Alliances

Various alliances had to be build to ensure the success of the programme. Collaboration was necessarry between the following stakeholders: 

  • Local and provincial government and administrative authorities
  • Social groups like youth clubs, women groups, agriculture committees
  • Forest and land protection committes 
  • Local, regional and national private sector businesses 
  • Various experts, researchers and scholars in this sector

Since this solution involves multi-level activities from planning, implementation, conservation, monitoring, marketing and promoting, it becomes essential to bring all the stakeholders together and interlink them through common goals and their ascribed responsibilities by the state and the society. 

- Stakeholders don't always have the same interests and goals

- Conflict between the stakeholders in the alliances are common because of their interests 

- The thoroughness of legal aspects while dealing with the local bureaucracy is needed

- The awareness of greater good has to be evoked to all the stake holders, time and again

 

Understanding the impact of ocean activities on the national economy

The main objective of the Portuguese Ocean Satellite Account (OSA) is to provide an economic information system for the sea. The OSA was considered the most appropriate tool to estimate the size and importance of the ocean economy to the Portuguese economy and to obtain information on the structure of production activities related to the ocean.

 

The OSA privileged the simultaneous treatment of supply and demand. Information was obtained, not only for the production account (output at basic prices, intermediate consumption, Gross Value Added - GVA), but also for relevant economic variables such as household and public administrations consumption, imports and exports. Thus, it was possible to estimate the contribution of the "Ocean" to GVA and national employment. Additionally, an estimate was made for paid and unpaid employment, not only due to its relevance, but also to allow assessing the results plausibility.

 

By applying the Integrated Input-output Symmetric Matrix System to the main results, it was possible to determine, in addition to the direct effects, the indirect effect of the Ocean Economy activities on the national economy.

 

The compilation of OSA at NUTS I level allowed having information for Azores and Madeira (islands), illustrating regional differences, namely different output patterns.

  • Mature statistical systems with quality and detailed data.
  • Very good articulation among entities.
  • New technical and coherence challenges in the second exercise, regarding NUTS I desegregation.
  • Detailing information at regional level allows improving data quality and robustness of concepts, namely concerning coastal tourism. Some concepts defined for national level are not adequate for regional level.
Value chain logic

The scope of the Ocean Economy, considered in the Portuguese Ocean Satelite Account (OSA), aggregates activities in two main areas: "established activities" and "emerging activities” which, in turn, are divided into groups. It considers nine groups, eight of which correspond to established activities (groups 1 to 8). The last group (group 9) includes new uses and resources of the ocean, which congregates emerging activities (see figure). The adopted criterion for the classification of economic activities as established or emerging obeyed the international logic of maturity level of the markets, namely what is followed in the EU, in the study “Blue Growth” for the purpose of international comparisons.

 

Overall, we adopted a value chain logic considering, inter alia, the level of industry disaggregation permitted by the National Statistical System. Given this restriction, the methodological option was to consider Maritime and Marine Equipment Services as independent groups, including cross-economic activities in other groups.

  • Mature statistical systems with quality and detailed data
  • Broad discussion with several stakeholders on the concepts, definitions, and aggregations of the account
  • Very good articulation among entities
  • Time consuming activity in the first exercise due to its pioneering character (pilot exercise)
  • Difficulty in obtaining information on emerging activities
  • Results compensate the effort: this organization of data allowed illustrating heterogeneity of the different groups (dynamic, productivity, resilience, etc.)
Benefits generated to communities and livelihood improved

Community forestry in Nepal has brought a number of benefits including an increase in income. It has helped to fight against illegal logging by putting clear rules in place on timber access and a strong system of forest monitoring. Community livelihoods have also improved with easier access to firewood and fodder and better health care and energy access, for example through money from ecotourism and subsidies for renewable energy.

Community forestry shows traits of political, financial, and ecological sustainability, including emergence of a strong legal and regulatory framework, and robust civil society institutions and networks.

A continuing challenge is to ensure equitable distribution of benefits to women and marginalized groups.  

 

The immediate livelihood benefits derived by rural households bolster strong collective action wherein local communities actively and sustainably manage forest resources. Community forests also became the source of diversified investment capital and raw material for new market-oriented livelihoods. 

 

Communities empowered and trusted

Conservation oriented community forestry is essentially a participatory process that requires strong technical assistance on both policy and implementation. Expanding the property rights of local communities over resources and empowering them with knowledge, information, resources, technologies, and required skills for forest management and institution building are basic building blocks for the community forestry. Gender and equity concerns are addressed from the program design so that the poor, women, and marginalized receive fair benefits from the program.

Legal rights over the resources, institutions, capacity, trust, and leadership,

It evolved from the community level, and is based on traditional uses of the forest by communities. This bottom-up approach is a great strength of the Nepalese model as it gives ownership and leadership to communities to decide both where to create a community forest and how to run it.

Environmental Guide: Wildlife Friendly Roads

This guide is the tool used to collect wildlife data on roads to identify the impact and recommed measures for Costa Rica. It can be inpmenented on new road projects and for existing roads. Since 2015, this guide is used by Costa Rican Government to implement masures on new road projects. We started implementing it on exisitng roads since 2020. 

1. Government participation;

2. Funding for the data collection;

3. Legislation requesting measures to reduce development impact on wildlife;

4. Inclusion on the Environmental Impact Assesment;

5. Funding for the implementation of measures to prevent or reduce road impact;

In many countries of Mesoamerican region, guidance is needed to reduce road impact. So this document can be adapted to local characteristics and to legislation of the country to start the implementaiton of measures on roads for wildlife;

Harmonization and reinforcement of an effective conservation system between the forestry administration and the commune
  • Support for local forestry administration

Surveillance operations will only be effective if the offender can be fined within a few days of the offence being detected. If this is not the case, there is a strong risk that offenders will no longer fear fines and will continue to damage forest areas. Three elements should help ensure the forestry administration's responsiveness:

  • The positioning of forestry administration representatives as close as possible to the communes in which they operate.
  • The provision of high-performance equipment: motorcycles, computer hardware, etc.
  • Payment of forestry agents' expenses.

  • Integration into the site management and co-management system

Ultimately, depending on the level of ownership and available resources, the project could encourage the integration of surveillance teams within partner communes. The positioning of the forestry brigades within the rural communes could be promoted as a contribution by local communities to site conservation. These collaboration arrangements will need to be defined between the promoter (site manager), the local grassroots communities, the partner communes and the forestry administration.

Forestry administration close to resource, causing farmers to withdraw from exploiting this resource

Commune must be upright in its actions

Away from the state, everyone does what they want

Capacity building and biodiversity monitoring

The project will rely primarily on local resources. Given the size of Beampingaratsy and the various levels of pressure, it appears that around 30 trained staff will be needed to ensure surveillance and, subsequently, ecological monitoring.

In order to improve the image of the ecoguard profession, the TALAKY project aims to develop a pool of local ecoguards familiar with the objectives, procedures and tools of forest and environmental monitoring. Drawn from local communities or from the ranks of pre-existing Polisin'ala

This pool receives training on the organizational aspects of patrols: frequency, planning, composition; aasite reporting through application of geoODK and the risks of corruption or collusion inherent in the nature of their mission.

To improve surveillance:

  • Disconnect the activities of local ecoguards from their home communities
  • Diversify the profiles and build the capacities of local ecoguards
  • Strengthen links between local ecoguards and the forestry authority.
  • Implementation of a patrol monitoring tool (geoodk)

Well-defined locations

Up-to-date and reliable information

All conservation sites must have an up-to-date fire and clearing warning system.

Declaration of Natural Marine Heritage Sites (World Heritage Sites UNESCO)

Both block 1 and 2 are focused on disseminating to the world and providing Virtual Reality / Recorded Reality video material evidence of the relevance of reinforcing bottom-up protection schemes that increase local governance for protection from fishing communities. Being in phase 2 of inclusion in Colombia's National Natural Parks, the nomination as a Marine Natural Heritage would ensure that the international protection framework with Mission Blue is quadrupled and conservation of these two resilient reefs Varadero and Capurgana-Cabo Tiburon located in the North and South ends that connect the biodiversity of healthy coral reefs to the natural parks in between (sanctuary of Fauna and Flora Playona with National Natural Park Corales del Rosario and San Bernardo) is achieved.

It has involved the local fishing community and dive operators (DIVE and GREEN) who monitor the reefs on a daily basis and are the in situ guardians of the reefs.

The National Navy also supports us in their protection and National Parks has participated in underwater cleanup campaigns.

The strategy of effective protection of coral reefs still works without the need to fragment coral colonies. In October 2021, a chapter of ours will be published in Springer Nature in which we demonstrate the evidence. While the intervention for restoration by fragmentation of coral colonies could generate risks to the survival, health, complexity and ecosystem integrity and biodiversity of natural reef ecosystems.

Interagency Data Standards and Access

Rather than harmonize data after it is collected, interagency standards for collecting underlying data for physical and monetary accounts will allow data to be aggregated and disaggregated, merged and filtered with ease. These standards should cover data storage and collection so that data collected over time are comparable. Further, sharing data across ministries and departments will prevent recollecting data when they exist.

  • Interagency cooperation
  • Statistical offices empowered to set standards
  • Data security and underlying support infrastructure

Fit-for-purpose data collection to answer particular policy questions may be redundant unless the full scope of existing data collection efforts are accessible and able to be disaggregated. Data to support ocean accounting may already exist, but are collected by environment ministries as well as by commerce and transport ministries.