Aligning public and private investments at the landscape level
The solution is funded through a combination of sinking funds and endowment funds from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and matching funds from other donors and public funding. The endowment funds from the GEF provide long-term financing to address the conservation needs within the coastal watersheds and are partially dedicated to the basic operation of protected areas. Public sinking funds from CONAFOR´s programs and payment for ecosystem services mechanisms increases watershed connectivity. Grants finance sustainable forest management and agro-ecology projects. The Integrated Watershed Action Plan will help to align these public and private investments at the landscape level.
The capacity to raise funds from multilateral, bilateral and private donors.
Matching funds from three public agencies that enable private donations.
An experienced, professional trust fund manager.
Coordinating investments from multiple agencies at the landscape level enables greater impacts on watershed recovery and functionality.
Raising funds for conservation is more likely when public and private investment is committed to a common goal.
Different funding sources with different timelines associated with them (endowment and sinking funds) bring advantages for conservation goals.
The involvement of all stakeholders is key to a successful, innovative watershed management.
Mexican Fund for Nature Conservation (FMCN)
Three federal Mexican agencies as well as a private organization are joining efforts for the conservation of priority watersheds. This is formalized by a letter of intent for collaboration stating the common goal all are working towards.
A technical committee with representatives of all institutions is formed and takes decisions. It meets every two months, and supports the implementation of the project. A participatory platform is set up at the local level in each of the regions, allowing local stakeholders from different sectors to get together and decide on activities to promote within the watersheds.
Public and private institutions have the willingness to collaborate for a common goal.
A technical committee for decision making with representation of all institutions involved gathers several times a year. Decisions are made by consensus.
Local organizations and governments considered as a key stakeholder by the technical committee jointly develop the Integrated Watershed Management Action Plans.
Inter-institutional collaboration tackles severe effects of climate change in vulnerable coastal environments, by ensuring adequate planning in the watersheds.
The technical committee, which includes representatives of all institutions involved, ensures transparency and adequate operation of the project.
Natural resources are key for local communities to sustain their livelihoods although there are laws that prevent such practices. This is always a source of conflict between protected area managers and local communities. Conflicts arise when protected area managers enforce law where arrests and fines occur. The method has been implemented to minimize conflict between actors on the ground and maximize sustainable management of resources while supporting local livelihoods. The most interesting side of this approach is mainly to monitor how activities implemented on the ground are making positive changes on conflicts and how sensitive are these activities. The sensitivity of activities is measured through participatory meetings to assess what conflicts have arisen from implemented activities.
Enabling factors include the availability of a facilitator who masters the process, field staff to implement all the steps and monitor changes, as well as stakeholders willing to change the situation and resources.
Conflict Sensitive Conservation methodology is effective towards natural resource based conflicts related to resource extraction if aiming at improving local livelihoods. Identification and understanding of changes happening during implementation are key for success. In Kahuzi Biega for example, illegal extraction of resources by local communities was identified as a key issue in Bugobe area. Education outreach was used to ensure that individuals are aware of existing legal constrains and consequences. As a result, 180 people identified themselves as illegal resource users. This was taken as an opportunity to identify their motivations and how we could respond to them. Given that they accepted to abandon these illegal activities, they requested support that can allow them develop alternative activities. We then developed a microcredit scheme with the local CCC which has reached to date 250 households.
Helping community conservation groups to form a federation
Although projects talk about involving communities, there are many levels of community involvement. The highest level encourages communities to take power over their own efforts. In India, communities know how to form their own groups from the Panchayat self-governing system. After many community meetings with the focus on the Manas Biosphere, community groups formed on their own to join the project. When members of the village of Koila Moila decided to join the Golden Langur Conservation Project, there was competition of whether they should join Nature’s Foster an NGO from Bongaigaon or Green Forest Conservation, a CBO from the western area of the Biosphere. Instead, they decided to form their own CBO and became the first CBO to join the project. Once Green Forest Conservation began its partnership with the Bodoland Territorial Council to patrol and protect its western Reserve Forests, other groups began to form within their own regions to participate in protection and to consider the possibility of tourism and other livelihoods. We then organized these CBOs into a federation, the United Forest Conservation Network that met monthly.
You must have strong empowered community groups that are functioning well. These groups should be brought together to discuss common interests.
Federations or networks of community-based organizations are the strongest community conservation institutions and probably the highest level of community participation. They seem to contribute to conservation contagion and perhaps maintain the energy level for it.
Encouraging communities to form conservation groups
Green Forest Conservation force
Forming their own community conservation group builds empowerment, pride, ownership and sustainability. It allows communities to chart their own directions. Participants become empowered by forming groups that set their own agenda. Sustainability results because the groups were formed by the communities themselves for their own reasons. In some countries, like India, creating community groups was known perhaps influenced by the Panchayat village system. In some countries, the catalyzing agent may have to help communities to form their own groups.
Communities must feel that there is something for them in the process. The incentives are usually social or cultural, with perhaps some financial possibilities. If communities have the knowledge in how to form groups, they will form the groups on their own as the Assam communities did. In some countries such as Rwanda following the genocide there seemed to be a strong governmental control that made it difficult for communities to think for themselves.
Helping communities to form their own groups for specific conservation reasons is central for success in affecting conservation action. It is empowering and becomes sustainable because it is in the self-interest of those community members. With federations it provides the highest of community participation. Essentially, these groups replace the community institutions that occurred prior to colonialism.
Conservation contagion is a type of social contagion that can cause ideas to proceed exponentially instead of linearly. Recognition of and focus on this concept are unique to Community Conservation projects and have not been observed by other conservationists or scientists. Although we cannot predict success in achieving it, contagion seems to respond to large amount of media advertising and bringing people together from different areas allowing messages to expand into other social networks. The Manas celebrations were to help to increase the probability of conservation contagion, to celebrate and raise the awareness, giving a higher focus on the Manas Biosphere Reserve rather that the Manas National Park which was ordinarily focused on, and to give a regional focus on the golden langur and the Manas Biosphere deforestation. These celebrations were to increase the human energy to activism within the region.
You need the help of motivated community members who know how to arrange such events in their own communities. Assam communities already had such leaders with such skills.
While achieving conservation contagion may not be completely predictable, it is possible to maximize the possibility of achieving it through mixing people from different regions and thus generating excitement from jumping social networks. Seeing how conservation contagion had been accidentally attained in Belize, mainly through countrywide advertising and bringing communities together from different parts of the country, allowed me to attempt to create a similar situation in western Assam. Instead of focusing on a small area, the project initially focused on the complete Indian range of the golden langur bringing together five existing NGOs and CBOs to work together to protect the endemic golden langur within its entire Indian range. The huge crowds that occurred, I believe stemmed from our original transparent, trusting relationships with communities who felt pride and ownership in the project.
Seminars for community and NGO members and government staff
Kachugaon workshop
Building on the success of the community response to community meetings we began to hold multi-stakeholder meetings and seminars to make the general community aware of the problems of deforestation and the plight of the golden langur, to bring government, NGO and community stakeholders together. This served to integrate the communities as equal partners in conservation and to highlight the deforestation and golden langurs within the regional community. These meetings were often written about in local newspapers highlighting the golden langur as an Assam animal. They also gave more credence to the project and focused on the strongest conservation solution, when governments, NGOs and communities work together. In retrospect it also gave a focus for the new Bodoland Territorial Council members who, at these meetings quickly made the transition from militants to tribal government representatives.
There must be interest on the part of government and NGOs to participate and they must be willing and capable of meeting and interacting with community members on an equal basis.
These efforts built on the community meetings to bring the stakeholders together on common ground. They also played a large part in generating conservation contagion.
Governance assessment through participatory consultation
A governance baseline assessment was implemented in February 2014 at village, village cluster, district and provincial level to collect data on the governance and management of the Hin Nam No NA so far. This participatory exercise gave a platform to voice disappointment and problems and it gave ideas on the direction and strategic vision of the Hin Nam No PA by bringing various stakeholders together. The governance baseline assessment also included an exercise of measuring management effectiveness and good governance based on a self-assessment method developed by the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (Mardiastuti et al. 2013) and a questionnaire developed by the Hin Nam No project and based on annex 3 of the IUCN publication “Governance of Protected Areas” (Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2013).
Face-to-face dialogue. Creation of common understanding and trust building in meetings between state and non-state stakeholders. Solid, transparent and well-documented process, which cannot be ignored by local authorities as high number of people and stakeholders involved. Facilitation by neutral facilitator bringing the parties together. Strong leadership by decision makers at national; provincial and district level.
The methods used for measuring management effectiveness and good governance are relatively easy and cost-effective and therefore suitable for annual repetition. The methodology fits well in the Lao context. Discussions around each indicator question are as valid as the final monitoring result. The methodology of yearly self-assessments in various groups is an easy way of social monitoring in which qualitative indicators can be quantified and compared over time. The tools are suitable for further action planning by identifying first of all the areas in which an improvement can be relatively easily obtained. The limited resources are mainly allocated to these areas instead of focusing on areas in which the protected area has limited potential for change. The results can also be easily presented to outside stakeholders to try to improve on areas that are beyond the influence of the park management.
