Preschool Children
Community mapping
GPS reading at the Singkalangan river
| Regional Programme for Southeast AsiaThe Global Diversity Foundation is committed to finding solutions through applied research, education and long term support of community-based initiatives. In Southeast Asia, our main priority is to develop alternative ways of managing the environment in areas where indigenous peoples live close to, or inside, protected areas. Through a blend of participatory research action and interactive training programmes, we are working intensively on exploring the issues between parks and people in Sabah (Malaysian Borneo), our focus site. Situated at the northern tip of Borneo, the Malaysian state of Sabah is bounded by the South China Sea to the west and the Sulu Sea to the east. Along the west coast of Sabah, sprawling coastal plains and peat swamp forests converge with the lowland, hill dipterocarp and montane forests of the hilly Crocker Range. As the terrain rises abruptly, the lushly forested Crocker Range culminates at the rocky peak of Mount Kinabalu (4,095m) in the north; the highest summit between the Himalayas and New Guinea. Both Kinabalu and the Crocker Range are renowned centres of biodiversity, famous for their spectacular flora and high endemism. However, while the establishment of Kinabalu Park (1964) and Crocker Range Park (1984) assures the conservation of this unique store of biodiversity, the livelihoods of the indigenous communities living on the periphery of these parks are increasingly at risk. Located within the hub of historical trading routes, Sabah has an astounding wealth of ethnic and linguistic diversity, with a veritable range of ethnic groups and sub-groups distributed along the coastline, inland plains and hilly ranges. The Crocker Range, particularly areas around Kinabalu Park and Crocker Range Park, is home to many indigenous Kadazan, Dusun and Murut communities. For generations and pre-dating the establishment of any protected areas in Sabah, these communities have been living in, trading throughout, and managing these areas. Today, they form part of the rural population in Sabah; primarily subsistence farming communities that cultivate the land, fish and hunt, and harvest forest resources to fulfil their daily needs. Faced with the encroachment of global market trends, commercial enterprise and a steadily decreasing resource base, these communities are sometimes left with few options to consider. The Global Diversity Foundation is working in close collaboration with our local partners in Sabah to explore ways in which protected areas and indigenous communities can converge to support both biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihoods. We are working with several Dusun communities living near Kinabalu Park and Crocker Range Park to carry out various applied research initiatives that investigate patterns of local resource use, valuation of landscapes, transmission of indigenous ecological knowledge, and the impact of subsistence strategies on areas adjacent to, or inside, parks. We are building local capacity to carry out these investigations through an interactive training programme that brings government officials, non-government representatives, professionals, researchers, students and community members together in a dialogue of joint learning and participatory field methods workshops. In fostering these partnerships, we are also supporting long term community-based conservation initiatives where local communities and partner agencies carry out projects that link the biological and cultural aspects of their surrounding environments. |
