By VINCENT OWINO

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More than half of local African groups working to conserve nature say their partnerships with international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) are riddled with lack of trust, slowing down their work to mitigate climate change.

A survey by international conservation non-profit Maliasili reveals that 71 percent of these local conservation civil society organisations in Africa find their partnerships with the international donors ‘challenging’.

The biggest issue marring these partnerships is the top-down approach used by the INGOs in communicating or dealing with the local groups, cited by over 64 percent of them, and the lack of trust in their relationships.

Other issues raised were unequal resource sharing, unclear agenda or intentions, poor communications, transactional relationships, unclear roles and different or conflicting goals.

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Inflexibility

These challenges limit the effectiveness of partnerships in reaching common objectives, slowing the outcome of environmental conservation efforts in the continent and consequently slowing the battle against climate change and biodiversity crises.

One of the respondents from a local conservator said: “Most of the grants where we work with international partners are short-lived. They come with big expectations and demand for results in such short time... There is uncertainty. In the field, things change, but some INGOs’ grant budgets are not flexible to emerging circumstances in the field. There is a mismatch between the actual needs of local organizations and what the grants offer.”

Despite the numerous challenges, 88 percent of the local organisations say these partnerships are important to them and 82 percent say the international partners are crucial in providing the much needed resources for their conservation work.

“How their engagements with local organisations are structured can create significant barriers that block truly effective partnerships from developing,” the organisation said in a statement after the launch of the report in Kigali on Thursday.

Resson Kantai Duff, Maliasili’s Portfolio Funding Director, says there is need to improve partnerships and make them work because both actors need each other for their conservation work to succeed.

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“Indigenous people play a critical role in the delivery of long-term stewardship of ecosystems, safeguarding of wildlife, and dealing with the climate and biodiversity crisis that we face,” she said.

Effective partnerships with INGOs would involve good communication, trust, and clear definition of roles, cited by over 80 percent of the respondents.

They would also like their partners to share in their goals, complement their expertise, have a long-term rather than a transactional relationship with them, and to also give them some credit in their success stories.

“These conditions of success are dependent on a partnership approach framed around listening and co-creating a space to understand the goals and needs of local organisations as a response to current context and challenges,” Maliasili said in the report.

“Neither of the two groups can achieve their work alone. So, at the end of the day, what needs to happen is not an end to these relationships because clearly, they’re important, but power and decision-making needs to move to the local level.”

“There can be a lot better, greater conservation impact; a lot faster work that can happen on the ground, but things are being tied up in misaligned expectations, confusion over roles and all these challenges,” Ms Duff told The EastAfrican.

“We’re already seeing what can go wrong, but we can see very clearly the route to what can go right; and it requires transparency, reflection, and a lot of hard work.”