• The leadership of the cooperative committee should be entrusted to persons in the community who are knowledgeable about the market.
• The co-operative should be made bipartisan and fair to everyone. 

- Stakeholders don't always have the same interests and goals

- Conflict between the stakeholders in the alliances are common because of their interests 

- The thoroughness of legal aspects while dealing with the local bureaucracy is needed

- The awareness of greater good has to be evoked to all the stake holders, time and again

This is a long process to get approved. Being able to show that our programs are successful and being assessed and approved took over 2 years of communication, submissions, and assessments.

To be able to obtain permission requires a group of committed volunteers that have relevant experience and are willing to participate in the program for a long term period of time.

NATURAL RESOURCE BENEFITS—the ultimate aim of UCRT’s efforts is to enable communities to benefit from their sustainably managed land and natural resources in order to improve their livelihoods. There are several key steps to this—building local capacity, strengthening governance institutions, securing rights and tenure, improving management, and finally generating benefits. We identified that UCRT needs to engage in all aspects of this process, or, through their foundational work on capacity building, governance, and securing rights are they delivering enough critical impact that only they can provide.

WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT— Capable women are often prevented from holding leadership positions due to their poverty. The entry point for these activities will be women in the Women Right’s and Leadership Forums that UCRT already works to strengthen. UCRT will build its internal capacity in order to directly assist women to develop nature-based livelihoods. UCRT will also work closely with partners who already have skills in naturebased enterprise development to bring additional knowledge, skills and opportunities to the WRLFs.

1. SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT— Building on the development of land-use plans and bylaws, UCRT expanded its approach by:
   • Ensuring communities protect connectivity between migratory livestock routes;
   • Integrating scientific knowledge with customary management approaches to improve pasture; and
   • Mainstreaming information related to climate change impacts and population growth.
   UCRT now works with elected Grazing Committees comprised of Traditional Leaders and build their knowledge and skills on rangeland management at the village level, by communicating relevant scientific knowledge in ways that can be understood in a traditional context. UCRT helps them engage with other Grazing Committee representatives from connected villages to develop cross border grazing and land use agreements. These cross-border MOUs between villages with communal grazing CCROs supports livestock and wildlife mobility and ensure resources are shared fairly and sustainably beyond village borders.
    

NATURAL RESOURCE BENEFITS—the ultimate aim of UCRT’s efforts is to enable communities to benefit from their sustainably managed land and natural resources in order to improve their livelihoods. There are several key steps to this—building local capacity, strengthening governance institutions, securing rights and tenure, improving management, and finally generating benefits. We identified that UCRT needs to engage in all aspects of this process, or, through their foundational work on capacity building, governance, and securing rights are they delivering enough critical impact that only they can provide.

WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT— Capable women are often prevented from holding leadership positions due to their poverty. The entry point for these activities will be women in the Women Right’s and Leadership Forums that UCRT already works to strengthen. UCRT will build its internal capacity in order to directly assist women to develop nature-based livelihoods. UCRT will also work closely with partners who already have skills in naturebased enterprise development to bring additional knowledge, skills and opportunities to the WRLFs.

SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT—Significant effort has been invested in supporting communities to secure formal rights over land, but tenure security alone does not mean that those lands are productive and healthy, particularly given the growing pressures created by human population growth, livestock impacts, land-use pressures, and climate change. Does work need to be done to improve the condition and sustainably manage rangelands and natural resources once they have been secured? And if so, what should UCRT’s role be in this? Building on the development of land-use plans and bylaws, UCRT expanded its approach by:
• Ensuring communities protect connectivity between migratory livestock routes;
• Integrating scientific knowledge with customary management approaches to improve pasture; and
• Mainstreaming information related to climate change impacts and population growth.

Fit-for-purpose data collection to answer particular policy questions may be redundant unless the full scope of existing data collection efforts are accessible and able to be disaggregated. Data to support ocean accounting may already exist, but are collected by environment ministries as well as by commerce and transport ministries.

It is important to work with companies who take sustainability seriously and not just jumping into the bandwagon of this conversation. Not because they can neutralize the plastic elements in their supply chain that they cannot immediately remove, they have the excuse to just produce more without any plastic recycling or reduction plan in place. These solutions must go hand-in-hand in order to achieve the best impact that our planet deserves.

In this industry, there is always tendency of greenwashing as corporations are cramming to be labeled “eco-friendly” or “sustainable” in order to remain relevant and competitive among consumers with growing demands for sustainability, not to mention to comply and respond to the global pressure on sustainability.

Thus, TONTOTON deems that an independent certificate audited by a globally-acclaimed third-party control body is a must to establish accountability. This helps us to be always on our toes in terms of ensuring all our activities are proper and aligned with the protocol.

TONTOTON also urges our business clients to sign a sustainability commitment, with the understanding that plastic credit is only a part of its overall action plan towards reducing or removing plastic in their bsupply chain.