This awareness-raising guide for provincial and municipal administrators was developed as part of the “Program for research, information exchange, awareness-raising and conservation of biodiversity in Burundi” set up as part of the Memorandum of Understanding between the OBPE (ex National Institute for the Environment and Nature Conservation, INECN) and the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Belgium (IRSCnb).

Despite their capital importance, protected areas can only play all the roles of supply, regulation, protection,... only when they are well protected. The Constitution of the Republic of Burundi states that natural resources must be preserved. Laws and decrees relating to the creation and management of protected areas exist, such as law no. 1/10 of 30 May 2011 on the creation and management of protected areas in Burundi, which accords a large part to the joint management of these ecosystems between the State and the local populations. The Environmental Code, the Water Code and the Forest Code strongly support the protection of these areas rich in biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Despite this, the biodiversity of protected areas is in continuous deterioration as a result of various anthropogenic actions. The various protection actions often carried out by technical nature conservation services lead to poor results. The various actors, who should normally support these conservatives, remain hands crossed and in most cases, some of them participate in the destruction of these ecosystems in defense.

In this activity of protecting protected areas, the territorial administration should play a key role. Indeed, the number of protectors, which is insufficient, is very unable to monitor all protected areas. Rather, it is the territorial administration that should participate effectively in maintaining them. Currently, it is not uncommon to find that several provincial and communal administrations, instead of supporting protection, instead participate in the destruction of protected areas by seeking various personal interests or by taking them as vacant land for various public activities. Because of the positive effects of these protected areas and the negative impacts resulting from their disappearance, we can only consider the efficient and effective participation of the territorial administration in their conservation. The time has come to analyze the role of local authorities in maintaining the threats of protected areas in order to reserve an appropriate remedy, that of changing behavior.