Executive Summary

BCN's Conservation Impact
The challenges facing each community implementing a project with BCN support are enormous. Yet in 1996, only three years since BCN's inception, preliminary monitoring results indicate that in 18 out of 20 projects, threats to local biodiversity are being reduced. Biodiversity monitoring and adaptive (responsive) management practices by local communities currently extend over 221,000 hectares with plans to expand to a total of 2.2 million hectares -- an area larger than the state of New Jersey.

Even more exciting is evidence that impacts of these biodiversity based projects are rippling beyond the project sites and are having a catalytic effect on community and national awareness of the benefits of conserving biodiversity. BCN-funded projects are stimulating wide-ranging transformations in conservation efforts and polices. Highlights include:

• Creation of the first Cooperatively Managed Marine Conservation Area in the Solomon Islands. Its rules governing the use of the marine resources around the Arnavon Islands, were approved and gazetted by the Isabel Provincial Assembly and are now part of the provincial by-laws.

• Passage of new legislation in Nepal permitting communities to keep 30 to 50% of tourist tax revenues from visitors to local protected areas.

• Requests for assistance from communities in Jumla, Nepal to the BCN-funded Humla Project to help them set up their own essential oil distilling operations, thus replicating the project on their own.

• Use of biological monitoring information to stop the building of a proposed road through the center of the Ikalahan Reserve in Central Luzon in the Philippines.

• Development of draft legislation in Fiji regulating prospecting for pharmaceutically active compounds from native flora and fauna by commercial companies.

Evaluating the BCN Approach: Stories and Lessons
In 1996 we also made significant progress towards our goal of collecting the data needed to analyze the effectiveness of enterprises on the conservation of biodiversity. An outside team from John Mellor Associates, including business, social science, and biological experts, spent four months examining every aspect of BCN. Their summary evaluation found BCN "on track" and stated that progress to date warranted further consideration of funding from USAID. In light of the critical importance of monitoring to evaluate the projects, however, they recommended that monitoring at project sites needed to be simplified in order to be effectively implemented.

Practicing what we preach, the BCN staff promptly responded by conducting a series of eight monitoring and evaluation workshops in India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Solomon Islands. In the coming year, BSP and BCN will also publish Measures of Success-- a user-friendly guide to designing, managing, and monitoring community-oriented conservation projects, based in large part on staff experiences establishing monitoring and evaluation programs at BCN sites.

As a result of these efforts, the 20 projects are now generating a wealth of insights into the conditions under which enterprise-oriented approaches to conservation work. Perhaps just as importantly, we are beginning to understand the constraints to success. In Section 2 of this report, our partners tell their own stories. The very selection of the stories they tell is part of BCN's learning process about our partners' perceptions of their projects' challenges and successes.

Over time, this information will provide the basis for drawing lessons about the conditions under which enterprise-oriented approaches can help achieve biodiversity conservation. Section 3 presents some of the early lessons that we have learned regarding establishing and managing an experimental or "hypothesis-testing" grants program.

Future Plans
While annual reports from BCN's first two years described the process of managing the grant program, this 1996 report begins to document the impacts of this program. Based on the monitoring work done to date, BCN grantees and staff are now well positioned to begin substantive analysis of the impacts of these biodiversity-based enterprises on conservation. In 1997, BCN staff and grantee partners will continue to focus on the viability of the businesses, the quality of the monitoring programs, and disseminating the lessons learned to the conservation community, policy makers and general public.

BCN funding to the first four Implementation Grants will end this year. Most of these projects are well positioned to fulfil their objectives, but will need further technical and financial assistance on monitoring issues for the next few years. BCN staff will assist these grantees to obtain additional funding.

Finally, a word of thanks and appreciation to all the community members, organization teams, staff of the BCN, and other BSP staff. Everyone involved with the BCN has continued to work tirelessly to address our two goals of site-specific conservation and evaluating the effectiveness of these enterprise-oriented, approaches to conservation. Despite many set-backs, groups continue to stay focused on the overall objectives of their projects. We feel certain that this level of commitment and work will ultimately lead to the success of the BCN in the years to come.

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