Securing support of local communities and other stakeholders
Practical support and capacity building for local livelihood improvement
Community-led management of vulture-Safe Zone
The success of the community managed vulture safe zones is because of the ownership to the local communities. When locals get ownership they feel their rights and are encouraged to invest their resources and time. The locals might take the ownership itself as a reward and their willingness to support the cause will be very high though there is less benefit compared to other thing. Apart from some technical support all the management part was taken by the local communities.
11 member Committee has been formed to manage the vulture safe zone and also a five year management plan is in place. The committee manages the overall setup of the vulture safe zone and are supported by two staff. Tourism promotion, supply of food to vulture and counting of vulture nest and vultures in feeding are the day to day operation of the vulture safe zone.
The local communities were already organised as being community forest user groups who already own the management of the community forest handed over by the government to them. Hence a small unit within the forest user groups were again organised as a vulture restaurant management committee with operational procedures in place. A small piece of land was also bought for the vulture restaurant. The management committee of the vulture restaurant also managed the local peoples' burden of keeping the unproductive old cows as killing is prohibited.
There should be a balance of ownership for regulation like in the case of the vulture safe zone the vulture restaurant management committee do not own the land but they have the full management authority so they are very aware that if they do some wrong then the regulatory body may revoke their management authority. Hence there is always a power balance in this type of situation.
Building community understanding of the value of the ocean
Integrating Environmental Fund in VSLAs
Planning the utilization of VSLA EF
Fund leveraging
Local community as a citizen scientists
One of the main building block of this solution is citizen science since the locals were themselves monitoring the vulture colony so it was very easy for them to understand the population decline of the vulture. Also carcass disposal was a burden for them. Citizen science is very useful in mobilising the group to take action in addressing the issue. Hence the same formula was also applied in our solution. The communities were very positive in setting up community managed vulture restaurant. Community managed vulture restaurant consists of a cow shed where old cows are kept till they naturally die and then fed to the vultures in an designated open space. This will let the vultures having the nesting colony there to feed on the safe diclofenac free carcass. In addition to this a bird hide and information center has been established for tourist and general public to see the vultures feeding as well as sharing knowledge on vulture crisis in the country and the conservation effort from the local communities. Communities are also benefiting from the tourism promotion.
A concept of very simple local action is the enabling factor for the success of this building block. The actions are the same things what a farmer will do in everyday life but have been successful in attracting visitors to the site thus income generation for the locals.
Institutionalisation of the group and good governance is very important to work with the local community in long run. Long term plan in documented form will be very helpful for good working partnership. Income generating activity should always be linked to involve the locals in long term conservation work.
The State Carbon Offset Mechanism, contextualized under a local protocol.
Soil monitoring practices.
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The local protocol contextualizes the Kyoto Protocol by adapting it to local conditions, develops formal and contextualized MRV (measurement, reporting and verification) methodologies, and confers value to natural capital in a way that favors landowners.
We propose replication of this building block across the subnational level: the financing of carbon footprint mitigation via small state taxes that comprise a state fund—operating under local protocol, adapted to the land owners' contexts—with additional funding by governmental organizations—CONAFOR and SAGARPA. We provide technical assistance to officials from other states in adapting this model to their contexts and priorities.
For purposes of transparency and standardization, we use validated ICAT methodologies when calculating carbon reductions that are based on natural capital recovery. We develop customized ecological models for different states and provide training to align public policies, promoting innovative financing via small carbon taxes at the state level and increased federal investment oriented towards integrating regenerative practices. This is a public policy that incentivizes climate mitigation and the regeneration of natural infrastructure, rooted in a collective response from rural society.
The urgency of integrating practices that regenerate natural capital is enhanced by the highly positive results of the pilot ranches. There is great interest on the part of other states.
Our initiative, embodied in the NAMA NS-272 "Subnational mitigation actions for the restoration of degraded forests and the implementation of planned grazing," proposes well-planned action and includes tools that enable its replication in other contexts.
A wide range of tools have been defined, developed, and applied in the process of implementing this building block. These tools include adapting models for replication in states with different needs and contexts; monitoring systems; reporting and verification of compliance and results in soils and forests; agreements between parties; analysis of fiscal opportunities; rules of operation; and guidelines to ensure transparency when managing environmental funds. An important tool is customizing models for replicating this building block in different states.
The Inter-American Development Bank is interested in continuing its support by seeking financial resources from climate funds of a larger scale.
The SEMARNAT (Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources) office of the administration of Mexico’s president-elect has demonstrated its interest in adopting this scheme as a strategic line of action for the next 6 years. This support is of great value and opens new possibilities for dissemination and application.
