A village based participatory approval process allocates individual reforestation sites to households, along with defined use-rights & obligations using the following steps:

1. Application to local forest authorities by smallholders through voluntary user groups
2. Consultation on village level to exclude disputed land upfront & for taking unanimous decision on the future reforestation sites allocation. Results: minutes & sketch plan
3. Verification by communal decision makers & endorsement by a communal decree
4. Assigning land to the village afforestation body based on a specification document
5. Mapping of individual wood lots; plot owners receive individual map with GPS coordinates signed by the mayor of the community
6. Registration of sites by the land office; official verification of the reforestation site based on sketch plan, the communal decree and the enrolment into the local tenure plan.

Forest authorities register the transfer of use rights for an indefinite period, including equal access and benefit sharing for the participants. Smallholder households involved in the afforestation scheme own ~3 ha. This enables them to produce about 2.6 t charcoal per year for 27 years without further investment.

The long-term plan of OMY is embodied not merely by one private developer but jointly initiated by a group of public-private stakeholders across the local business districts. Indeed, the Council for Area Development and Management of OMY, being comprised of 68 landowners, 12 observers, and 8 special members in 2016, established the Advisory Committee on OMY Area Development in 1996 together with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Chiyoda Ward, and East Japan Railway Company. As the first area management initiative in the country, the Committee regularly updates the guidelines for redevelopment activities since 1998. These guidelines set out 8 development goals, key functions of zones, axes, and hubs, district design standards, and local operation rules for coordinating cityscape, networking public open spaces, and transferring FARs. Furthermore, the committee has introduced a variety of area management and place-making initiatives such as free loop bus service, car-free public spaces, establishment of a district-level association, and various city events.

Accompanied by private redevelopment projects, the national government decided to restore the old redbrick building of Tokyo Station, initially built in 1912 and damaged by firebombing during World War II. While the symbolic building restoration was expected to have broader social and cultural benefits for the neighboring business districts, its project cost was estimated around JPY50 billion. In order to meet both social and commercial objectives, the site of Tokyo Station was extensively designated as a zone for the special FAR exemption and allowed to transfer the unused FARs from the historic redbrick building to the neighboring lots for new commercial tower developments. The station building restoration, partially financed by the FAR transfer revenues, was successfully completed in 2013 by a railway company, which also developed two 205-meter tall skyscrapers among the towers with extra FARs, and reinvested the increase in land value of the densified grade-A office buildings to cover the railway finance. To improve the district further, the current provision of a multimodal transportation square for regular bus and taxi services plans is to be completed by East Japan Railway Company in partnership with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in 2017.

The district can be conveniently accessed by a variety of transportation systems. The major model option is Minato Mirai Line opened in 2004 which is directly connected to central Tokyo. Two arterials and several link roads enhance transportation connectivity and business cohesiveness across the two central districts of Minato Mirai 21 and their neighboring areas extensively. With the high-quality transit infrastructure and services, a range of business persons, residents, and visitors can get smooth access to and from international and domestic hub facilities in Tokyo (e.g., Haneda and Narita Airports). Furthermore, footbridges, automated walkways, and underground paths form an integrated pedestrian network over the entire district, which is accompanied by intercity bus, water bus, and bicycle-sharing schemes.

In Minato Mirai 21, the City of Yokohama in 1983 commenced three major development projects: land reclamation (73.9ha) by the city; land readjustment (101.8ha) by a semipublic agency for housing; and port facility improvement (77.9ha) by the city and the national government. The actual project delivery has taken much longer than the original schedule. Indeed, many sizable lots in Minato Mirai 21 have long been unfilled with private real estates, due to occasional market shocks and sequential economic downturns across Japan and Asia over the last few decades. To utilize the undeveloped land lots, the city as a project owner allows temporal land use for commercial activities with some fixed lease terms up to 10 years. As a result of this interim arrangement, private building development in the district has advanced, filling more than 80 percent of both permanent use and temporal use land.

Once the creative process has started, ideas have turned into plans, and there are high expectations about what can be achieved, the Association faced the dilemma of fast profiting, by catching all product available (altought at lower price per unit), or long term profiting, establishing a catch-limit in order to ensure the availability of high quality product (better valued, and allowing black shell population to meet its life cycle).
Since the second alternative seemed more rational for members, the had to design the tool to manage the catch limit. The solution was to set the catch-size 2 millimeters above the legal limit to catch, and to adopt some several regulations into their rules of procedure. That is, to pass from some crazy ideas to a disciplinated implementation with strong sanctions ( monetary and suspension of the fishing rights of the members) aprooved by the total of the members.

Despite self-clousures are well known measures in order to preserve a biological resource, it has never been applied by the Association or the black shell resource in the area. Creative sessions have allowed members to propose ideas (self-clousures) to the plenary, and the creative participation on analyzing and discussing its benefits and consequences have helped to develop complementary measures (like zonification and a fattening area), obtaining a more robust and fruitful plan.

Association Las Huacas has developed a Cooperative networking with different allies from private and public sectors. Partnership agreement with GEOGES C.Ltda. (environmental consultancy agency), wich has been interested into cooperate with ancient populations in order to preserve the culture and traditions, as well as to recover the optimal conditions for mangrove development and conservation.
The agreement brings to the association the technical capabilities of the Agency, in order to get the assistance to design- implement- and follow up of the management plan. The agreement has also served as a framework for cooperation at different levels – community, asociation – in order to enforce the organizational aspects of both institutions, as well as to propose and to develop alternative initiatives of production or self-employment, and the critical analysis of thrird parties cooperation initiatives.

The protection and sustainable management of forests within the biosphere reserve was accompanied by the active promotion of Participatory Forest Management (PFM) and integration of PFM user groups into the trade with wild coffee and honey. The following activities were conducted:

1. Implement Participatory Forest Management in the region with the help of local authorities
2. Record data on activities of NGOs active in the environmental sector in the regions Kafa, Sheka, Bench Maji, Yayu. Identify possible partners for the upscaling of the coffee & honey value chain
3. Establish cooperation with Biosphere reserve authorities to strengthen PFM support within BR boundaries
4. Assess the existing PFM user groups, analysing and recording their potential to supply wild coffee and honey and their administrative structures.
5. Select existing best performing PFM user groups in wild coffee collection and honey processing.

The conservation aspect through the PFM aims at the sustainable use of the natural resource base and contributes as such to the preservation of biodiversity in one of the 34 internationally identified “biodiversity hotspots”.

Honey export value chains have been developed according to the following stepwise approach:

1. Selection of cooperatives
2. Training model farmers in pre-and post-harvesting quality management, organic certification and internal controlling system, traceability system to fulfill EU-quality parameters
3. Provision of food grade and quality improving equipment (packaging & processing equipment, solar lamps, food grade honey bags, presses etc.)
4. Provide technical expertise from Germany to smallholders, their cooperatives and unions in honey processing and fulfilling the export requirements (e.g. honey water content control)
5. Support the unions to acquire an export license, organic certificate and risk management certificate plus other necessary requirements from the Ethiopian government in order to implement the export process
6. Communication to veterinarians and other inspection authorities on EU-level by German partners to allow future import of Ethiopian honey
7. Constantly monitor and guide honey unions, laboratories and authorities during the export procedure
8. Establish a contact to the shipping line by German partners and prepare honey export logistics