As well as Socotra, the archipelago has three smaller islands, Abd Al Kuri, Samha and Darsa.
The small island of Samha is home to about sixty people. It can be reached from Socotra by boat in four hours. Abd Al Kuri is reachable in approximately ten hours. Both islands are barren with very little vegetation and drinking water is of poor quality. No schools or health facilities exist. The people of these islands depend on fishing and occasionally come to Socotra for medical help or trade but in general they are extremely isolated. The island of Darsa is not inhabited.
The UNDP JEF project has focused on the development of a zoning plan for Socotra, which has been accepted by the Council of Ministers. The plan sets out guidelines for development and conservation and designates certain areas as ‘sensitive’ and in need of total protection. Other areas can be developed to a limited extent while infrastructure and services will be concentrated in non-sensitive areas.
Dr Hakim emphasized that the local people have been involved in the UNDP project since its inception. Five thousand school children were given an introduction to conservation. Extension officers, respected members of the community, were recruited on a part-time basis to prepare monthly reports about any changes in the landscape. The traditional leadership structure on the island has been respected and all the UN’s activities have been discussed with the sheikhs and muqadams (community leaders).
‘The people are conservation orientated and know how to preserve the bio-diversity. The Sheikh must give his permission before a tree is chopped down but when people are struggling for survival conservation takes a back seat’, Dr Hakim said. “We have to prove to them that conservation will be beneficial and will provide a good source of income’.
If eco tourism is developed the locals could provide tourist guides, accommodation and other services such as meals. The genuine openness, warmth, friendliness and desire to make guests welcome are priceless assets of the Socotri character destined to guarantee the success of the tourist industry.
While there are no injuries or deaths from human violence, the peace loving people have made their island a haven in a hostile world, where nature has made their homeland a tourists’ paradise.
From the aqua lagoon at Qalansiya to the snow-white dunes at Ras Momi, from the alpine meadows of the Haggier Mountains to the desolation of Nowged, Socotra is a land of surprising contrasts. Rising to over 1700 meters, the Haggier Mountains loom over Hadibo, Socotra’s administrative capital. The red granite of the peaks has been stained a ghostly grey by the lichens, which grow thickly above the tree line. Perennial streams radiate from the misty heights, green ribbons of life teaming with endemic fish and freshwater crabs, limestone plateaux fan east and west providing alkaline soils for the Dragons Blood Tree.
Bottle trees, cucumber trees, statuesque relatives of the melon, provide fodder for starving animals during times of drought.
The island is ideal for sailing, boating, swimming, scuba diving, hiking or just relaxing on the unspoiled, wild beaches with an amazing assortment of shells.
To win the confidence of the locals and show responsiveness to their needs the UNDP also instigated a basic needs project to alleviate poverty, improve the quality and accessibility of primary health services and design and implement an integrated water management system using improved traditional techniques.
While the UNDP’s project is likely to culminate in the creation of the trust fund, the $1 million master plan study for the Socotra Archipelago commissioned by Yemen’s Environmental Protection Council and the Ministry of Planning and Development, financed by the EU and undertaken by four international companies, is also nearing completion and starting to produce tangible results. Eighty projects which can be undertaken within a ten year period have been proposed along with 2 small immediate impact ventures which can be carried out very quickly with very little money.
Proposals for a twenty to forty million dollar plan to upgrade the islands roads, a must before serious development of tourism can be contemplated, is also being prepared.
Dr Hakim is confident that the UNDP’s biodiversity study has put Socotra on the tourism map of Yemen and further afield. He admits that the island is still not well known but it certainly has a promising profile.
Socotra is still one of the least developed places on earth. It remained shrouded in mystery as its granite peaks are shrouded in mist which was once described as Yemen’s best kept secret.
But the island’s isolation is ending. The locals used to speak of sustained 80-knot winds that traditionally closed the island to air and sea traffic for up to half the year. Today the new runaway at Mori enables Yemenia’s planes to land all year round.
For centuries the islanders have lived in harmony with nature and preserved a unique, traditional life style in their little corner of the world: Today the government, international companies and donor agencies are helping them to ensure the survival and optimum development of their unique, subtropical island.

——
[archive-e:05-v:2001-y:2001-d:2001-01-29-p:./2001/iss05/lastpage.htm]