Consultancy on Agricultural Development Support to Rural Communities Surrounding Conservation Areas

Job description

THE Project

Project Background
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is investing in conservation initiatives that, in partnership with the Zambian Government, traditional leadership, local communities, and conservation partners, is focused on fostering inclusive and resilient terrestrial and freshwater conservation across a functionally connected Kafue-West Lunga Landscape. The Kafue-West Lunga Landscape is a mosaic of state and communal lands comprising approximately 40% of Zambia’s conservation estate, anchored by Kafue National Park (2.24M ha) and West Lunga National Park (0.17M ha), extending across 12 Game Management Areas (GMAs) totalling 5M ha, and several National Forest Reserves and communal lands linking them. A key part of TNCs work is restoring these GMAs and key corridors that connects them to high-conservation-value national park buffers that generate tangible and long-term benefits for local communities, and safeguarding wildlife dispersal areas.

Rural communities living adjacent to conservation and protected areas are often highly dependent on subsistence and small-scale agriculture for their livelihoods. Unfortunately, conventional agricultural practices in these areas frequently contribute to environmental degradation, including deforestation, erosion, biodiversity loss, unsustainable water use, and expansion of agricultural activities into conservation zones. These impacts undermine conservation objectives and pose long-term threats to ecosystem services, food security, and rural development.

Recognizing the need to balance livelihood enhancement with biodiversity conservation, this contract aims to establish a model for conservation-compatible agriculture and implement it in select geographies, with the potential for broader landscape-scale replication. The selected partner will collaborate with local communities, conservation stakeholders, and agricultural authorities to improve agricultural systems in ways that align with conservation goals, reduce environmental pressure, and deliver tangible livelihood benefits. These agricultural benefits will be explicitly tied to community conservation performance—meaning that as communities invest in and uphold conservation practices, they will directly benefit from the increased natural capital and ecosystem services that result. In this way, agriculture becomes both a livelihood strategy and a conservation incentive, reinforcing the value of protecting and restoring natural landscapes.

The body of work should be anchored on a set of core principles designed to align agricultural development with conservation objectives while improving community livelihoods. First, it will promote agricultural practices that are compatible with conservation and biodiversity goals by encouraging land use approaches that reduce erosion and topsoil loss, improve water management, and minimize the use of harmful agricultural inputs. This potentially includes supporting ecological farming systems and agroforestry models that help conserve native vegetation and protect wildlife corridors. Second, the consultancy will aim to reduce agricultural pressure on conservation areas through sustainable intensification, focusing on increasing productivity on existing farmland to limit the need for further expansion into protected ecosystems. Lastly, the consultancy will emphasize community empowerment and livelihood enhancement by delivering tangible conservation dividends such as agricultural input support, technical training, and improved access to markets, while also strengthening local governance and encouraging active participation in conservation-linked livelihood initiatives.

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