Community conservation related initiatives

Mvembili Conservancy Project

This is a project aimed at achieving sustainable natural resource management as well as alleviating poverty by developing sustainable community based tourism enterprises for the Emvembili community. The Emvembili community has identified several protection worthy sites with a potential for eco-tourism within their area.

The project emanated from the BCPD country project which was an innovative and challenging project aimed at introducing an ecosystem management approach to achieving biodiversity conservation and sustainable economic development in two broad geographic areas of the country – a “Northern Biodiversity and Tourism Corridor (BTC)” running east-west across northern Swaziland and an “Eastern BTC” which runs north-south along the eastern part of the country – which together covered about 4,800 km2, or ⅓ of the country.

These BTCs represent a spatial scale large enough to encompass important biological and ecological functions and to provide a critical mass of tourism attractions and opportunities for private sector investment. Each BTC consist of a mosaic of four main types of land use that each contributes to the overall objectives in its own way and the Emvembili project is a representative of one of these BTCs.

Shewula Conservancy

Shewula Conservancy is a community-owned and managed tourism camp and nature reserve on top of the Lubombo Mountain Plateau. The initiative is owned by the Shewula community.