An inclusive, fair and transparent participation process and tourism benefit sharing mechanisms are key to building and maintaining trust within local communities.

In order to spread the tourism benefits fairly in the village, it is important to set clear and fair regulations for the ecotourism service provider selection. In case of NEPL NP ecotourism program, the key elements are:

• 1 person per household. Only one member from each household is allowed to have membership in only one service group,
• Poor and disadvantaged families are prioritized in the selection process,
• No NEPL NP regulation violation for min. of the 2 years.

To ensure transparent and equitable ecotourism service provider selection process, a multi stakeholder committee votes for the voluntary candidates. The committee consists of the following members: (1) village ecotourism head, (2) existing ecotourism service providers and (3) the national park staff who work closely with the 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 purpose of this building block is the logistical organization and methodological design for the participatory workshops with producer families.

In this stage, the concept and step-by-step procedure for each workshop is developed:
From the introduction to the subject matter, the work on the different components (hazard, exposure, vulnerability, intermediate impacts) and factors of the IPCC AR5 climate risk concept.

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.

One of the main challenges was the low availability of adequate and viable seedlings. To overcome this challenge, the project began constructing new tree nurseries, which were all developed during 2019 and became fully operational during 2020 with the construction of 900 seedbeds. Instead of one nursery per region, as it was initially planned, the project was recommended to construct nine (9) nurseries altogether as part of the strategy to meet the 10,000 hectares restoration target or slightly more. To sustain these nurseries, the project recruited 18 Nursery Attendants (two per nursery).

The nurseries aim to increase available planting materials to supply the EbA interventions and for use by communities outside the scope of the project. The project also developed long-term business plans and revenue models to support sustained operations of expanded/created nursery facilities.

In addition, six (6) Forest Stations were refurbished as part of the nursery infrastructure.

 UNEP is also working with the Department of Forestry to explore low-cost options to establish small gene banks for use by the project and beyond the lifetime of the project. With the construction of these nurseries, adequate seedlings are and will be available throughout the year.