Planning phase | PANORAMA

Collaboration of appropriate authorities and creating a team

Visit of Officials to Lésio-Louna Reserve

The Aspinall Foundation

Effective collaboration with the relevant authorities in the Republic of Congo is a key element to the project. This is not limited to permission to carry out conservation work in country, but is also important for the long-term relationships required, including the joint patrols of the reserve and enforcement of laws and regulations that are essential for long-term management of a protected or conservation area. Team composition is also extremely important and the Aspinall Congo team are almost entirely Congolese.

A strong team formed of Congolese nationals who understand the systems and processes in country.

Good communication, and development of mutual trust and respect are important to successful relationships.

Participatory assessment of climate vulnerability

Field worker Rama Paudel from HIMAWANTI, holding a pen, facilitates talk with women in Bishnupur during the climate vulnerability assessment.

RECOFTC

The objective is to understand the vulnerabilities to climate change impacts. Following a free, prior and informed consent process with stakeholders, the community level vulnerability assessment identifies climate threats and impacts, assesses threats and impacts to community livelihood assets and identifies vulnerabilities and vulnerability response topics.

In Bishnupur, a locally based coordinator supported the assessment for six months. A female field worker from the Himalayan Grassroots Women's Natural Resource Management Association consulted women stakeholders. It was perceived as inappropriate for male workers to engage with women.

A series of matrices allow for clear collection, organization and evaluation of climate change and socioeconomic information to assess vulnerabilities. Each matrix builds on information captured in the previous one. The climatic variables and exposed sectors analysed in the matrices depend on site specific factors.

The matrices are completed using primary and secondary data. Primary data comes from participatory rural appraisal and participatory action research. Community forest user group’s guidelines and operational plans, district-level government offices, and forest and land use research institutes provide secondary data.

Community forest user groups in Nepal use participatory processes and hold socio-economic and biophysical information needed for vulnerability assessments. Stakeholders must be willing to work together—local government and sectoral agencies such as the District Forest Office supported the process in Bishnupur. Having an experienced facilitator who is sensitive to the local context is key. They must be familiar with complex aspects of climate vulnerability under assessment and able to create space and opportunities to recognize the relevance of community voices.

A lack of empirical data is a challenge for implementing vulnerability assessments at community and local levels. Participatory tools to map climatic trends can help overcome the challenge to an extent. Empirical evidence remains important to analyze and validate information community members share.

For example, the Bishnupur community interpreted climate trends as leading to drought. The days of rainfall had decreased but the meteorological data showed that overall rainfall had increased. After informing the community about the finding, the proiect prioritized water management and capture as a key intervention area.

Climate vulnerability assessment processes can be an opportunity to raise awareness about climate change among community members and other stakeholders. Representatives from local government and sectoral agencies were invited in the vulnerability assessment process in Bishnupur. They contributed to the analysis and benefited from a nuanced understanding of how climate change is affecting communities and what actions to take. This helped to secure their support to implement adaptation interventions.

Planning phase

Inception phase

Local

Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Report for the Bishnupur community fore…

B1: Setting a price tag on climate change for the involvement of private sector in Ecosystem-based Adaptation

El sector privado en Riviera Nayarit-Puerto Vallarta usando una herramienta digital para el análisis del riesgo económico en sus celulares/tabletas.

GIZ-ADAPTUR

Inversionistas de Riviera Nayarit probando la metodología para la Guía de inversiones adaptadas al cambio climático.

GIZ-ADAPTUR

Autodiagnóstico de riesgos climáticos actuales y futuros en el negocio, disponible en la Guía para inversiones adaptadas al cambio climático.

GIZ-ADAPTUR

Traditionally, climate change has been conveyed as an environmental and scientific concept. But since its impact on industries and productive sectors has become more and more apparent, there is an urgent need to better understand the economic dimension of climate change and its financial risk for the decision-making of the private sector.

Translating environmental risks into business risks also helps to draw the private sector's attention. Therefore, the project ADAPTUR performed an economic risk assessment in three of its project destinations to calculate the future costs of climate change for the tourism industry. Additionally, a handbook on climate-proof investment was published, which was developed with inputs and participation of the private sector, especially during the design of methodology. One of the conclusions was that adaptation would be a good investment because by making businesses more resilient to climate change, it is possible to reduce their future costs.

Translating environmental terms into business language: e.g., vulnerability = business risk; ecosystem = nature capital, etc., helps the private sector to get your message.
Link climate change impacts to business risks and opportunities: since companies understand their business best, this should be very participatory.
Understand how the private sector works: consider existing business processes as part of your solution.
Create trust: involve private sector representatives from the beginning, be transparent in decision-making, and have clear expectations.

Understand business concepts (return on investment, business case, economic risk, etc.) and the way of thinking (time is money, resources are limited, etc.) when engaging with the private sector. It helps to include a member with private sector background in your team.
Since industries have established business processes, it is essential to develop compatible solutions. In Mexico, new investments in tourism infrastructure follow a strict process. Therefore, ADAPTUR developed improvements easy to integrate into the existing process.
The private sector has its own tools and methodologies (scenario modeling, risk assessment, cost analysis, etc.). In many cases it is better to build upon those tools instead of introducing a new methodology unknown to the industry.
The private sector may consider specific data or information as sensitive, including financial data and specific project results because they may affect a company's reputation in its market. It is therefore important to have a mutual understanding of the information that is confidential or sensitive. Confidentiality agreements may help to formalize this understanding.

Metodología para el análisis del riesgo económico

Autodiagnóstico de riesgos climáticos en el negocio

Guía para inversiones adaptadas al cambio climático

Taking stock of the existing Blue Economy

The storymap interface, centred on a pin of an indigenous fishing enterprise in Moruya, NSW

UoW

An example image from the storymap: Cruise tourism

Open source

An example image from the storymap: 3D seawalls

Open source

Before embarking on a journey to build a community based approach to a Blue Economy we felt it was important to first understand where we had come from and where we are now. We examined the historical role of maritime businesses on the NSW South Coast and the existing economic, social and cultural relationships of South Coast communities with the ocean. The result was a Blue Futures ‘Story map’ which details the diverse ways in which businesses, community groups and individuals engage with the ocean in our region.

When ‘taking stock’ of a region’s blue economy potential, the story map design ensured that no one social, environmental or economic angle was prioritized over another. Instead, space became the organizing principle, enabling users to scroll around the map to learn about what was important to the blue economy around them. In practice, this meant that employment statistics, historic coastal artworks and ocean governance examples appeared alongside clean ocean tech startups and established marine industries. The map brings these data into conversation with each other in the mind of the viewer, purely by their spatial proximity. This is an important first step in raising the profile of cultural and social data for developing blue economy solutions, which are often overlooked in favour of quantifiable statistics.

This building block was enabled by a multidisciplinary team committed to working across traditional disciplinary silos. Artists worked with geographers, economists and environmental scientists to gather together a breadth of visual and textual materials for inclusion in the story map.

We underestimated how long the storymapping process would take. Substantial time was needed to bring together digital resources, rights for image use (both from companies, artists and museums/archives) and for trialing different story map styles to best suit the project scale and range of sources.

Collating diverse data sources together in a publically accessible and easy to navigate story map gave this building block a larger audience both locally and globally than a traditional written report or textual media release. The story map educated diverse audiences about the ‘blue economy’ and ‘blue future’ concepts which would be viewed by many as otherwise amorphous or niche ideas, at a distance from their everyday lives.

Storymap: Imagining a Blue Future for Southern NSW

Hortimare - an essential partner for Kelp Blue.

Hortimare's logo

Hortimare

Shows millions of Macrocystis gametophyte cells self-propagating. They remain vegetative until the environment is changed to turn them fertile, producing sporophytes. This is enough to seed hundreds of kilometers of Macrocystis farm.

Hortimare

Hortimare, a Dutch-based company, is one of the few companies in the world specialising in the genetics, breeding and propagating of seaweed. Hortimare works with Kelp Blue to create starting material, increase yield and research on best growing techiniques of the Macrocystis pyrifera specie.

Holtimare has a state-of- the art lab in The Netherlands as well as a highly trained experienced team which specializes in seaweed breeding and propagating. Hortimare is an external technical consultant that is helping Kelp Blue set up and develop a hatchery in Namibia and to train a local workforce to run it. They also work together with Kelp Blue in sourcing, collecting and cultivation methods. They are also co-creating a giant kelp seedbank for future use.

The breeding of kelp seedlings is an essential first step in the cultivation of seaweed. There is no public Macrocystis seed bank so Kelp Blue has had to work with partners around the world to sustainably collect spores from wild kelp beds and transport them back to The Netherlands where Hortimare then optimizes Kelp Blue's hatchery system and seeding technique to get to predictable and consistent yield. They share all the information that is needed to make the farm successful. This as a win-win for both parties. Hortimare gets more and more reliable data and knowledge to be able to develop a certain standard and Kelp Blue can translate their findings to predictability of operation.

Sustainably sourcing material, a breeding programme and a property set up hatchery are the cornerstone of any seweed farmer's project.

Documentation and dissemination of results

Multi-national

Hortimare

Co-operative farming for sustainable livelihood

Brooms made by the beneficiaries

Bighnaharta Nepal

An institutional support is required for the beneficiaries to promote the products they make through this solution, in local, regional and national markets. Since a single farmer cannot meet the quantity demand of the market and the distributors look for bulk quantity, a functioning co-operative has to be formed at the local level. This cooperation serves the purpose of collecting the products, negotiating the price with the distributor, supervising the manufacturing and distributing the profits.

There is a high demand for brooms and associated products in the local, national and international market and distributors always buy in bulk. By applying cooperative farming methods, it will be easier for a single farmer to supply their product and get a reasonable rate for it. Instead of approaching single farmers, distributers negotiate prices with the cooperative committee, which also guarantees more stable and profitable prices for their members.

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.

Alliances

Various alliances had to be build to ensure the success of the programme. Collaboration was necessarry between the following stakeholders:

Local and provincial government and administrative authorities
Social groups like youth clubs, women groups, agriculture committees
Forest and land protection committes
Local, regional and national private sector businesses
Various experts, researchers and scholars in this sector

Since this solution involves multi-level activities from planning, implementation, conservation, monitoring, marketing and promoting, it becomes essential to bring all the stakeholders together and interlink them through common goals and their ascribed responsibilities by the state and the society.

- 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

Planning phase

Implementation

Monitoring

Documentation and dissemination of results

Community participation

People of the community

Bighnaharta Nepal

The communities living in thes project landscapes are directly involved in all phases of this project: household selection, area(s) selection, plantation and supervision of all activities. The project promotes active participation and involvement in decision-making processes.

Community sensitization, to make them aware of the problem
Reliability on indigenous knowledge about nature based solutions
Understanding that the project is in the interest of national and global donors, but should ultimately be in-line with the local, regional and national priorities
Trust between the community and the organization had to be developed

During the inception of this project we relied heavily and in some cases solely on the local's knowlede and age old indegenious craft. But during the process we came to know that some of the componenets were irelevant and had to be balanced with some modern techniques and technologies too.

We also learned that, the interest of the community and the local political will doesnt always match.

Benefits generated to communities and livelihood improved

Community forestry in Nepal has brought a number of benefits including an increase in income. It has helped to fight against illegal logging by putting clear rules in place on timber access and a strong system of forest monitoring. Community livelihoods have also improved with easier access to firewood and fodder and better health care and energy access, for example through money from ecotourism and subsidies for renewable energy.

Community forestry shows traits of political, financial, and ecological sustainability, including emergence of a strong legal and regulatory framework, and robust civil society institutions and networks.

A continuing challenge is to ensure equitable distribution of benefits to women and marginalized groups.

The immediate livelihood benefits derived by rural households bolster strong collective action wherein local communities actively and sustainably manage forest resources. Community forests also became the source of diversified investment capital and raw material for new market-oriented livelihoods.

Documentation and dissemination of results

Communities empowered and trusted

Women in community forests

The Guardien

Conservation oriented community forestry is essentially a participatory process that requires strong technical assistance on both policy and implementation. Expanding the property rights of local communities over resources and empowering them with knowledge, information, resources, technologies, and required skills for forest management and institution building are basic building blocks for the community forestry. Gender and equity concerns are addressed from the program design so that the poor, women, and marginalized receive fair benefits from the program.

Legal rights over the resources, institutions, capacity, trust, and leadership,

It evolved from the community level, and is based on traditional uses of the forest by communities. This bottom-up approach is a great strength of the Nepalese model as it gives ownership and leadership to communities to decide both where to create a community forest and how to run it.

Documentation and dissemination of results

Forestry sector of Nepal