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afrol News, 29 April - An increasing number of Mozambicans find a livelihood by combining environmental and cultural efforts into crafts made of pure, natural resources. The art revival grew from natural resources awareness raising campaigns, aiming at nature conservation. The concept of natural resources as valuable assets with a great potential for sustainable socio-economic development has not yet been established at different levels of our society. However, people in Mozambique were increasingly realising that besides the ecological values of nature, natural resources continue to play a fundamental role to the well being of the people who live in or near them, reports the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). IUCN has been working with community-based natural resource management projects in the Mozambican districts of Gorongoza and Matutuine since the late 1990's. The projects have sought to mobilise and raise awareness of the natural resources in the area, in order to improve livelihoods through proper utilisation and conservation. This has resulted in the hosting of the "Festival of Community Arts" on Friday 25 April at the Centro Franco-Mozambicano in Maputo, Mozambique. The festival commenced at 9:00 in the morning with an exhibition of community art, ranging from wood sculptures and basket weaving to batiques, from the districts of Gorongoza and Matutuine. A workshop on "Cultural Tourism" was held at 10:00, featuring the exhibition of community-based natural resource management books and videos from Mozambique. The program for the night, which started at 19:15, highlighted traditional music, dance and theatrical performances from the two districts. As part of the Zambezi Wetlands project and the Community Mobilisation in Matutuine project, the communities had benefited from capacity building in arts and craft production as an income generating activity, IUCN reports. There was evidence that people's appreciation of natural resources had been increased by the income generated from resource-based activities like craft production. An IUCN study undertaken in the Mozambican component of the Zambezi River Basin wetlands had established that natural resources possess a significant value both in terms of the countries' national production (economic value) and people's livelihoods (financial value). Looking at the Zambezi Basin, the study found that the Zambezi Delta wetland contributes US$ 14,996,000 to the annual income of Lower Shire. These are thus the most valuable wetlands in terms of contributing to the economy of Mozambique. - This clearly demonstrates that natural resources are more than just "bushes and thistles" and more effort should be focused towards increasing awareness on their values and importance, IUCN concludes. Even greater was therefore the exigency to develop natural
resource management practices and policies tractable to the growing
awareness of direct and indirect wetland values of natural resources.
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