The Hwange Sanyati Biodiversity Corridor (HSBC) project covers an area of 5.7 million ha in north western Zimbabwe and falls within the Kavango-Zambezi (KAZA) Trans-frontier Conservation Area (TFCA). It is a $6.4 million project being funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) over 5 years. World Bank is the implementing agency for the project, WWF is the activities implementing entity and the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Management is the coordinating authority. Key project partners are: Parks and Wildlife Management Authority; CAMPFIRE Association; Environmental Management Agency; and the Forestry Commission.

The project seeks to address the following corridor wide challenges:

• inadequate water supplies for wildlife;
• destructive wild fires;
• poaching of wildlife and timber;
• human wildlife conflicts;
• land degradation;
• limited livelihood options;
• food insecurity; and
• inadequate institutional capacities to address environmental and livelihood challenges.

Focal areas

An integrated landscape/ecosystems approach is used to address the multiple GEF focal areas in the project which are:

• biodiversity,
• climate change,
• land degradation, and
• sustainable forest management/REDD+.

Under the biodiversity focal area, the project will support the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity by strengthening the management of Hwange National Park and its buffer area. Under land degradation, the project will contribute to developing tools for arresting and reversing current trends in land degradation in the Sanyati catchment area and piloting land rehabilitation projects. Under climate change, the project will support small mitigation measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, management of land and longer-term adaptation measures. Under the sustainable forest management/REDD+, the project will support the reduction of pressure on remaining forests in the HSBC by developing sustainable forest management tools and testing and adapting them in pilot areas.

Objective

The overall objective of the project is to provide tools for the sustainable management of the corridor.

Project Components

The project has the following three closely inter-related components:

• Improving Protected Area (PA) management effectiveness: The component will improve PA management in the Hwange National Park and the livelihood of communities involved in the stewardship of natural resources in the buffer area of the Park through pilot livelihood projects;
• Developing tools that address land degradation and deforestation across the corridor and piloting rehabilitation measures in the Sanyati catchment; and,
• Supporting human and institutional capacity improvement on climate change; strengthening local environmental committees within the corridor; and providing training, national awareness building and outreach activities as part of a comprehensive communication strategy.