Message from the Director

This past year was an exciting one for the Biodiversity Conservation Network (BCN) in terms of the progress that was made both across the twenty individual project sites and by the program as a whole. In this report, we document this progress, focusing on the projects' successes and challenges and the analytical themes that are emerging regarding enterprise-based strategies to conservation.

Stories from the Field

Based on an overwhelmingly positive response to last year's Annual Report, which provided the grantees an opportunity to share their experiences in their own voice, we have expanded the Stories from the Field section. In keeping with the title of this year's report, you'll see in these stories that all of the projects are "getting down to business" with regard to developing enterprises, influencing natural resource policy, and empowering communities. The enterprises are beginning to contribute to local economies and provide incentives for conserving local resources. The projects are also helping to influence national and local level policies that support better natural resource management. Most importantly, the projects and the businesses are increasing the ability of local communities and their partners to gauge the health of their natural surroundings and develop and implement strategies that conserve them. Perhaps the best measure of these successes are the many times in the stories that project teams note how project ideas are spreading beyond the initial site. For example, the project teams write:

• A large number of projects from various parts of the country as well as from neighboring countries are visiting Baghmara and Kumrose to gain first-hand information and to learn from the User Group Committee of Baghmara.... At the local as well as at the national level, government has appreciated the work and wants to extend the program. Now, all 36 Village Development Committees (VDC) on the edges of the park are forming User Group Committees to assess and implement their own opportunities. The Chitwan experience has been one of success breeding success through replication. [Ecotourism in Nepal, #2]

• The BCN project in the Gunung Palung buffer zone will likely be the first model of community-based forest management put forth by the Directorate General of Forest Utilization. It was highlighted as an approach to community based forest management at a workshop on the Consultative Group on Indonesia Forestry a policy roundtable of NGOs, intentional donor agencies and officials from the Ministry of Forestry. It is obvious that BCN has created a clear and direct link between community needs and high level policy. [Community Logging in Indonesia, #7]

• The third area of success is the reaming and exchange going on with projects undertaking similar or related projects. There have been four other Indonesian projects who, it would seem, have thought highly enough of our project to visit it, and to do comparative studies. [Ecotourism in Java, Indonesia, #6]

Despite their successes, the projects have also continued to face daunting challenges. We have thus continued last year's tradition of candor in reporting not just the successes, but also the challenges inherent in doing this work.

Analytical Themes

This report also continues BCN's efforts to analyze the results of the twenty projects by identifying common themes emerging from the projects and laying out some general principles that we believe are critically important to advancing the conservation process. Although we cannot claim that any of these themes or principles is particularly novel, we do feel that our partners have provided powerful illustrations of how they are addressing some of conservation's most vexing issues. In Section 2.1, we have thus tried to capture some of these lessons, focusing on a) how to define conservation success, b) principles for making use of catalysts and overcoming obstacles in the conservation process, and c) developing adaptive and reaming institutions. And in Section 3, we focus on some of the specific business issues including the need to have resource control to secure long-term business investments, the prerequisite that resource monitoring commence at the startup of the business to ascertain ecological impacts, and the requirement to accurately account for all costs without subsidies to assess business viability.

In developing these themes and principles from the stories, inevitably people ask us: "How can you make statements about the conservation process at these sites given the preliminary nature of the data from them?" In reply, we readily acknowledge that we can't make definitive statements about these projects' conservation impacts at this point in time.

But we also feel that we should not be constrained by an expectation of making only definitive statements before putting forth our most reasonable observations as to what matters in the conservation process. In many ways, the "journey is the destination" -- the insights that we glean from the network of projects as they develop will help us all to advance our conservation agendas. Furthermore, given current rates of biodiversity loss, we can't afford to wait until all of the data are in. If we've reamed something, let's act on this new knowledge, but maintain an attitude that leaming, changing, and improving upon what we do are at the heart of addressing the ever evolving set of threats to worldwide biological diversity.

Looking Towards the Future

As a program, the BCN has attempted to follow its own advice by continually collecting information, leaming what we can from it, and adapting to the new situation. With respect to BCN's future, we will do likewise. We anticipate that by March 1999, when the current cooperative agreement with USAID ends, our partners will have made significant strides in moving the process of conservation forwards at their sites and that as a Network, we will have gained many insights into the effectiveness of enterprise-based strategies.

We also know, however, that the work will not be finished. We view the upcoming transition period as a good opportunity to assess the past, consider the current conditions, and then design an appropriate new program which builds on the BCN franchise that's been established. Does such a program currently exist or has there been money set aside for it? No. But we hope that over the next 16 months, BCN staff and grantees, our USAID colleagues, and others can begin to define this new phase of the BCN that builds on our knowledge and has a significantly broader conservation impact.

Finally, on a personal note, it is with mixed feelings that I want to tell you that I will be moving on to a new opportunity to do enterprise-based conservation, working to establish an eco-timber business in Papua New Guinea. (It's time that I tried to make this enterprise-based approach to conservation work myself!) I say mixed because on the one hand I'm sad not to remain working with all of the colleagues and friends I have developed, but on the other hand I'm immensely proud of the accomplishments to date of our project partners and BCN staff and am confident that they will be able to carry on our tradition of reaming and adapting to change.

Starting December, 1997, BCN's management will be capably led by the senior management team of Ganesan 'Bala' Balachander, Nick Salafsky, Diane Russell, and Bernd Cordes. As the new BCN Director, Bala is one of our own. Bala started with the BCN as the Technical Director of the Forest Products in India (#5) project. His background of business and a Ph.D. in ecology make him ideally suited to the work that we do. Two years ago we convinced him to work at a broader level by becoming the BCN Regional Representative based in Manila. He has very capably led our regional program and I have the utmost confidence in his assuming the BCN Director position.

In closing, as in the past, I want to express my strong appreciation to all of those that are part of our network: BCN Grantees and staff, USAID personnel, and our BSP colleagues. It is obvious that our partners in the field are making some good advances under difficult circumstances. I thank everyone in the Network for their commitment and I look forward to future work together.

-- Hank Cauley   November 1997, Washington, DC

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