The promotion and use of Foyer Amélioré (FA) is one of the mitigation strategies used by GIZ/ECO Consult to reduce pressure on the timber forest resource in the Far North, as their use reduces household wood consumption and related expenditure.The dissemination and use of Foyer Amélioré Trois pierres (FA3P) and Foyer Amélioré bil-bil in the Far North region since 2015 has enabled a significant and rapid reduction in wood-energy consumption.

Dissemination of the FA3P essentially targets rural and peri-urban areas where wood is the only source of combustion (over 95% of the population depend on it) and building materials are locally available and free of charge, whereas the FA Bil-bil targets rural and urban areas due to the presence of wood-using Small and Medium Enterprises.

The East Cameroon Region is the country's main forest region. It has 24 wood processing units, generating around 500,000 m3 of scrap wood per year.

The carbonization of sawmill waste has gradually been introduced, given the enormous waste observed in wood processing (material yield of 35%).

Support consisted in organizing and structuring producer groups. Once these producer groups had been legally recognized, efforts were made to sign sawmill scrap agreements with raw material holders, in order to secure the supply of scrap wood to charcoal makers.

The professionalization of charcoal makers in the production chain has focused on the development and implementation of Environmental Impact Notices for charcoal-making activities, and training in improved charcoal-making techniques. It also involved facilitating access to the secure transport documents needed to bring coal to market.

An institutional framework for monitoring the value chain has been set up at regional level, to ensure the improvement of framework conditions for the value chain.

Once the communities have been consulted, a process of internal reflection is opened, without the participation of the executing organizations, through which the communities decide whether or not to give their consent to the project and define their degree of participation in the project based on their interest in it.

During the reflection, if any doubts or clarifications arise, the consultant is at the disposal of the communities to inform them, without recommending or intervening, but only providing information. During this stage, the communities express, if necessary, recommendations within the framework of the project activities.

In accordance with the communities' internal governance processes, they give their consent and sign a document in the presence of invited stakeholders such as local authorities and leaders of indigenous organizations. The event is covered by local and national media.

This block refers to the set of activities and processes that strengthen the exchange of information and experiences related to the design, implementation and monitoring of the solution. This allows building a shared knowledge base with the potential to facilitate the adaptation process and accelerate innovation and expected change/adjustments.

The main activities are:

• Formation and training of commissions to recover local narratives that interweave actors, perceptions, experiences, knowledge and changes that are triggered throughout the adaptation process,
• Systematization of the solution to identify lessons learned and confirm the results of the process.
• Elaboration and dissemination of materials with great communicative power that show the territory, the actions carried out and the main protagonists of the adaptation process.

The SbN citizen monitoring exercise is a useful tool in the analysis of better solution alternatives for local communities, but also to promote good governance and transparency, since it allows citizens to learn about the problems and challenges of ecosystem-based adaptation actions and to propose complementary alternatives for improving social organization, diversifying economic activities, new governance practices, among others:

• to know the problems and challenges of ecosystem-based adaptation actions and the proposal of complementary alternatives for the improvement of social organization, diversification of economic activities, new governance practices, among others.
• Raise realistic expectations about collective action and better understand their role as contributors to local well-being.
• Recognize the relationship between adaptation to climate change and local development that responds to the needs, demands and realities of vulnerable groups.

The block shows the actions taken to establish the relationship between livelihoods and ecosystems, with emphasis on the benefits they provide: services and functions that are the most important part of the natural capital of our communities.

Capacity building on Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA)

• The EbA approach oriented the analysis of livelihood vulnerability, the choice of measures of biodiversity use and ecosystem services, showing how they help people and their livelihoods to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change and indicators for monitoring the solution.

Actions in the territory

• Establishment of 2 community nurseries with a production of 9,226 native plants with which 67.5 ha. of riparian zones were reforested.
• Participation in the benefits derived from the restoration of riparian zones.
• Community reforestation in riparian zones contributing to the health, livelihoods and well-being of local communities, taking into account the needs of women and the poor and vulnerable.

The purpose of this block was to build an enabling environment for political advocacy in favor of the adaptation of municipal natural and social systems that are vulnerable to current and future climate impacts. To achieve this, two components were worked on:

Enabling conditions

• Workshops to integrate biodiversity values into climate change adaptation strategies and municipal development planning processes and to reduce socioeconomic and environmental conditions that exacerbate climate impacts.
• Establishment of agreements and synergies between ejido, municipal, state and federal authorities, as well as education and research centers to support the integration of ecosystem-based adaptation into municipal development planning and improve governance of natural assets.

Coordination mechanisms

Consolidation of horizontal and vertical networks through consultation and working groups that facilitated the development of the adaptation process:

• The Expert Working Group.
• The Municipal Adaptation Council
• The Community Working Group
• The Peasant Learning Communities

This stage is rather a stage between the technical teams with the objective of ordering and systematizing all the information.

• First, the reports are prepared, the documentation for each workshop, with a list of participants (disaggregated by age and gender), the step-by-step development of the workshop and the results recorded.
• Then the components (of the climate risk concept) with their respective factors are systematized in an excel table. A review of coherence and cause-effect logic is made at the technical team level.
• Then, cause-effect chains are built on the identified climate risks and based on the qualitative, descriptive analysis that was worked on with the producer families for their different production systems.

Ideally, this systematization and the chains are then taken to the communities and validated together. If this is not possible, it also helps to work with the technicians who know the territory and the situation on the ground.

The Resilient Family Livestock project is the result of an inter-institutional articulation process that includes:

• First degree family producer organizations (6 Rural Development Societies), second degree (National Commission for Rural Development - CNFR), and third degree of regional coverage (Confederation of Family Producer Organizations of MERCOSUR - COPROFAM).
• The National Agricultural Research Institute (INIA), a public entity under private law.
• The Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries (MGAP), a government agency that provided political backing for the development of the action.

This network interacted with other institutions such as the University of the Republic (UDELAR), the Ministry of the Environment (MA), the Uruguayan Agency for International Cooperation (AUCI), IICA and the Delegation of the European Union in Uruguay.

A new vision of innovation must recognize farmers as agents capable of observing, discovering new ways of doing through experimentation and learning (Van der Ploeg, J.D. 1990). Instead of 'technology transfer' processes, thought should be given to improving farmers' ability to learn and experiment (Leeuwis, C. 1999). Therefore, innovations at the level of complex systems, in which the human being is an integral part, are no longer conceived as external but are developed and designed in their context of application and with the participation of those who manage the systems and make decisions (Gibbons, M. et al., 1997; Leeuwis, C. 1999). This ensures the relevance, applicability and adoption of potential solutions to the problems detected. The Resilient Family Farming project, based on previous experiences developed by INIA and CNFR, promoted joint work between producers, technicians, organizations and researchers, using the co-innovation approach, to generate a cyclical process of characterization and diagnosis, implementation, monitoring and evaluation that would allow innovation to emerge from interactive learning among the actors involved.