For the last 60 years, a great number of rightsholders in Colombia have promoted sustainable management and biodiversity conservation of their territories beyond protected areas, even though their conservation efforts have not been recognized as important elements of climate-smart land planning and have very little governmental support.
The project’s overarching goal is to strengthen and make visible the culturally rich and socially diverse conservation and sustainable production initiatives that different Colombian actors are implementing, as a contribution to sustainable development that does not impoverish the country's natural patrimony.
As their identification as Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECM) is an opportunity to visualize those efforts, Resnatur and partners have been working for several years in adapting the OECM identification criteria to the Colombian context together with 27 initiatives, according to the international framework.
This project contributes to the implementation in Colombia of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Decision 14/8 of 2018 that “Encourages Parties and invites others, in collaboration with indigenous peoples and local communities, to apply … …advice on OECMs”; … “Identifying OECMs and their diverse options within their jurisdiction;”
The adaptation of the international framework and especially the OECM criteria of the IUCN guidelines and the Decision 14/8 of 2018 to the Colombian context.
The application of OECM criteria on a case by case basis.
The development of two methodological processes to apply the OECM criteria and to identify the elements to be strengthened.
• OECM framework allows to recognize other forms of conservation and governance.
• Capacity building is needed to apply the OECM criteria in a bigger scale.
• National authorities should be involved in the discussion on how to apply the criteria.
• More resources will be needed to identify OECMs and to monitor the biodiversity outcomes.
• OECMs must be areas maintaining high biodiversity value. There is a necessity to develop participative monitoring methodologies.
• OECMs are an oportunity to increase connectivity, effectiveness and climate change adaptation of protected areas systems.
• OECMs are key elements to Post 2020 Biodiversity framework goals.
Education, awareness, and traditional knowledge documentation
Local Community children's education
Karim Omar
Local Community children's awarness
Karim Omar
Training Stakeholders
Karim Omar
Training Stakeholders 2
Karim Omar
Education for children's
Karim Omar
Over the past 10 years, we have focused on assessing the conservation status of endemic species and their rehabilitation in the wild. We have made a great effort to preserve it and plan for its sustainability. The most important thing that my team and I reached is that the surrounding community, users of resources, researchers, and decision-makers, whether in the site or in the government away from the place, the private sector, and students even the public can destroy everything we built during the previous years as a result of their ignorance of what we work and its importance to us and them. Dissemination of information is an external protection shield to ensure the sustainability of activities on the site. Continuous training and awareness activities should be in the target area and throughout the country in order to avoid destruction due to ignorance. Also, not documenting the traditional knowledge inherited by the local community is extremely dangerous and its loss is a waste of wealth that will cost the state and the world huge sums to discover again.
Education, awareness, and documentation, could reduce the current and future pressures and reduce the impact and the cost of recovery.
The most important factor for the success of training and awareness programs is the appropriate choice of the recipient, who preferably has contact, whether from close or from afar, with the natural resource.
Involving the community in planning and implementing conservation programs and agreeing on the sustainability and conservation of the natural resource consolidates the principle of partnership and trust and facilitates the process of documenting their knowledge.
Share with the community all your next steps and challenges and hear from them their opinions and suggestions, even if they are simple from your point of view.
Teach children in the region to understand the next generation.
Follow-up and engagement of trainees after training and awareness is very useful and works to establish and implant information within them.
Educate stakeholders about the importance of your role for their future and share the decision with them.
Building block 1: Gender-differentiated vulnerability assessment
Participatory process for vulnerability assessment
CityAdapt
This vulnerability assessment methodology allows for the accurate targeting of nature-based solutions to critical areas of need in cities and sectors of the population. It specifically includes a gender focus to ensure that adaptation efforts take into account how climate change affects women differently than men, given their varying roles in society. The vulnerability studies allow identifying the areas of greatest danger from weather-related events (such as landslides, floods, etc.) based on the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of the analyzed territory. They are carried out through participatory processes with communities and key stakeholders and climatic scenarios that integrate climatic, environmental and socioeconomic variables at the same time. The analysis also allows estimating the risk of loss of ecosystem services and therefore the potential needs for adaptation to climate change. This exercise is the basis for designing and implementing nature-based solutions to strengthen the resilience of communities in urban and peri-urban systems. Finally, this process builds a sense of co-ownership and relationships for partnerships to carry out the project.
One of the main conditions needed for this building block’s success is the inclusion and approval of local communities and key stakeholders within those communities and their respective governments. Additionally, strong sources of climate and hydrological data facilitate this analysis process greatly.
A key aspect of this block is access to data. For example, Mexico has abundant meteorological and hydrological data while El Salvador does not. This allowed for a much more thorough climate change scenario in the former case. In terms of the consultation process, capturing perceived risk, in addition to modeled risks, is key for developing targeted activities where they are most needed. In that process, including women through the gender-differentiated approach also contributes to better targeted adaptation efforts by successfully identifying socially vulnerable populations. During this vulnerability assessment, capacity building is essential to ensure that communities and policy makers can interpret and use the assessments subsequently.
