QUICK SCAN OF THE PROJECT

The first step of the analysis is to assess if the project is applying one or more OH principles within its scope of work. Seven OH principles, adapted from the literature, are used in the framework (i.e., multisectoral, transdisciplinary, participation, prevention, decentralisation, evidence-based, multi-scalar). Not all principles in the framework have equal value, with the multisectoral principle considered an essential component in the proposed tool. The reason for this is that the basis of One Health is the collaboration among different sectors. The framework allows multisectoral collaborations at any level, for example where an MoU has been signed between ministries, or at community level through the joint effort of village health workers, animal health volunteers and rangers.

  • Refer to the provided definitions of each principle to ensure a correct understanding of its meaning in reference to the analysis framework
  • Review the project simply by looking for the mere application of principles and avoid jumping to quick conclusions regarding the adoption of the One Health approach

A quick scan of the project gives insight into the project’s current state. If the project already applies one or more OH principles, there are immediate opportunities to design and plan a One Health component within its scope of work. However, failure to apply even a single principle does not prevent the One Health approach to be implemented, nor does it imply that the framework analysis has to stop. The quick scan of the project will help to clarify what principles need to be explored and included to successfully implement a One Health approach.

FORM A REVIEW TEAM

Once formed, a review team will lead the analysis of the project and the potential integration of the One Health approach. It is key to initiate a discussion across sectors, identify opportunities of collaboration among stakeholders, and enable the co-design of One Health components that align with and push the project goals towards a holistic approach to the biodiversity-health nexus. The review team is multidisciplinary and should be made up of all the project owners, including institutional and development partners.

  • Multidisciplinary composition of the review team, including experts from different sectors (e.g., conservation, animal health, human health, education, social science)
  • Transdisciplinary composition of the review team, including experts from different levels of intervention and with different roles (e.g., researchers, policymakers, service providers, community members)

External assessors can greatly contribute and amplify the outcomes of the project analysis at the biodiversity-health nexus. They can guide the project team through the analysis process providing a fresh and independent perspective to the project analysis. External assessors should have some sort of experience in multisectoral collaborations and One Health to guide the review team in the project analysis and identification of opportunities to integrate a more holistic approach. 

Uniform sentencing

Country-level contexts are important to take into consideration as part of efforts to prevent illegal wildlife trafficking. It's really important to bring all the relevant stakeholders together to compare notes, share innovations, and ensure that sentencing guidelines are harmonised within and between jurisdictions. This can be bolstered by trainings and capacity building at the regional and international levels.

Having a knowledgeable judiciary can help establish uniform sentencing, and underscore the point that sentences for wildlife-related crimes seldom reflect the killing of a single animal, but rather must address the damage that wildlife trafficking can do to ecosystems, economies, and the rule of law.

This work has shown that it's important to bring all the relevant stakeholders together. The trainings as part of this solution have brought together law enforcement, prosecutors, and the judiciary, all of which are crucial in effective interdiction and enforcement.

Cooperation – Enhancing information sharing across jurisdictions

Multi-jurisdictional cooperation is a key element of wildlife protection and illegal wildlife trafficking. Strategies to reduce the pressurse of illegal and unsustainable trade on biodiversity - and enhance the benefits to wildlife conservation and human well-being that derive from trade at sustainable levels - require cooperation between conservations, law enforcement, customs, and private industry.

  • Cross-jurisdictional comparisons of wildlife trade trends, patterns, impacts and drivers to bolster the knowledge base on trade in wild animals and plants.
  • Policy-level work to inform, support and encourage action by governments and international bodies to adopt, implement and enforce effective policies

Effective information sharing through formal and informal networks can result in high-level conviction and seizure of assets.

 

Once a baseline level of cooperation is established, individual nations should implement legislation to enable wildlife crime to be treated as serious and organised crime according to the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), with penalties of four years or more in prison. Sentences should punish the offender to an extent that is justified by the circumstances, and be comparable with sentences applied to other serious crimes. Sentences should provide conditions that will help the offender to be rehabilitated, deter the offender and other persons from committing the same or a similar offence, and make clear that the community denounces the sort of conduct in which the offender was involved.

 

Information exchange between law enforcement agencies, FIUs, financial institutions, and civil society should be encouraged, to share knowledge, identify targets and patterns of behaviour, and more effectively mitigate wildlife crime risks.

Forensic accounting for wildlife trafficking interdiction

Wildlife crime is not purely a conservation issue, as its adverse impacts also threaten sustainable development, good governance, rule of law, and national security.

 

The aim of this building block is to identify the risks and vulnerabilities of money laundering and how it relates to wildlife crimes. Additionally, this building block endeavours to provide guidance and recommendations to law enforcement and related personnel to enhance the financial aspect of wildlife crime investigations.

 

Fraudulent paperwork can transform wildlife contraband into seemingly legitimate merchandise, enabling it to be openly traded and evade interdiction. There are many schemes that criminals use to create fraudulent wildlife paperwork, including false declarations of captive breeding, purchasing paperwork from corrupt officials, forging paperwork, re-using or altering old permits, etc. Forensic accounting is therefore an important building block

 

 

 

 

Transnational organised crime is found wherever money can be made from illicit dealings, and well-organised criminal groups have turned illegal exploitation of wildlife into a professional business with lucrative revenues. Criminal groups exploit gaps in legislation, law enforcement and the criminal justice system; and the generally weak legislation and inadequate law enforcement in wildlife protection has enabled wildlife criminal groups to flourish. Forensic accounting allows practitioners to close these gaps and bolster wildlife protection.

In order to capitalise on enhanced forensic accounting, complementary legislation should enable wildlife crime to be considered a predicate offence for money laundering, so that anti-money laundering tools can be used. Governments should review their criminal legislation to ensure that law enforcement agencies are fully authorised to follow the financial flows related to wildlife crime and to prosecute money laundering offences.

Domestic multi-agency cooperation should be common practice for wildlife crimes, involving police, customs, environmental authorities, Financial Investigation Units (FIUs), prosecutors, and other relevant domestic agencies for sharing information, intelligence, and conducting joint investigations where appropriate. Joint investigative teams which include FIUs are essential to target criminal networks and not just low-level offenders, and have long been used successfully to address other serious crime types.

Valuing traditional knowledge

The stores of traditional knowledge in upland Cambodia are rich and greatly varied, and include knowledge on conserving nature, health protection, farming systems, and plant and animal species uses and management.

 

These stores of knowledge reflect the varied geographic areas indigenous peoples and minorities live in, as well as the groups’ respective needs. All societies have utilized the natural environment for sustenance and succour, and the use of plants for medicinal treatment is therefore especially well developed across the globe.

 

As such, research institutions, private pharmaceutical companies and NGOs have in recent years recognized the importance of conserving this knowledge, but also using it to create benefits, which have not always been equitably shared. The absence of a system for the protection of traditional knowledge can easily result in the further erosion of this valuable knowledge and a permanent loss to local and indigenous communities, the country and the global community at large.

 

Failure to bring fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the utilization the traditional knowledge and genetic resources - especially for indigenous peoples and local communities - is a key constraint for the effective conservation of biodiversity.

To remedy these past inequities and build a framework for future success, the ABS project is developing and finalizing national ABS frameworks and roadmaps, as well as models on bio-prospecting, a monitoring framework for tracking genetic resources application, and a monitoring and evaluation plan.

 

To ensure longevity and sustainability, an effective financial mechanism for benefit-sharing from ABS agreements has been established, with an ABS Administrative Permitting System and check-points inaugurated.

The power of innovation, realized via the synthesis of traditional knowledge with modern science and technology, has transformed genetic resources into medicines, foodstuffs, and many other products that are indispensable for human existence. In fact, it can be argued that both genetic resources and innovation underpin sustainable development.

 

Genetic resources are the planet’s patrimony, and can be harnessed for present and future generations; there exists a clear link between sustainable biodiversity use and economic growth. The Nagoya Protocol provides a platform for the equitable sharing of benefits that facilitates sustainable development for indigenous peoples and local communities, and the continued conservation of our natural capital for many years to come.

ALIGNMENT OF FUND-FOR-EMPLOYMENT MECHANISM

After the socialization and validation of the plan, the following steps are taken:

  • Execution of the Plan:
    • Meetings to prepare the budget for each work (with quotations). These included the formation of work teams, preparation and signing of lists of workers, letters of commitment (with agreement on a fixed payment) and schedules within the project's timeframe.
  • FundManagement Process: The fund was distributed to the participating communities in the 2 PAs, covering the following expenditure categories:
    • Purchase of community materials. Using the "Affidavit" tool for the economic payment received by the community members providing these materials.
    • Purchase of construction materials (not available in the community). For this purpose, the payment vouchers were considered as means of verification, together with a Materials Delivery Record.
    • Payment of local labor: a distinctive element of this mechanism that made it possible to recognize the time and effort of each inhabitant in the construction that their own community identified in their plan. To achieve this, the following tools were designed:
      • Letters of commitment, with the workday of each settler.
      • Work follow-up card, with the control of the time worked by each inhabitant.

Affidavit of receipt of payment.

The limited access to other sources of local income (labor vulnerability) allowed the involvement of people around the identified works. In addition, the openness of the beneficiary communities was key to the sustained development of each project.

In some communities, the participation of their local and community authorities was key, giving legitimacy to the works. It should be noted that during this process, neither children nor adolescents (members of the participating families) were involved in the work.

The works developed thanks to the Fund-for-Employment mechanism had to be in line with a tourism product vision; that is, in addition to benefiting the community (in terms of usability), they had to fit in with the tourism experience proposals developed for each community. The articulating and permanent monitoring role of the Field Officers ensured that the works were carried out within the estimated deadlines, under the principles of transparency, flexibility and assertive communication.

Within each community, a "Master Builder" was chosen to guide the quality of the work performed; in addition, the project provided information and reference models for the implementation of the works.

The transfer of materials was a major challenge, due to the abrupt weather changes suffered by both PAs, as a result of global warming and the instability of rainfall. Prevention and permanent communication were the keys to overcoming this obstacle.

COMMUNITY ACTION PLAN

A participatory planning tool based on the following steps:

  • Preparation: identification of actors (community leaders and managers of the territory), of previous agreements, and logistical preparation for the workshops.
  • Plan constructionworkshop.
  • Socialization of the Plan among the communities and managers.

During the Plan Construction Workshop, the participation of the communities involved (as a whole or through their elected representatives) and the managers of the territory is encouraged, with the accompaniment of the Project's technical team.

Thus, during this workshop (of approximately 8 hours), a Collective Dream of a 12-month scope is identified, linked to tourism within their territorial spaces, and that at the same time is consistent with the conservation efforts of their protected area.

Once the Collective Dream is identified, the participants determine:

  • Objectives.
  • Goals that allow them to measure the achievement of their objectives.
  • Activities (and their respective responsible parties) that will make it possible to achieve their goals.
  • Follow-upindicators to measure progress in the fulfillment of their activities.
  • Responsible parties, both for goals and activities.
  • Estimateddeadlines and dates.
  • Resources, of the project, of the destination's agents and of the territory's own managers.
  • Tourism Use Plans being updated: this allowed the Community Action Plan to become a reference document for the sustainability of the tourist destination.
  • Full Life Plans (in the case of the Amarakaeri CR) in the process of being updated: this allows the PACs to be a precedent in the identification of the vision and needs of the native communities.
  • Involvement of the communities and managers: this allowed for active collaboration as the main characteristic of the governance of a territory with a vocation for sustainable tourism.

In the process of designing the Community Action Plan, a methodology was developed that required validation by those involved in the project and transfer with the team in charge of field work. To this end, the developing versions of the methodology were socialized and perspectives were aligned among all those involved in this stage, giving priority to the conservation approach and community tourism as a high-impact tool that promotes capitalizable economic income from the knowledge of the participating communities.

The implementation process required a convening stage, the challenge of which was representativeness; it also faced geographical distances and the time of the community representatives and managers.

For this, two formats were used (one for each PA): in the case of Río Abiseo, one in which 2 community representatives met in an 8-hour workshop; the other (Amarakaeri), in which the workshop format was carried out at the rate of one workshop per community. Both allowed for representation and assertive management of each workshop.

PaRx Program: Support for conservation objectives through experiencing nature

Research shows that people who are more connected to nature do more to protect it and engage in more pro-environmental behaviours in general. Through time spent in nature, people develop a sense of attachment to natural and cultural areas and increase their support and interest in the conservation of these protected and conserved areas.

 

  • Research demonstrating the links between human health, nature connectedness and pro-environmental behaviours; time spent in nature, and protecting nature are solutions to improve health outcomes for both people and ecosystems.
  • Existing resources highlighting the connection between health and well being and time spent in nature
  • Demonstrating the connection between nature prescriptions and a longer-term shift to prioritize nature protection is a complex research question that will take time and more resources. Longer term data sets and new research endeavours are required to confirm the link of nature use through the program to improve support of nature protection over time.
PaRx Program: Outreach and engagement with the public and with health-care professionals

The BC Parks Foundation and PaRx program conducted outreach and media events to raise awareness of the program and the link between health and nature. The launch of the collaboration with Parks Canada generated substantial media coverage, including from international outlets, thus raising awareness of the connections between nature and well-being, and the PaRx program. Parks Canada has also developed informational materials to help health-care providers connect patients with Parks Canada administered places, in so doing creating connections with the health-care community, increasing interest in health and wellness activities across Parks Canada destinations, strengthening engagement between health care sector and protected and conserved areas, and raising awareness of protected heritage areas in Canada.

  • Both the BC Parks Foundation and Parks Canada have a track record of educating the public about the health benefits of time spent in nature and the importance of protecting nature to maximise these heath benefits for current and future generations.
  • Health care professional spokespeople as trusted messengers
  • Regular communication between PaRx and endorsing health organizations ensures consistent and widespread promotion of the program to help build public and health-care professional trust in and awareness of the program.
  • Uptake of the program increased with targeted media campaigns and launches across provinces in Canada. Continued targeted marketing, new resources, and improved usability of the platforms is important for maintaining and growing interest in the program.