Documentation and dissemination of results

Bahia de Todos Santos World Surfing Reserves Surfonomics Report

Surfonomics Study

BBC Article about Surfonomics

Development of a participatory management plan

The parties of the Laponia Process envisioned to create a new management plan for the property using the values within three areas: the natural environment and its high values; the living Sámi culture and reindeer industry; and the historical heritage arising from previous usage of the land. This participatory management plan is based on a shared understanding of the World Heritage property by all stakeholders involved in the process and the implementation of the plan. Besides the governing institutions (municipalities, county, governmental agencies in charge of heritage conservation), important stakeholders to be considered and integrated in this participatory process are the Sámi villages which are organizations responsible for the reindeer husbandry within a specific area. It is a legal entity and they are organized through village meetings.

The platform for dialogue created with the Laponia Process.
Reindeer Husbandry Act (member of a Sámi village organization).
The constitution provides special protection to Sámi people and their rights.
The Sámi are the Indigenous people of Sweden (determined by the Parliament) which gives them a special legal status in Swedish law.
The Right of Public Access.
Willingness from the authority to try something new, new working methods for management.

Management plans where different stakeholders have to compromise all the time might be too unspecific. There can be themes in the management plan that the organization have no prerequisites to implement and then people will be disappointed if the organization is not working with them. For instance, in our management plan, there are sentences that state how we should be working with the Sámi language, and therefore, we are doing it to some extent. But language is not our main focus and then sometimes people may be disappointed with the results.

Monitoring

Establishment of an inclusive dialogue process: the Laponia Process

The Laponia Process was an approach to dialogue created and developed by a diversity of stakeholders in the Laponian Area World Heritage property. Since Laponia is a large area which consists of several protected areas, to establish a coordinated management system as a whole has been very challenging since its inscription in the World Heritage List. The County Administrative Board of Norbotten and the Sámi communities and municipalities of Jokkmokk and Gällivare started originally to prepare their conservation programs independently. The Laponia Process started by the initiative of the Governor of Norrbotten in 2005 including all stakeholders in a process of dialogue based on a set of common values, which would lead the parties to agree in crucial issues and the terms in which the Laponian Area should be managed. All decisions were determined to be taken by consensus, and new regulations for the national parks and nature reserves were requested. In 2006, the parties signed a common agreement which they sent to the Government, which contained:

A set of common basic values
Common intentions for a number of efforts
The establishment of a temporary Laponia delegation
Preparations for the start of a World Heritage management group with a Sámi majority on the committee.

The political will of the Governor of Norbotten, the Sámi village organizations through the association Midjá Ednam, the interest of the municipalities of Jokkmokk and Gällivare, and the endorsement of the SEPA were essential conditions for starting the process. The initiative originates in the acceptance of the different realities of the parties involved and the strong will to co-create a new management for the Laponian Area. Moreover, there was enough financing for the project and each group participated with the same economical prerequisites.

To be able to establish an organization based on consensus and develop a new way of management, one needs to listen to people and try to learn why they are thinking and doing like they are (it is norms and values that forms their ideas and practise) but also openly explain why one is thinking and doing in the way one is, because that also depends on the norms and values one has in life. This process takes time, and it is about learning new knowledge from each other and accept it. This is also a process one cannot do in the office, one needs to go out and meet people in their ordinary life regularly. It cannot be rushed or think it can be a quick fix. The Laponia Process took six years until all stakeholders involved could agree upon a common organization and management plan.

To do a process like the Laponia Process – you need to have time, financing, and the “right” people involved. Listen to each other. Time to take home tricky questions and discuss them with other representatives for the stakeholders, before decisions are made.

Creating a shared vision of land management through water

In order to promote an operational connectivity between the diverse upriver and downriver sub-basins (zones) of a river basin, including both ecosystems and productive activities, water was chosen as the conductive element; the element to bring the zones and stakeholders together. Modelling of the surface water supply and sediment retention in different zones permitted the identification of provider-recipient-accumulation relationships. Through this, the dynamics between demand for hydrological services (e.g. populations, tourist zones) and those that produce them (mountainous zones with forest cover) could be identified and connected. Based hereon, the different stakeholders were brought together to learn about and exchange on key information on zonal levels of production and services available. This in turn led to the identification of what should be done where and by whom.

A network of NGOs with sufficient experience to mentor producers and other stakeholders;
Availability of quality teaching materials and methods usable by and with communities;
Commitment and interest from different stakeholders and government insitutions towards the whole project

The intrinsic connectivity of the PAMIC methodology has proven to be the aspect that attracts interest from the government entities and from land use stakeholders. The tool helps to identify who they can work with regarding productive activities (i.e. coffee, sugar production). This aspect has enabled local actors as a group to understand the dynamics between micro watershed units.

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

Testimonio Miguel

Fundación Karla Wheelock

Palabras de Jane Goodall

Fundación Karla Wheelock

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.

National

Prizes for the Winners

Equipo ganador en La Antártida

Fundación Karla Wheelock

Mi cumbre, mi decisión

Fundación Karla Wheelock

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.

Global

Training Program

Grupo de Líderes

Fundación Karla Wheelock

Niños en talleres

Fundación Karla Wheelock

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

¿Qué es un proyecto Ambiental?

Fundación Karla Wheelock

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

Sharing project information with focus group

Van Riper Lab

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.