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 is to generate tools to understand and evaluate the impacts and opportunities that biodiversity and ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change offer in the face of climate change conditions. To this end, three types of training processes were developed:

Valuation of ecosystem services

• Awareness-raising actions on the role of riparian ecosystem services in reducing the vulnerability of livelihoods to floods.

Increased climate resilience of livelihoods,

• Workshops for the elaboration of impact chains (community analysis of the vulnerability of their livelihoods).
• Workshops to define and prioritize actions for adaptation to climate change.
• Working meetings for the analysis and development of the implementation strategy.

Actions in the territory

• Training and formation of the AbE Squadron (group of women and men in charge of seed collection, location of sites to be reforested and planning of activities for this purpose).

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

To create a wide community support for conservation, the Ecotourism Benefit Fund (EBF) was introduced by NEPL NP. Through the EBF, the NEPL NP not only delivers to the villages surrounding the ecotourism area a fixed amount of money for every tourist going on the tour, but an additional amount is provided depending on the numbers and type of wildlife encountered by the visitors on the tour. To encourage conservation efforts, greater incentives are provided for sightings of species with higher conservation importance.

While the NEPL NP ecotourism program provides direct tourism revenue opportunities to members from only around 40% of households in 4 village, in total 26 villages receive financial benefits annually from the NEPL NP tourism program based on their conservation efforts.

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 purpose of this building block is the implementation of participatory workshops with a maximum of 30 members/participants from producer families per workshop in the different territories (communities, sites, associations, etc.).

These workshops are carried out with the objective of:

(a) sensitize and raise awareness among producers, as well as technicians or other stakeholders on climate variability and its impacts; and.

b) assess and make a qualitative and descriptive analysis of perceived climate hazards and their direct impacts, exposure and vulnerabilities for the different production systems.

In addition, the first ideas for solutions / adaptation measures for a better resilience to the identified climate risks are worked out.

All this work is facilitated in a participatory, playful way, motivating all participants to speak and make their contributions, documenting the different steps of the workshop and its results.

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.

The project increases the generation of ecosystem goods and services and promotes the establishment of commercially viable natural resource-based businesses managed by local communities. To establish such businesses, the project conducted a baseline study including an assignment on the Economics and Market Analysis for establishing financially viable natural resource-based businesses in the Gambia. The report proposed 7 potential business portfolios and defined the financial implications of these natural resource-based businesses for the contributions to the National Forest Fund (NFF) through a detailed discounted cash flow analysis. One such activity to facilitate the establishment of these businesses was the introduction of bee-fodder tree species to support bee farming in the community-owned forests and community-protected areas (CPAs).

The project also facilitated the integration of the EbA approach and natural resource-based businesses into existing government plans and activities and demonstrated and quantified their commercial viability to promote further investment by the government and the private sector beyond the project implementation period.

Based on the results of baseline studies that determined climatic risks, different ecosystem-based adaptation and mitigation measures were identified and individual farmers and community-based organizations were incentivized to lead the various activities through diverse training (led by World Agroforestry (ICRAF)); including:

1. The establishment of a two-meter-wide fire belt around all preferred mother trees, large trees within a forest that act as centralized hubs, supporting communication and nutrient exchange amongst trees.
2. Farmer-managed tree growing approach, named Zai Pits, half-moon planting pits, which farmers create in the hardpan soil using hand tools or plows and animals. These act as micro-water catchments, holding about four times the amount of water that normally runs off the land but also compost, thereby increasing production.
3. Adding water-buffering vegetation around the runoff water collection reservoir to reduce wind flow over the reservoir and thus reduce evaporation from the system. The system also facilitates reduction in runoff and enhances groundwater recharge through infiltration.
4. Rainwater harvesting, storage, and distribution techniques were implemented to support the restoration efforts and overcome the shortage in water resources due to extreme weather conditions and low rainfall.

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.