Inter-institutional governance at different levels

To create and develop PAMIC, diverse government entities belonging to the environment sector joined forces to design a cutting edge and innovative project: the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC) coordinated the construction of the PAMIC plans; The National Comission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) consolidated the management and operation of the project within the Protected Natural Areas (ANP); and the National Forestry Comission (CONAFOR) implemented Payments for Environmental Services schemes from the biodiversity fund. The Mexican Nature Conservation Fund (FMSN) contributed its experience in the management of financing schemes. All in all, this created two further funds to stimulate activities and impacts. Moreover, the inter-institutional coordination included i) a Technical Project Committee that supervised and directed the operation of C6; ii) a Unit Project Coordinator and iii) two Regional Project Units, which were responsible for the daily coordination of technical and logistical issues. Such a design has been an essential aspect that generated major advances in land use planning for collective benefits.

  • Very good coordination between the institutions, all of which share a clear vision of the use of different financial and management instruments;
  • Sufficient financial and institutional resources;
  • Experience and interest of the institutions involved;
  • Experience in the implementation of existing programs, e.g. social assistance programs, subsidies, Payments for Environmental Services, etc.
  • Coordination efforts benefit from forms of polycentric governance between levels and stakeholders. This scheme of governance is backed by formal agreements between institutions that establish the rules of the game for all the other organizations and stakeholders involved in the project in a transparent manner.
  • Formal institutional agreements can produce a planning instrument which is dynamic and can strengthen decision-making, helping each stakeholder to make the most of different planning elements for land use management.
  • There has been a visible increase in confidence on the part of key institutions in local scale land use planning processes. This can be seen in improved decision making and use of programme funds.
Follow-up with Graduates

The program includes working with the graduates who become "fellows" of the program and help subsequent participants.

Continuous training of graduates so that they can in turn teach the younger ones.

Linking up with groups that already have performed previous work, such as the boy scouts.

Children learn a lot from their peers, sometimes much more than they learn from their teachers.

Follow-up with graduates gives these young people the opportunity to continue contributing to the nurturing of nature and sustainable development.

Prizes for the Winners

While all participants entered a training program, the winners won an extraordinary trip to Antarctica, for which they also had to prepare their minds and bodies.

On that trip, they also learned about the scientists who monitor the climate station and the site. There they saw how everything is interconnected and that their local projects had an impact on climate at the local level.

1) Funding: each expedition required financial resources that were managed by companies that sponsored the program.

 

2) Agreements with scientists or administrators of the Natural Protected Areas. The sites visited are not open to the public, so visiting them involved a process to obtain the appropriate permits.

It was very expensive to take them to Antarctica and it was only possible to take very few teams. That is why we started to give prizes to more teams, taking them to other natural protected areas, closed to mass visitation, where more children could have a learning experience and a larger number of children would be selected as winners.

Training Program

The transformation of meaningful learning comes precisely when the elements of knowledge and contact with nature converge for the participants, including 4 key values: 1) Building character, 2) Order, 3) Respect and 4) Unity or Solidarity.

 

Each activity, each expedition brings with it the strengthening of the participants' learning, with sensory and emotional exercises.

In the case of the Karla Wheelock Foundation, it was she who developed all the programs, planned the logistics of each trip, created the agreements and sought funding. In order to do so, she was also in an ongoing learning process where every day she had to become even more professional.

The process gave rise to a learning model, where the children learned, the trainers learned from the children, the parents learned from their children, the school learned from its students and the program learned with each expedition in order to improve its performance.

 

 

Call for Action

Launch a call to public schools in Mexico City for five children and one student to propose an environmental project for their schools.

Agreements with the Ministry of Education that would allow the issuance of a call for action in public schools.

1. Both children and teachers were not clear about what it means to undertake an environmental project, so this had to be taken into consideration.

 

2. The work to keep the government involved is complex because it must be managed with each governmental change and that becomes a very tiring endeavour, so we are now looking to create a legal initiative where children must prepare an environmental project in their schools in order to graduate.

Reflection period and integrating outcomes

The purpose of the reflection period and integration of project outcomes is to continually disseminate findings from this research to residents, businesses, government agencies, scientists, and other relevant decision-makers who are shaping the future of protected areas, those in the Denali region. In turn, the research team is building knowledge of how residents are discussing and reacting to pressures related to rapid social, economic, and landscape change, and this knowledge is being reported back to stakeholders. This cyclical process of co-creation is occurring throughout the project. The medium for reflection is taking a variety of forms, particularly through webinars, in-depth discussions with the local executive committee, and reports provided to decision-makers. The reflection period will culminate in a film about communities in the Denali region, as well as wrap-up workshops at the end of the project. These workshops are being framed as spaces for civic discovery whereby residents become aware of the diverse values for places that they do (and do not) share with others in the region. They are encouraged to recognize potential opportunities for growth in ways that take advantage of shared thought, directed actions and channeled support for preserving the desired character of places.

All previous phases of this project are instrumental in supporting this building block. The mixed-methods databases from this project provide the empirical basis for engaging and reflecting on lessons learned from the research process. Existing relationships across an array of stakeholders is also important for encouraging participation and maximizing impacts that emerge from the study.

Major lessons learned throughout the project include: (1) Trust building is an ever-present set of actions that needs continual attention. (2) There is a shift towards replacing the dichotomy of use versus preservation, by the complexity of environmental sustainability, industrial tourism, and landscape change. (3) Charting a course for inclusive conservation will require understanding processes that reduce tensions across stakeholder groups. (4) Moving away from generalized conflict, to clarify specific points of conflict and appreciate points of agreement. 

Generando voluntad política y apoyo social

La cooperación transfronteriza para la PEM en la Macaronesia europea sólo es posible si se da un paso más allá del ámbito científico.

 

En este sentido, se pretende, por un lado, difundir tanto los resultados obtenidos en el proyecto como la información de relevancia para la cooperación transfronteriza a la población interesada en los temas marinos y costeros de la región. Esto se consigue mediante la elaboración y difusión de cuatro boletines informativos que aportan información sobre la ordenación del espacio marino, en general, y sobre la realidad socio-ecológica de la Macaronesia europea, en particular.

 

Por otro lado, es necesario mostrar a los responsables de la toma de decisiones, de los tres archipiélagos y de los dos estados, las principales recomendaciones para avanzar en la cooperación transfronteriza para la PEM en la Macaronesia europea. Para ello, se elaboraron recomendaciones políticas. Este documento propone la consolidación del concepto de Océano Macaronésico Europeo, un espacio común de cooperación en el que los Estados miembros (y terceros países) se esfuerzan por alcanzar una visión compartida y dar así respuestas eficaces a los retos marítimos a los que se enfrentan.

  • La Macaronesia europea comparte relaciones ecológicas, sociales, culturales y económicas. Esto permite encontrar canales comunes de entendimiento para la cooperación transfronteriza en el medio marino.
  • Todos los Estados miembros que comparten una cuenca marítima deben cooperar para garantizar que los planes marinos sean coherentes entre sí y funcionales a través de las fronteras.
  • España y Portugal no han aprobado aún sus planes espaciales marinos, siendo una oportunidad para diseñar, en una fase temprana, herramientas de cooperación.

La filosofía de integración que subyace en el proyecto de la Unión Europea es transferible a la región marina de la Macaronesia europea. Por lo tanto, esto debe estimular los esfuerzos de colaboración para la adopción de una gestión más amplia e integral de un territorio que ya es compartido (europeo).

 

Es necesario considerar la importancia de generar la suficiente voluntad política y social para que la cooperación transfronteriza se convierta en un eje transversal e institucionalizado dentro de los procesos de planificación del espacio marino en la Macaronesia europea.

 

Debido a la lejanía de los tres archipiélagos, los boletines se difunden casi exclusivamente de forma digital, lo que dificulta el acceso a la información de la población socialmente más vulnerable. Por ello, es necesario reforzar los mecanismos de difusión y divulgación en los tres archipiélagos.

Multi stakeholder Forums

CEJAD realized the value of engagement is very critical in getting various stakeholders with different needs to realign consequently unlocking resources as well as forge alliances for meaningful participatory development.

Forums were held in the community to ensure that public participation is at the heart of the marine plastic waste as well as getting community groups to own the problem and take charge.

  • Alliance: Establishing alliances has contributed to ensure the perpetuity of the plastics value chain as well as the development of marketing platforms for plastic waste products.
  • Stakeholder engagement:  Establishing platforms and fora is very critical in getting various stakeholders with different needs to realign and get buy-in from partners consequently unlocking resources as well as forge alliances for meaningful participatory development. Forums were held in the community to ensure that public participation is at the heart of development.
  • Proper documentation must be followed through with action points that are all rounded as well as approved by all to enhance accountability.
  • Amplify and provide visibility for impactful members so as they can be champions and ambassadors for plastic waste management.
  • Link the training to sources funding for the sustainability of the ventures for desired outcomes as well as continuous mentorships and coaching sessions including table banking.
  • Cooperation must be at the heart of the engagement to facilitate waste management initiatives.

 

 

4. Internal and external communication.

Communication enables an understanding of the objectives and the actions that have been taken to achieve adoption of the principles that sustain the program, by all the members of the organization and the local community. It is a way to highlight the effort made and the policies implemented in order to ensure the sustainability of the productive processes. Communication within the organization allows dissemination of the vision, values and actions put in place to improve environmental performance, the commitment to the community and the quality of the products offered External communication specifically allows dissemination of the organization's efforts to improve its productive and environmental performance to the local community, buyers, suppliers and any other social actor relevant to their interests. 

Having smooth internal communication mechanisms between the company and the staff; and the presence of external local/regional media interested in production/environment topics.

1- Due to internal communication, employees develop a sense of appreciation and commitment towards the actions carried out by the company, which are then transferred to their family and social environments. 
2- The alliance between the company and civil society in communication matters, increases the credibility of messages, especially if the communication comes from civil society.
3- The positive response of people to communication processes increases trust in what has been done and the company's commitment.
 

Adaptive Management

BFD has started using SMART as an adaptive management tool in the Sundarbans which is among the key potential benefits of the approach.

Presentation of reports to SMART enforcement committee helped the decision makers of BFD to plan patrols based on data queries and interpretations from actual SMART reports. This with on-board mentoring observations helped BFD decision makers to take further management decisions.

BFD is using SMART patrol reports and assess how patrol plans have been adapted based on the results of previous patrols and how effective these adaptations have been in increasing the effectiveness of SMART patrols as evidenced by the area covered, number of arrests and successful prosecutions of criminals committing serious wildlife, fisheries and forest crimes such as poaching and poison fishing; confiscations of boats, weapons, snares and traps, and wildlife carcasses and body parts; and trends (increasing, stable or decreasing) in sighting rates of key threatened wildlife species.

Awareness of managers on adaptive management and role of SMART data on that front

BFD need to enhance capacities of managers to play with SMART data and project/forecast changes/trends and incorporate forward looking measures towards conservation