The Heartland Conservation Process: enhancing biodiversity conservation and livelihoods through landscape-scale conservation planning in Africa

The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) has developed and applied a landscape-scale conservation planning methodology in eight priority conservation landscapes in Africa, areas we call African Heartlands. The foundation of the African Heartland Program is a landscape-scale planning process that has been developed and applied as part of the overall Heartland Conservation Process. This process helps AWF and its partners develop intervention strategies that address critical threats to the ecological viability of these landscapes, and to specific biodiversity conservation targets, whilst also working to improve the livelihoods of local people. In applying this participatory planning process to eight conservation landscapes in Africa we have begun to document and learn about the benefits and limitations of planning and implementation at the landscape-scale with stakeholders. We draw out lessons on the challenges and successes from our experience. Central to this are the merits of balancing a systematic science-based and pragmatic approach to landscape-scale conservation planning while addressing the needs and aspirations of local people. This approach could be particularly useful for other large-scale conservation planning efforts in developing countries where conservation objectives and human livelihoods are inextricably linked.