Migration is an important strategy for coping with environmental variability and change, but it can also place additional stress on ecosystems. Policymakers and practitioners are not always fully aware of these threats, nor fully prepared to manage them through appropriate interventions. Conservation professionals in the field therefore have a key role to play in reducing the harmful impacts that migration can have on the environment, and in mitigating any tensions that may emerge between migrant and host communities.

Based on lessons learned from three extensive case studies in the Great Lakes region of Africa, the International Institute for Sustainable Development has developed a toolkit on migration and conservation for practitioners from government, civil society, and international organizations, as well as local authorities, who work in critical ecosystems and see human migration as having a negative impact.

The toolkit is designed to guide conservation actors through a process of analyzing their operating context, assessing migration impacts, and designing response strategies. It presents a series of tools that can be used to accomplish this goal and describes ways the user can ensure an inclusive, conflict- and gender-sensitive response to migration that benefits both communities and their ecosystems.

Migration in the Great Lakes Region

Traditionally, migration in the Great Lakes region was primarily practiced by pastoralists moving across countries and borders in search of pasture. However, in recent decades, political instability, economic pre