Comité de Microcuenca El Aguacate trabajando en el desazolve de canales (comunidad El Tamarindo)
IUCN @ Paul Aragón
"Action learning" and monitoring to increase capacities and knowledge
Manos a la obra en los manglares de la comunidad El Tamarindo
IUCN @ Paul Aragón
Action learning is a process that involves the implementation of EbA activities, coupled with a practical capacity building program for scaling up results. The process, in addition to enhance local communities' capacities and skills, generates evidence on EbA benefits through the implementation of a monitoring system aiming at policy makers. Some elements and steps in the process are:
- Participatory assessment of communities’ socio-environmental vulnerability.
- Prioritization of mangrove restoration sites, as an EbA measure, based on assessment and in complementation to traditional knowledge.
- Participatory monitoring and evaluation of EbA effectiveness to food security. The research (22 families sample) aims to understand the benefits of restoration on their livelihoods.
- Capacity building process to strengthen natural resource management, local advocacy and adaptive capacities, through:
- Trainings and exchanges of experience on adaptation to climate change, watershed and water management, and sustainable mangrove management.
- Technical support provided to the communities, to jointly undertake mangrove forest restoration.
- Joint monitoring activities. With tangible evidence, communities are able to raise awareness and gain political advocacy capacities and access to financial resources.
- Due to a weak governmental presence locally, the communities have promoted their own self-organization through Development Associations and other local structures (e.g. Environmental Committees), making room also for leadership and mobilization by women, all of which result in increased social capital.
- Working with both with formal community's (e.g. through Development Associations) and other local civil society groups (e.g. Microbasin Committee) is key, as these entities have a direct interest in the success of the EbA measures to be implemented.
- Local stakeholders can facilitate dissemination of the measures, and with it, their replication, as occurred with upstream communities in the Aguacate River basin, where takeholders became interested in the measures implemented downstream and proposed the creation of a broader forum (a 'Mangrove Alliance') for the entire Salvadoran coast.