QLF International

• Home
• Our Approach
  • Themes
  • Projects
• Programs
• In More Detail
• How You Can Help
• Contact
• QLF Home

"Ten years ago we began our cooperation with QLF...Now we are able to help thousands of rural people...to live better lives with higher respect for nature.
"We could never have done it without what we learned thanks to QLF."

Stewardship

QLF’s programs are encompassed in the concept of stewardship. Stewardship means, simply, people taking care of places. In its broadest sense, it refers to the essential role individuals and communities play in the careful management of their natural and cultural wealth for now and for future generations. More specifically, it can be defined as efforts to create, nurture and enable responsibility in landowners and resource users to manage and protect land and its natural and cultural heritage.

Parks and Protected Areas

As an obvious expression of stewardship, parks and protected areas are an important component of a healthy society and environment. Though some park units have been in existence for some time, many lack management capacity, and some have no staff at all. Protected areas in many of the countries we work are new, and parks systems in any modern sense are in their infancy. In many instances, authorities lack training and experience dealing with communities in and around their parks. Of particular interest is the growing trend towards private protected areas, and ways to work with landowners—individual, corporate, and nonprofit organizations—to achieve conservation and integrate privately protected areas in national protected area system planning.

Protected Landscapes

A related theme, Protected Landscapes, is an emerging focus for our work and builds on our recent work with the Protected Landscapes Task Force of IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas. The protected landscape approach recognizes that the cultural and natural values of landscapes are inextricably linked, and that the communities living in or near these landscapes are central to sustaining them. It is an inclusive approach, relying on participation and partnerships that bring together diverse stakeholders. This approach to conservation is discussed in a book we recently published through IUCN, The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community (Brown, Mitchell and Beresford 2005).

Commitment and Partnership

We recognize that significant change does not come after a single project or short-term intervention. Once QLF commits to a region, we usually continue to be involved as long as we can be useful to our local partners. In many cases this is for a decade or more.

Acting Globally, Thinking Locally

Most of our initiatives respond to the requests of local partners to deliver programs and opportunities according to local needs. We believe that the most effective way to protect natural resources and preserve cultural heritage is through an active, informed and engaged civil society operating within a rational regulatory environment.