Monitoring | PANORAMA

Use of advanced technology

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Representation of the areas covered by the drone patrols. Three main take of spots where used (represented with a drone icon), used to cover a long area of more than km. In orange the flightpath in the MPA of Murdeira, in green the MPA of Costa Fragata an

C:\Users\artur\Documents\Biopama\drone

Use of advanced drone technology with thermal and infra-red imaging allows greater capture of infractions within the targeted areas, as well as the ability to travel further distances for longer time. This technology allows greater distances to be covered with less resources required, for example, more isolated nesting beaches that would require a larger team of people for security reasons, or more complex logistics in locating teams to those beaches.

Intensive training, or recruitment of a qualified person(s), to use this advanced technology is essential. In this case the drone pilots had previous experience in night flights using thermal imaging so were able to quickly learn how best to use and understand the new infra-red camera imaging. It is also essential that the persons have knowledge of the target area and experience in navigating within the area, both via drone and by vehicle.

Advanced technology is useful in itself but is much more effective when partnered with conservative techniques. In this case, whilst the drone patrol was effective in covering a large area, quickly, it was unable to fly over the full time period (all night). Therefore, when combined with foot patrols, it enhanced coverage within the MPA and allowed for greater protection withing the MPA and it’s surrounding isolated beaches. It is also important to consider that whilst the drone could quickly and easily reach isolated areas, when infractions were discovered, the response of the suitable people (either foot patrols or authorities) was much slower, allowing for poachers to escape being detained. Whilst effective for deterrent of poaching, which was an advantage in this case, for other contexts this may be a strong factor in planning the strategy.

Monitoring

Local

Building up: Implementation and Monitoring—role of self-analysis, fundraising and tools

Implementation is the desire of any plan. It is the “boots on the ground” that counts. A portion of the equation is developing a protected area enforcement plan. Equally important is the capacity to implement. To determine ability to implement, an organization must carry out a self-analysis. The plan can outline fundraising needs: capacity needs, equipment and tools. Additionally, an organization can have a buildup period for implementation showing donors the full picture of desired impact.

Adequate financing and resources are needed for implementation and monitoring. If you have these then tracking and monitoring provides the results needed to show the benefit of an enforcement plan.

The enforcement strategy is a plan, implementation is determined by other factors such as resources. The plan can be a fundraising tool as it clearly outlines desired state and needs.

Implementation

Monitoring

Documentation and dissemination of results

Local

National

Adopting and adaption

Interacting with local chief

Francis Sakala

community meeting

Francis Sakala

This process involved peer-to-peer learning among the different sites of the project beneficiaries, to learn from one another, adopt some good governance practices and adapt to their local situations such as how to structure good benefit-sharing mechanisms.

The beneficiary communities shared similar governance challenges, and sometimes the same landscape and were familiar with common issues. Through sharing of the lessons at the various sites and joint implementation and peer-to-peer interaction were an important part to share the success stories and challenges.

Governance challenges are similar across sites in Zambia and require enacting national policies and legislation to support efficient community-led conservation. Community based natural resources management approaches are crucial to successful management of protected areas.

Implementation

Monitoring

Documentation and dissemination of results

Local

Subnational

Information booklet Luano GMA

Project blog

Action Planning, communicating, and support.

Action planning meeting

Francis Sakala

This building block assisted in developing actions to address the governance challenges, communication of information, training, and ensuring ongoing mentorship and coaching for the Community Resources Boards in the implementation of governance actions. The key issue of this stage was creating opportunities for having a shared vision and collective actions.

Good stakeholder participation, and support by the government and the traditional leadership. The participatory nature of the tool allows broader collective action planning and assessment.

It requires proper planning and identification of key governance issues to be analyzed and acted upon. Usually, you would want to focus on relevant governance issues such as gender equity, participation, and information sharing.

Information booklet Luano GMA

Project blog

Collaboration

Blue Parks relies heavily on collaborations with other conservation NGOs, communications and marketing professionals, government leaders, MPA managers, scientists, and local ocean champions. Growing the network of Blue Parks and amplifying the Blue Park standard for conservation effectiveness requires many partners.

Blue Parks has benefitted from the contributions of many partners. These collaborations have been made possible by a growing awareness that MPA coverage alone is not sufficient to safeguard biodiversity -- that we need to fully implement high quality MPAs in order to see conservation outcomes, and most MPAs are not yet well implemented.

These collaborations have also grown out of Marine Conservation Institute's long-standing history as a trusted partner among marine scientists, conservation organizations, and governments.

Nurturing collaborations across multiple sectors (government, NGO, academia) requires clear communication. We have found that regular, though not too frequent, outreach and communication with these partners keeps the collaborations active, and that these communications are most effective when they are designed for the audience, so we often send separate communications to partners in different sectors.

Documentation and dissemination of results

Sustainable management of forest resources

Training on bush fire controlling

@giz

Bush fire danger index sign board

@giz

Training in forest monitoring

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Logging of trees in natural forests for charcoal and fire-wood production is mostly unregulated and not monitored in Ghana. This leads to overexploitation and unsustainable forest management. The implementation of an inventory and monitoring system which based on communities’ needs is key to achieve sustainable forest management.

Community forest management plans were developed which integrate the sustainable management of the project restoration and energy wood plantation sites, but also the protection of selected zones like e.g. river buffers and general management of the forest resources. Regular uncontrolled bushfires destroy upcoming natural regeneration and planted tree seedlings. A bush fire management system was therefore integrated in the plans as well and supported by the training of fire volunteers in patrolling and suppression of uncontrolled fires

Communities and charcoal producers need to be well integrated in the development of a forest monitoring and management system. Beside that it needs to be supported by the local authorities to determine, for example the sustainable volume of wood which can be annually harvested and to select zones and tree species which should be protected from logging. For a functionable bush fire management it is key that especially farmers and herdsman are aware about the risks and damages uncontrolled fires can cause and how they can control them.

Success lies beyond the project

During the lifespan of the project, activities are usually going well. Everybody is happy. But this is normal because the system on which the project operates is injected with external expertise and resources: it is boosted.

The real efficicency of the intervention can only be measured after the end of the project.

Donors need to account for this monitoring aspect.

Measure the intervention success one, two or five uears after the end of the project.

Community processes can only emerge from individual commitment to shared interests.

An individual will only invest the required knowledge, time and energy if they perceive the process as resonating with their inner self.

The most difficult part is to provide room for this inner self to express itself in a meaningful way to build trust and agency in the transformation process and contribute to the collective objective.

Pathways to sustainable and healthy systems probably depend more on the respect of that inner self than on the level of information and capacity production.

Monitoring

Local

Fully transdisciplinary project

ProSuLi being a development project implemented by researchers, we wanted to test if a full transdisciplinary project could make sense for the benefit of TFCA.

No activities were imposed on final beneficiaries beside the participatory approach (that was flexible adapted ot each of the four sites' contexts).

The project’s hypothesis was that collective action supported by targeted capacity building and co-designed governance systems could result in a better appropriation of one’s livelihood and more sustainable use of natural resources for the benefit of the whole social-ecological system.

Strong multidisciplinary project team, many of us already knowing each others and with many social science colleagues.

Time for trust building between project members and local actors / final beneficiaires (usually a 3-years project would not have enough time for such trust building).

Resources for mulitple interventions/missions that cannot be listed at the beginning of the project as the apporach needs to adapt to the local context (e.g., power-relationships between local actors).

Such a transdisciplinary project challenges all stakeholders, including academic principles and dogmas, because it demands embracing more complexity and accepting complex courses of action that are not ‘simple solutions’.

The project team needs to be transparent and willing to learn any existing lessons from previous and ongoing development interventions and to source additional expertise along the way.

Implementation

Monitoring

Local

Elaborate follow-up activities early in the process

Participants during group exercise

GIZ

The effectiveness of training is increased if follow-up with participants is ensured. This allows the organisers to check on the feasibility of follow-on activities discussed during the training and can account for the follow-up needs[NM1] of the participants. Follow-up activities can range from webinars to on-site activities in the respective countries

[NM1]Needs: unclear. = if something has not been understood or if there are follow up questions, or resources needed or something of the sort?

If so: see suggestion for possible re-formulation.

To design appropriate follow-up activities, the content of the training needs to be defined (see Building Block 2). The diversity of activities also depends on the support structure in the countries. If partner (health or climate) projects are in place in the respective participating countries, this allows for greater diversity in follow-up activities that can be conducted.

Consideration to possible follow-up activities should be given already during the planning process;
It is advisable to launch a survey to ask for participants interest and preference;
The creation of a What’s App Group is a quick, easy and cost-effective way to stay in touch with participants and continuously share relevant documents and news with them.

Monitoring

Documentation and dissemination of results

PPT on the Regional Training presented to GIZ colleagues from Health and Social Protection Network

First out of three follow-up webinaire with participants on specific topic of interest from the training

Environmental DNA

Internationally, coral restoration and biodiversity are still lacking behind in terms of certification and uniform verification / measurement standards. To address this issue, we adopt eDNA - environmental DNA - to measure biodiversity, though in the long run, international standards would definitely increase our recognition and perceived reliability.

Our Chief Scientist and Co-founder Dr David Baker is also an Associate Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity at the University of Hong Kong, as well as a multi-disciplinary marine ecologist with a focus on coral reef species. He leads our scientific team to develop a robust methodolgy to measure and monitor the impacts of our restoration work using science-backed methodologies such as eDNA.

eDNA approaches require much less effort in terms of human resources and time. Water and sediment samples can be procured easily, and stored indefinitely. Data analysis does not require any special taxonomic expertise. It is therefore presumed that eDNA biodiversity monitoring will become the norm in the future, once good regional databases for biodiversity are established.