Positive Reinforcements:

A Review of Some of BSP's Experiences with Building Capacity for Conservation

Nancy K. Diamond, Mary Cox, and Catherine A. Christen

Table of Contents

Overview

What We Want to Share

BSP Partners

Navigating This Report

Table 1: Focus Programs and Projects

Capacity Building in Resource Management Activities

Conservation Planning

Box 1: Capacity Building in Conservation Priority-Setting Processes: Comparing Crimea and India

Community Mapping

Box 2:Steps in Community Mapping

Box 3: CARPE — The Central African Regional Program for the Environment

Box 4: KEMALA — The Community Natural Resource Managers Program

Box 5: Community Mapping Elsewhere in KEMALA

Monitoring

Policy Dialogue

Box 6: The BSP Analysis of Behaviors in Conservation and Development Project

Box 7: The Sierra Madre Project

Conclusions

To Learn More

Overview

The Biodiversity Support Program (BSP) is a consortium of three international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the World Wildlife Fund-U.S., The Nature Conservancy, and the World Resources Institute, solely funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). BSP’s support for field activities has been divided among regional programs in Africa and Madagascar, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe, as well as the Biodiversity Conservation Network (BCN), which operated in the Asia and Pacific region.

For more than a decade, BSP has worked worldwide to conserve biological diversity by supporting innovative programs and projects integrating conservation with social and economic development, applied research and analysis, and information outreach and exchange. BSP has supported local, national, and international organizations, researchers, and even government entities as partners in both new conservation efforts and ongoing conservation-oriented activities. BSP has recognized that along with technical skills needed for conservation management per se, project partners also require diverse organizational, interactive, and strategic planning skills to work effectively with a wide range of groups and stakeholders in social and political processes that affect natural resource management and conservation. Over the years BSP programs around the world have amassed considerable practical experience supporting a wide range of such capacity building. BSP has found that support for strengthening these capacities of project partners, especially of local and national NGOs and community-based organizations, is a vital step in working to promote sustainable biodiversity conservation.

What We Want to Share

Conservation practitioners increasingly recognize that long-term conservation requires more than identifying and sequestering important natural resources. It takes participating successfully in the political and social processes associated with decision-making, policies, and practices affecting resource management. In working with partner organizations, BSP has found that technical conservation skills and knowledge alone are usually insufficient—partners are equipped to participate in these social and political processes affecting conservation only when they also have commensurate strategic and organizational development skills and knowledge. BSP found has observed that partners’ community organizing and development skills were are often more relevant to biodiversity conservation work than formal environmental training, and becoming ever more so, as local communities and civil society organizations play bigger roles in conservation initiatives with authority over natural resources being increasingly decentralized.

Local communities and civil society organizations often lack the necessary political and social power to secure access to natural resources, influence decisions about natural resource use and conservation, or enforce accountability of government and private interests. Perhaps just as often, they simply lack the necessary know-how. Although skills in organizational development, negotiation, and conflict resolution are best honed with experience, they can to some extent be taught. BSP has provided opportunities for learning and practicing these skills through workshops and training programs, on-the-job-learning, mentoring, networking, and other means. Partners and other stakeholders have developed and used these skills to change the way resources are used, by playing new or stronger roles, shaping more effective laws and policies, and building networks and relationships with other organizations, government authorities, and local communities. These changes, in turn, have enhanced biodiversity conservation.

We want to share some of the lessons BSP has learned from its experiences with capacity building, to help other conservationists design effective capacity-building programs. BSP staff have identified several programs and projects that, by original design or adaptation, helped build or reinforce partners’ organizational, interactive, and strategic planning skills. All of these involved capacity building in some combination of conservation planning, mapping, monitoring, enterprise development, and policy dialogue (see Table 1). The eight geographically dispersed programs and projects featured here illustrate these capacity-building activities. To better understand how these kinds of capacity building affect conservation, we gathered information on local and national contexts, project chronologies, details of the activities themselves, and assessments of their impact. This report draws from interviews and correspondence with BSP staff, project partners and others associated with BSP capacity-building endeavors, and from published and unpublished BSP reports.

BSP Partners

In-country partner organizations have been both recipients of and contributors to BSP’s conservation capacity building. BSP has partnered with host country and international environmental NGOs, other civil society organizations, such as indigenous rights and development NGOs, regional or local cooperative associations, and regional or national networks focused on natural resource management or biodiversity conservation. Employing face-to-face meetings, site visits, grant proposals, and recommendations, BSP sought partners with good financial management practices, transparent decision-making procedures, community accountability, and a geographic focus appropriate to project needs. Although government ministries have not been principal partners, BSP has involved government representatives from ministries such as protected areas, forestry, environment, planning, cartography, tourism, and small business development in many capacity-building activities.

Requests from USAID, national and local governments, biodiversity experts, civil society groups and especially BSP partners guided BSP capacity building choices. The kinds of skills different organizations need vary from situation to situation. Capital city-based environmental organizations often make attractive partners for international conservation NGOs because they share similar goals and vision. However, they often need to strengthen their abilities to engage local communities in their activities, and to build ongoing relationships at the community level. They need the skills to translate their broader vision of a problem into terms that resonate locally. Local community or indigenous organizations often have a good understanding of community dynamics, a membership base, and some accountability to local communities. While conservation may not be their primary interest, they often see environment and natural resource issues as a valuable vehicle for political and educational objectives. BSP staff, outside service providers, and sometimes partner organizations themselves carried out the capacity- building activities. Capacity building tends to be most effective when done as part of an ongoing relationship that takes into account the local, national, regional and even international context of programs and projects, including economic, political, social and cultural dimensions. BSP increasingly relied on local consultants, including individuals, organizations and community representatives able to form long-term relationships with partners and local communities.

Navigating This Report

The next section of this report features four resource management activities that BSP staff identified as most effective for capacity building. These are conservation planning, mapping, monitoring, and policy dialogue. Looking at eight programs and projects, we explore capacity building in conjunction with each of these activities, and the impacts on BSP partners and on conservation. If you are considering how to do capacity building in conjunction with a particular one of these resource management activities, such as conservation planning through priority setting, you may wish to focus particular attention on those segments, as guided by the table below.

Table 1: Focus Programs and Projects

Capacity Building in Resource Management Activities

BSP carried out capacity building through traditional methods, such as workshops and training and providing technical management advice, but also built capacity by developing and nurturing networks, encouraging on-the-job learning, and supporting applied research and methodology testing. BSP used these methods to build capacity through conservation planning, community mapping, enterprise development, monitoring and policy dialogue. These five resource management activities served as effective vehicles for BSP partners to learn and practice strategic and interactive skills for conservation, giving them important tools for participating in and influencing decision-making processes in ways that enhanced conservation.

Conservation Planning

BSP worked with partners on a range of conservation planning activities resulting in resource management plans or delineation of biodiversity conservation priorities. Here we discuss preparation, implementation, and follow-up in two large-scale conservation priority-setting activities that BSP coordinated with individuals and partner organizations, in which capacity building played a significant role.

Crimea Conservation Needs Assessment

BSP’s Eastern Europe division supported a regional workshop to determine conservation priorities for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in Ukraine. The Conservation Needs Assessment Workshop, known as the Gurzuf Workshop, used an open, transparent process involving stakeholders from Crimean and Ukrainian central government agencies, scientific institutions, and NGOs to evaluate threats to Crimea’s biodiversity, and to determine both geographic and thematic conservation priorities. Throughout the process, BSP staff provided technical and strategic advice on workshop preparation, implementation, and follow-up, including outreach, data gathering, meeting format and organization, adult and participatory learning methodologies, and report writing, oriented to address Crimea’s particular social, economic, and political context.

Six months prior to the workshop, BSP held a preplanning meeting and organized a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional steering committee that included both government and NGO representatives. The steering committee then planned the six-day participatory priority-setting workshop. Participants included government staff, scientists, environmental and Tatar (an ethnic minority group) NGOs and local experts and activists.

BSP also worked closely with the steering committee to develop the workshop’s format. With BSP funds, the committee gave small grants to experts to prepare working papers in advance of the workshop. The event itself was really a working meeting, with participants in small groups drawing up maps, creating matrices and lists enumerating priority areas and themes, and writing accompanying text. Throughout, they shared their knowledge to create comprehensive and persuasive geographic and thematic priorities useful to donors, practitioners and other decision-makers.

In accordance with BSP suggestions, workshop outreach included making all sessions free and open to the public, with free transportation from Crimea’s capital city available to all. Media announcements gave the public prior notice about the event, and ongoing media coverage informed the public of the workshop’s progress. BSP also identified and invited key NGO, government and scientific sector representatives, and paid their expenses to ensure that they could attend the workshop. In total, over 100 people participated. After the workshop, BSP provided organizational development assistance to a new umbrella conservation NGO, the Association for Promoting Biological and Habitat Diversity in Crimea made up of 14 local conservation NGOs dedicated to following up on the results of the workshop.

Impacts on Partners and Conservation: BSP support for the Crimea Conservation Needs Assessment helped the steering committee build its capacity to organize a participatory and democratic workshop. Perhaps most important in a region of newly independent states lacking democratic traditions, this workshop provided both the steering committee and the other participants with a model and a hands-on demonstration of democratic priority setting. According to BSP’s Tatiana Zaharchenko, "although there is no tradition in Ukraine for scientists to be involved in a broad, democratic decision-making process, the workshop showed the capability is there."

The exercise produced a set of 50 priority sites for conservation. The Crimea State Committee for the Environment has since been using these results as the basis for their future planning, with scientists applying to the Committee to gain special attention for certain high priority sites. BSP recently published the workshop proceedings, the first biodiversity conservation publication about Crimea. The workshop has attracted attention to conservation issues, and inspired another conservation research publication and a special journal devoted to biodiversity conservation in Crimea.

The workshop helped establish relationships among individuals and organizations in government, NGO and scientific sectors. Participants from various disciplines and sectors of society found themselves using democratic procedures to work together on prioritizing conservation issues for funding and action. Many participants had their first opportunities to learn skills related to policy and funding decision-making. In a country with a developing civil society, government staff gained new respect for the contributions of scientists and NGOs. Since the workshop scientists from Crimea, Kyiv and the Carpathian region of Ukraine have planned joint work. Researchers from the Carpathian region hope to replicate the workshop process to set biodiversity priorities in their own region. Because the workshop’s planners deliberately involved lower-tier civil servants, policy makers are addressing priorities identified by the Crimea Conservation Needs Assessment despite high turnover among senior government staff. The workshop’s outcomes are also influencing donor and state conservation-related priorities in Crimea. Since the workshop, some of the participating scientists, activists and government officials have joined with 14 local conservation NGOs to form an umbrella NGO, the Association for Promoting Biological and Habitat Diversity in Crimea (Gurzuf ‘97), to conduct environmental education and communication activities with local governments in the 50 priority areas identified through the workshop.

The Biodiversity Conservation Prioritization Project in India

BSP’s Asia and Pacific division supported the BCPP, a two-year project in India to test alternatives for setting geographic and strategic action priorities — the "where" and "how" of conservation planning. The project was designed to develop transparent participatory methods and to result in a set of Indian priorities, strategies, and site-specific plans appropriate not only to scientific imperatives, but also to socio-economic conditions in the country. A secretariat based at World Wildlife Fund-India coordinated the effort. Dr. Shekhar Singh, a well-respected expert on conservation based at the Indian Institute for Public Administration, was project director and the primary liaison with BSP. Through a consultative process, Dr. Singh, BSP and WWF-India selected a steering group of five 5 government representatives and 15 NGO representatives. The steering group developed an implementation strategy for the project and provided guidance to BCPP’s coordination unit within WWF-India.

BCPP organized priority-setting workshops at the sub-regional and national levels and provided grants to test priority-setting methods. Within the steering group, a screening committee reviewed grant proposals and recommended for or against their funding. The steering group funded 47 projects, aimed at identifying conservation priority sites, species, and strategies, and at developing support systems for sharing and disseminating biodiversity information.

BCPP trained community-based NGOs and other organizations, and university faculty and students in technical skills for community-level data collection and priority-setting methods. More than 40 NGOs and hundreds of local organizations in village clusters and individual villages near valuable biodiversity sites in eight Indian states applied these methods to produce local conservation priorities and plans.

Impacts on Partners and Conservation: BCPP’s activities helped build capacity among participating community members, community-based NGOs, university representatives and scientists. Some of the participating NGOs broadened their portfolios to include environmental activities and data collection. Professors and students learned how to do policy-oriented research benefiting communities. BCPP provided an opportunity for many scientists from across India to work together for the first time. BCPP helped build relationships within and across sectors, giving the university community, local communities, and policy makers the opportunity to learn to work together. BCPP experts formed a new formal biodiversity conservation network in India to advance conservation priorities.

BCPP was the first biodiversity project in India that helped local, regional and national stakeholders coordinate to set conservation priorities for future action. The project set priorities for ecosystem sites and flora and fauna species by utilizing scientific information while simultaneously working out conservation strategies at the micro- (village) and macro-levels. Bringing local communities and community-based organizations into the process, BCPP emphasized socioeconomic considerations to ensure that priorities and strategies adopted were socially equitable.

BCPP helped change how communities make decisions and interact with their natural environment. Project director Singh noted that some of the communities assisted now have a new "scientific temper" that helps them more effectively assess their resource management options. For example, in one village in the Himalayan foothills, new brides from the plains are now required to learn the local customs of tree climbing and lopping rather than cutting down whole trees for firewood. Overall, activities linked with BCPP have already had a positive impact on biodiversity conservation, with 500,000 hectares throughout the country documented to be under improved management.

Participating in BCPP helped Indian biodiversity experts build their awareness of under-researched topics, what Dr. Singh termed their "encyclopedia of ignorance," helping them to work with policy makers to determine where next to direct their attention. BCPP recommendations were incorporated into India’s Biodiversity Action Plan under the Convention on Biological Diversity, and species were added to the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Red Book. BCPP also helped provide support for passage of India’s new Freedom of Information Act, which increases access to government biodiversity data and plans. The new priorities have also influenced conservation projects funded by international donors, such as the Global Environmental Facility’s India Biodiversity Strategy and the World Bank’s Uttar Pradesh Forestry Project, national programs, and state programs in Karnataka and Kerala.

Community Mapping

In many countries, maps and mapping have traditionally been the exclusive domain of government, used to reinforce government or private sector claims to land, often at the expense of biodiversity. With community-based mapping, this can change. BSP and partner organizations have used community-based mapping techniques to document the boundaries of community and individual land holdings and resource uses. BSP worked with local NGOs and helped train community-based organizations and community members in social and biological inventory techniques so that community members and organizations could carry out the actual surveying and mapping work. Community maps have often proven more accurate than government maps.

CARPE-SOS and Community Mapping in Cameroon

CARPE works to counter deforestation and biodiversity loss in the Congo Basin of Central Africa by evaluating threats and identifying opportunities for sustainable resource management. BSP/CARPE coordinates CARPE’s core partners, the several international environmental NGOs and government bodies USAID has funded to work on different aspects of this $20 million, 20 year program. BSP also runs CARPE’s grant program, the Strategic Objective Support (SOS) fund, which funds activities of researchers and NGOs from Congo Basin countries or working on Congo Basin-related research on-site or in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Grantees, if they are not CARPE core partners, are considered to be CARPE extended partners.

In southwest Cameroon, CARPE-SOS funded a pilot community mapping exercise involving the British-based Mt. Cameroon Project and the small U.S.-based NGO, Center for the Support of Native Lands. This assistance focused primarily on technical mapping and data collection techniques. To initiate the mapping exercise, the Mt. Cameroon Project and Native Lands representatives held meetings with community members to discuss mapping, data collection techniques, and potential uses of community maps. Participating communities selected community members, usually respected individuals with literacy skills and an understanding of local natural resource uses, to be the researchers and cartographers responsible for collecting data and producing the maps. Mostly for reasons of personal security, communities generally selected men rather than women to carry out the data collection.

The first phase of mapping was a five-day workshop in the provincial capital designed to orient researchers to the sequence of mapping activities. Researchers then returned to their communities to gather information on physical land features, natural resources, and subsistence use patterns. In a second workshop in the provincial capital, researchers collaborated with experienced cartographers to produce draft maps, then brought these back to their communities to verify and correct them. Researchers finalized the maps in a third workshop. Participating communities then held meetings to review the completed maps and discuss future plans.

Impacts on Partners, Communities and Conservation: While the workshops focused on technical skills, community members immediately grasped the strategic benefits of community mapping as a tools to negotiate with other stakeholders for control of their lands. Mapping served as a catalyst for mobilizing community-level institutions to take part in activities necessary to initiate and sustain decentralized forest management. The maps have given community representatives leverage in ongoing negotiations over land use and land allocation with the Cameroon government, and the powerful government concessionaire, the Cameroon Development Corporation.

PeFoR and the Philippine Association for Intercultural Development

Through PeFoR (the Peoples, Forests and Reefs program), BSP’s Asia and Pacific division worked with indigenous peoples to enhance their capacities and rights to manage and benefit from forests and reefs under their stewardship as a means to reverse trends in loss of both biodiversity and cultural heritage. In the Philippines, PeFoR support helped several indigenous peoples produce maps to support their applications for Certificates of Ancestral Domain Claim (CADC), which establish their rights to use and manage their ancestral lands. Government regulations for CADCs require a high level of accuracy in these maps.

PeFoR helped the Philippine Association for Intercultural Development (PAFID) purchase Differential Global Positioning System equipment. With this equipment, PAFID could provide surveying and mapping assistance to indigenous communities applying for recognition of rights to their ancestral lands and waters. This equipment also allowed PAFID to meet the required mapping accuracy specified in the government regulations, and ultimately gain authorization by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment to produce maps supporting CADC applications. Seven indigenous peoples formed a federation to organize use of this new technology, and then directed PAFID in using their GPS equipment to survey and document their ancestral lands and waters.

Impacts on Partners, Communities and Biodiversity: As a result of this mapping work, several indigenous communities filed for and obtained Certificates of Ancestral Domain Claim, helping them to protect both their cultural and natural heritage. For example, in Mindoro, a special government committee awarded Certificates of Ancestral Domain Claim to indigenous communities on the basis of their community maps, helping to protect the last remaining forests on the island.

The Tagbanua, an indigenous people on the Philippine island of Palawan, also used maps to protect their ancestral reefs and initiated a national debate on the inclusion of waters, as well as land, in formal ancestral domain claims. On learning that Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company and Occidental Petroleum Corporation planned to build a pipeline through their reefs, the Tagbanua called on PAFID to help them survey and map their ancestral waters. When the oil companies heard of the map, they approached the Tagbanua to negotiate the location of the pipeline. Through these negotiations, the Tagbanua were able to convince the companies to modify their plans for the pipeline’s location so it would not cross their ancestral waters. The Tagbanua’s unique claim, focusing on ancestral waters rather than land, was also crucial in building public support for the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997, which, along with other clarifications, provided that formal ancestral domain claims could encompass ancestral waters.

KEMALA, PPSDAK, and Community Mapping

Several KEMALA partners work on community mapping, providing both technical mapping skills and strategic skills for community organizing to local communities for mapping their lands, seas and other natural resources. Communities use their maps to negotiate boundaries with other communities, defend their territorial claims against outside users, and document management and cultural practices for spatial resource planning.

KEMALA partner PPSDAK, a mapping organization formed by indigenous Dayaks in West Kalimantan, goes through a six-step process for participatory community mapping. First, PPSDAK introduces the idea of mapping at a community meeting. The community discusses the problems and threats it is facing, and a community organizer from PPSDAK describes the mapping process and uses of maps. If the community decides to move forward with the mapping exercise, it formally requests that PPSDAK provide community mapping facilitators to work in their village.

Next, the community mapping facilitator divides the community into groups based on age and gender, and works with them to delineate their "mental maps" of village lands and resources into sketch maps. After this initial mapping, the community discusses its plans to map village lands with neighboring villages, to ensure goodwill and openness and avoid future conflicts over boundaries. Once they reach a common understanding, neighboring villages give their permission to the participating village to map its territory.

The village then proceeds with in-depth mapping of its land and resources. Community members learn to use modern technical tools such as compasses and global positioning systems (GPS) to document their mental maps. Once these maps are completed, they are taken back to the village for community members to check for accuracy and correct mistakes. Final maps are completed and taken back to the community. The community holds another village meeting where the mapping facilitator delivers the map into the community’s hands for them to sign as a symbol of their ownership of the maps. PPSDAK provides communities with technical skills, strategic alternatives and information about risks of community mapping, but once the exercise is completed, communities make their own choices about how to use their maps.

In conjunction with community mapping, PPSDAK, part of the umbrella organization known as Pancur Kasih, facilitates communities in participatory biodiversity surveys and discussions of environmental problems based on the results of community mapping. Communities hold traditional meetings to discuss these issues and evaluate current rules and penalties for resource use. If they deem it necessary, communities revise these rules, revive traditional practices and ceremonies, and develop alternative income-generating activities to reduce pressures on natural resources. They then set out describe these new policies in a community agreement. PPSDAK also works with groups of villages to use community maps as bases for inter-village land-use agreements and management plans.

Impacts on Partners, Communities and Conservation: Through KEMALA’s support, and in response to interest from other communities who that became aware of initial community mapping activities, PPSDAK has been able to scale up its activities. PPSDAK has now worked with 150 villages in West Kalimantan to develop community maps, and has trained villagers to become mapping trainers themselves, thereby increasing the scope and impact of its activities. PPSDAK has also expanded the reach of its activities, with its base in West Kalimantan becoming a training center for community mappers from elsewhere in Indonesia. Representatives from KEMALA partners and other NGOs and community members from Papua and Sulawesi have come to West Kalimantan as apprentices to learn not only technical and strategic mapping skills, but also skills in land management. PPSDAK-trained community mappers also transmit these skills to other community organizations and KEMALA partners. For example, mappers from Biak, West Papua, who trained with PPSDAK in West Kalimantan have hosted representatives from communities from the Arfak Mountain area of West Papua and BLBC, another KEMALA partner from West Papua, to pass on mapping and conflict resolution skills. PPSDAK representatives also travel to other areas to assist community groups with mapping training and exercises.

The process of mapping gives community members a great sense of accomplishment and "increased community awareness of resource scarcities and limitations," says PPSDAK Director Kristianos Atok. Community mapping also gives communities more skills and tools to protect their land rights and culture. PPSDAK has trained more than 300 local community mappers. These communities have used their maps strategically — to negotiate boundaries with other communities and with local governments, and to defend their land claims against unwanted oil palm plantations, logging concessions, and other unwanted development projects. For example, after mapping work in Papua, traditional leaders were able to halt the construction of a major fish factory downstream from their lands. Communities have also used mapping to document management and cultural practices related to their land. Mapping exercises have helped rebuild and reinforce indigenous communities, improving communication between generations and genders and strengthening younger Dayaks’ ties with their history. Surveying their lands for mapping exercises has also made communities more aware of current conditions of and threats to their natural resources, revealing where biodiversity is relatively intact and where it has been degraded. This knowledge helps communities develop management and rehabilitation plans for their lands.

Community mapping serves as a catalyst and basis for inter-village and sub-district land management and conservation agreements. These regional management and conservation plans coordinate between upriver and downriver communities and facilitate watershed and forest management. In West Kalimantan, communities have achieved 15 new sub-district conservation agreements focusing on protecting remaining forests for watershed protection.

Finally, mapping has helped communities achieve policy changes advancing recognition of community natural resource management. PPSDAK and Pancur Kasih have encouraged local governments to use community maps in local and regional development and land-use planning. PPSDAK signed an agreement with the West Kalimantan regional government to ensure that regional development plans account for community maps. Four sub-district governments have recognized community maps in their jurisdictions.

Monitoring

BSP-supported monitoring activities have included community-level data collection and analysis for adaptive management of community-based natural resource enterprises, and standardized data collection and analysis by national NGOs for independent oversight of forest concessions. BSP and partner organizations have helped partners and community groups develop monitoring plans and trained local community members and NGO staff to collect and analyze data.

CARPE-SOS and Global Forest Watch

CARPE-SOS supports Global Forest Watch (GFW), a program at World Resources Institute, to conduct forest monitoring in Central African countries including Cameroon and Gabon. GFW is an international data and mapping network that collaborates with local groups to generate accurate, peer-reviewed, and objective data about forest resources.

In some countries, such as Gabon, GFW’s local partners are multi-issue environmental groups with limited staff, institutional and technical capacities for data gathering. GFW has been working with these groups to assist in their efforts to gain access to official records, and to build their technical and institutional capacity for data collection, analysis, and report writing. CARPE-SOS permits GFW to mentor these local organizations by embedding funds for training and technical assistance into GFW’s grant.

In 1999, Washington-based GFW staff member Jean-Gael Collomb worked with Gabon partners on interpretation of forestry legislation, data collection and analysis, and report writing. Realizing the need for capacity building, Collomb extended his stay from four to six weeks and structured training sessions around partners’ work commitments. Training took place in during evenings and weekends, in both group sessions and individual tutorials. This commitment helped build trust and a spirit of collaboration.

Collomb’s training focused on working with partners to organize information and use computers for data analysis. They jointly reviewed data and documents, sorting the information, sometimes by literally piling it into separate labeled stacks on the floor. They then compiled the data into coherent descriptions of past and current forest concession developments.

GFW also hired Gabon lawyer Guy Rossatanga, a specialist in environmental law, to conduct a one-day workshop on forestry legislation. After giving a lecture outlining the pertinent laws, Rossatanga spent hours answering partner questions about Gabon’s forestry legislation and legislative processes. With his years of experience in Gabon legal and legislative issues, Rossatanga was able to speak frankly to Gabon partners about how they could improve their effectiveness during discussions with government officials. One workshop participant recalled, "his lecture made us aware of all the gaps in our knowledge. When we realized all that we didn’t know, then we were ready to start asking lots of questions."

Impact on Partners and Conservation: Global Forest Watch’s Gabon partners were able to build their technical and strategic skills and knowledge background to increase their knowledge about forest resources. They learned how to gain access to government information sources and collect and process information. Partners also learned strategies for effectively presenting information to their governments in written and verbal forms demonstrating technical expertise and credibility. GFW’s Central African partners are starting to play a watchdog role regarding forest protection and the allocation of logging concessions. They have established useful relationships with local and national government officials, as well as other NGOs affiliated with GFW. They have been working to establish an office in Libreville, shared by all Gabon GFW partners. GFW’s Gabon report, produced and printed by GFW in Washington, incorporates local partners’ monitoring and analysis work.

Policy Dialogue

BSP has also supported opportunities for policy dialogue — sharing views, advocating and networking for policy change — in ways that benefit biodiversity conservation, at local, district, provincial, national, regional and international levels. BSP has helped establish new forums and processes for policy dialogue by providing advice on organizing, facilitation, meeting structure and content, and helped open access to existing policy-making processes to include representatives from multiple sectors, including local communities, NGOs, and scientists. BSP partner organizations, local communities and other stakeholders have learned technical and strategic skills to advocate for policy changes that benefit conservation.

BSP has strengthened the capacities of partner organizations by supporting their ongoing policy-related activities and programs. Moreover, because government policies have an impact on other resource management activities, BSP work with planning, mapping, monitoring and enterprise development activities has fed into policy dialogue. These activities have highlighted policy constraints on conservation and natural resource management and encouraged policy changes.

Summit of the Americas on Sustainable Development

BSP's Latin America and Caribbean division and partners from the Latin American region coordinated input on biodiversity conservation for the December 1996 Summit on Sustainable Development in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Over an 11-month period, through the Inter-American Commission on Biodiversity and Sustainable Development (composed of biodiversity experts from throughout the Americas), BSP and partners developed recommendations on how best to integrate biodiversity conservation into the Summit agenda. BSP and the Commission also liaised with other civil society groups organizing for the Summit and with national delegations to the meeting. BSP helped establish the Inter-American Commission on Biodiversity and Sustainable Development, a functional advisory body composed made up of professionals with diverse backgrounds, affiliations and nationalities.

Impacts on Partners and Conservation: Through their work on the Summit, Inter-American Commission members built new relationships and gained expertise in how to strategically advance their agenda in convention negotiations during the preparatory conferences and the formal regional summit.

Four out of five of the Commission's initiatives were incorporated in one form or another in the Summit’s Final Plan of Action. One of the Commission's recommendations was to establish a Web-based network for sharing information on biodiversity in the Americas. Subsequently, the USAID-funded Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network, or IABIN, was created.

CARPE-SOS and CEFDHAC

CARPE-SOS has provided support to establish and facilitate activities at the Conference on Dense and Humid Forest Ecosystems of Central Africa (CEFDHAC). In Central Africa, there have been few opportunities at the regional level for natural resource management or biodiversity conservation discussions among environmental ministries, NGOs and private stakeholders. Yet along with sharing a common ecosystem, many of these countries share forest concessionaires and share the interest of donors concerned with supporting more accountable and transparent governance. CEFDHAC is a biennial Congo Basin-wide conference that brings together all stakeholders concerned with forest policy and forest management, including timber companies, NGOs, and representatives of environment and forest ministries in nine Central African countries, to discuss and coordinate regional forest policy. CEFDHAC serves as a regional forum for a wide range of stakeholders to discuss issues of sustainable natural resource management, and promotes transparent debate, sharing of experiences, and information dissemination.

Through the CARPE-SOS funds, BSP/CARPE has promoted the involvement of African NGOs as effective participants in CEFDHAC. CARPE-SOS grants to CEFDHAC earmark funds to support NGO networking, in order to enhance opportunities for NGO representatives to be present and interact at CEFDHAC with private sector and government delegates. Because Central African environmental NGOs were present at the 1997 CEFDHAC meetings, but were not speaking up or otherwise actively participating, in late 1997 the CARPE-SOS fund supported a training workshop focused on exploring the role of environmental NGOs in the sustainable management of forest resources in Central Africa. The aim of the workshop was to get these NGOs thinking about their rights and responsibilities in terms of forestry policy, and to build their confidence and skills in public speaking and advocacy so that they could fulfill their roles. Transparency International, a coalition that works to end government corruption, the African Forest Action Network (AFAN), a CARPE-affiliated network working on tropical forest conservation and management, and the Brazzaville, Congo office of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUVN) co-sponsored the workshop.

The training workshop focused on improving the technical and strategic skills of partners and participants to articulate and communicate their perspectives at CEFDHAC meetings. It was structured around several presentations followed by working sessions. The first two presentations were about the functioning of CEFDHAC within "a context of instability," and about the importance of NGOs taking every opportunity to enhance their credibility and enhance their role within civil society. Three of the presentations focused on case studies — in Surinam, Burkina Faso, and Gabon — and how NGOs functioned within these cases. Each presentation was followed by long question-and-answer and discussion sessions. After the presentations the workshop divided into two working groups, which focused on different issues and concerns brought up by the presentations.

These working groups yielded recommendations, which were debated and adopted during a subsequent plenary session. They were then transmitted to the AFAN secretariat to be incorporated into an NGO action plan. By the close of the workshop the NGOs felt they had better defined their role and the necessary characteristics of their heightened activities within civil society. They summarized these as transparency, equity, integrity and professionalism. They left the workshop with the dual objectives of bringing local NGOs further into contact and collaboration with global strategies for forest protection and management, and to improve the position, the knowledge, and the professionalism of local environmental NGOs in order to reinforce their influence within civil society.

Impacts on Partners and Conservation: At the CEFDHAC meeting from May 31 to June 10, 2000 in Bujumbura, Burundi, AFAN’s director presented a review of NGO coordinating actions over the prior two years, which demonstrated the increased credibility of NGOs as legitimate partners in the CEFDHAC process, and demonstrated that the NGO training participants had also been able to apply these skills in other settings internationally and within their own countries.

CEFDHAC has also been a vehicle for influencing participating national governments to increase transparency in their forestry practices. Participants have built relationships across the region to share information on common regional issues such as unsustainable practices of forest concessionaires. Sometimes NGO participation in CEFDHAC meetings have provided the inspiration for organized NGO meetings elsewhere. For example, a network called "African Women for Sustainable Development," many of whose members had first met up with each other at earlier CEFDHAC meetings, planned a side meeting in Kinshasa during the March 1999 CEFDHAC meetings. Unfortunately, this meeting did not take place, because so many of the women involved could not afford the travel expenses from their home countries. Therefore, the network applied for a CARPE-SOS grant to organize its own conference several months later in Cameroon. The conference was focused on developing national strategies for increasing women professionals’ involvement in environmental issues and addressing womens’ conservation policy concerns. The participants drew up three-year plans for activities in each one of their countries, and an overall action plan to present to potential funders. They even fit in a field trip to a nearby fish farm.

KEMALA and Policy Dialogue

KEMALA partners have built and strengthened their capacity for promoting policy changes by building networks and alliances with each other and providing mutual support and technical assistance to advance community-based natural resource management. KEMALA partners organize an annual forum to develop KEMALA’s workplan, which sets out a common platform and priorities for the coming year. The forum provides partners an opportunity to share experiences from their work and identify needs for technical assistance, analytical and policy work and outreach.

In addition to strategic networking and support, KEMALA partners provide mutual technical assistance for policy dialogue, for example, with national partners training field-based partners in policy and legal analysis. In turn the national partners learn from field-based partners about appropriate directions for policy change, thus becoming more accountable and responsive to local communities. For example, KEMALA partners PPSDAK and JKPP work on community level mapping, while JKPP’s policy working group is developing strategies to promote national acceptance of community maps for use in spatial use planning. It is also working on a draft regulation on community mapping systems, to be submitted to the Ministry of Environment.

Impacts on Partners, Communities and Conservation: LATIN, a partner working on national policy to promote community forestry, held a training workshop for other KEMALA partners in policy analysis and advocacy. This workshop helped participants identify and develop an agenda for further LATIN support on policy and planning related to community forestry, non-timber forest products, and coastal and marine resources. ELSAM, a partner working on national legal and policy research, trained KEMALA partners in legal analysis and writing, which improved their skills in understanding laws and policies related to community-based conservation, and improved their work with other NGOs and community-based organizations within local networks.

KEMALA partners have also become more efficient and effective in influencing policy change. As set forth above, community mapping has brought about changes in natural resource policy at local, regional and national levels. SHK-Kaltim, a KEMALA partner working on non-timber forest products marketing in East Kalimantan, conducted policy research analyzing laws and regulations relating to community rattan gardens. As a result of this research, the government is no longer taxing rattan from two districts in East Kalimantan.

Indonesia’s recent political changes have provided an opening for KEMALA partners to promote policy changes aimed at gaining greater government recognition of community-based spatial use and management systems. As a result of advocacy by indigenous groups at a March 1999 Adat Community Congress, which involved several KEMALA partners, the new State Agrarian Ministry Regulation, signed in September 1999, provides a process for registering customary rights over indigenous lands at the local government level. KEMALA partners based in West Kalimantan formed a team with other indigenous organizations to advocate for recognition of indigenous land use and natural resource management systems in accordance with this new regulation and other new decentralization laws. They held meetings between local people and local governments to consider options under these laws. As a result of these efforts, local governments requested that KEMALA partners Konsorsium Pembaruan Agraria and PPSDAK train members of two district legislatures on the new decentralization laws. This training encouraged participating legislators to make commitments to ensure that local implementing regulations recognize community land use systems.

KEMALA partners have worked with local communities to help them participate in governance processes provided under new laws and policies. After holding briefings on Indonesia’s new Regional Autonomy law, SHK-Kaltim collaborated with an organizing committee from each of eight villages to establish Community Legislative Bodies, as provided under the law. Together they developed criteria for village legislature members, identified groups, such as women and youth that should have representation, and determined how many representatives should be chosen. SHK-Kaltim then left the communities to organize legislative bodies themselves. As of January and February 2000, six of the eight villages had formed legislative bodies.

Some policy achievements of KEMALA partners haven’t entirely fulfilled the aspirations of the communities they serve. In South Sumatra, the indigenous community of Krui mapped its lands with support from PeFoR. KEMALA partner LATIN then helped Krui leaders apply to the Minister of Forestry for recognition of their traditional ownership and management rights to this area. The Minister eventually decreed Krui as Indonesia’s first "Special Use Forestry Zone." The decree halted conversion of these lands into oil palm and timber concessions, but maintained state ownership. Since then, local communities have been improving lands degraded by timber concessions and restoring traditional agro-forestry management techniques. Recognizing these developments as representing a significant breakthrough, communities still hope eventually to achieve recognition of full ownership rights.

PeFoR, PAFID, and Mangyan Advocacy

In addition to mapping support, PeFoR has supported training and networking to build capacity for policy advocacy and dialogue. At the request of indigenous Mangyan leaders on the island of Mindoro, PeFoR supported the Philippine Association for Intercultural Development (PAFID) to conduct workshops to educate and train the leaders in advocating for recognition of their rights to ancestral lands. More than 200 leaders from six Mangyan tribes attended a workshop, participating in deliberation, reaching a consensus and voting to validate a draft of a bill entitled "Aan act on the Genuine Recognition, Control, Development, Management and Ownership of the Ancestral Domains of the Mangyans and to Benefit from the Fruits, Profits and Produce Therein." Additional capacity building trained 37 representatives from Mindoro in techniques for advocating for recognition of their ancestral rights.

Impacts on Partners, Communities and Conservation: Participants in the advocacy training workshop formed a committee to coordinate and conduct dialogue activities for passage of the Mindoro bill. Members of the advocacy committee met with then vice-president Joseph Estrada. After receiving letters from the vice-president, several Representatives met with the advocacy committee and agreed to sponsor legislation on the Mangyans’ ancestral rights. The committee also met with the Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, who agreed to issue a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Claim to the indigenous communities of Mindoro recognizing their rights to manage ancestral lands, which include habitat for banteng and other rare and endangered species.

Conclusions

BSP found that building partners’ organizational and strategic skills to interact with and influence various sectors within society was an important step toward achieving conservation goals. Organizational skills include strategic planning, monitoring, and development of transparent and fair organizational procedures. Strategic skills include those related to conflict resolution and negotiation, advocacy, and communication. As the cases indicate, these skills helped partners make significant conservation advances by making them more effective participants in social and political decision-making processes that influence how society uses, manages and conserves natural resources. Participatory conservation priority-setting helps change how decisions about natural resource use are made by incorporating diverse perspectives and interests. Community mapping and monitoring helped organize and strengthen communities and community-based organizations to defend their natural resources against external pressures. Policy dialogue gives a voice to conservation interests in political decision-making processes.

Capacity building may be provided by a donor organization, outside service providers, or partner organizations. Whomever the provider, capacity building should help enable conservation partners to strengthen relationships with other stakeholders and play more effective roles in natural resources management decision-making, which will ultimately result in enhanced biodiversity conservation.

To Learn More

Borinni-Feyerabend, G., ed. with Dianne Buchan. 1997. Beyond fences: seeking social sustainability in conservation. Volumes 1: A process companion; and Volume 2: A resource book. Cambridge: IUCN.

Brown, M. 1996. Non-governmental organizations and natural resources management: Synthesis assessment of capacity-building in Africa. Washington, D.C.: PVO-NGO/NRMS Project.

Brown, M., and J. McGann. 1996. A guide to strengthening non-governmental organization effectiveness in natural resource management. Washington, D.C.: PVO-NGO/NRMS Project.

Clayton, A., ed. 1996. NGOs, civil society and the state: Building democracy in transitional societies. Oxford: INTRAC.

Conservation International. 1994. Human resources for conservation: bBuilding local capacity. Lessons from From the fieldField, Issue No. 3. Washington, D.C.: Conservation International.

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Kaplan, A. 1999. The development of capacity. NGLS Development Dossier. New York: United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service.

Seymour, F. J. 1994. Are successful community-based conservation projects designed or discovered? In D. Western, R. M. Wright, and S.C. Strum, eds., Natural connections: Perspectives in community-based conservation, eds. D. Western, R. M. Wright, and S.C. Strum, 472–498. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Biodiversity Support Program

Web Addresses

Biodiversity Support Program: http://www.bsponline.org/
Biodiversity Conservation Network: http://bcnet.org/
CARPE: http://carpe.umd.edu/
KEMALA: http://www.bsp-kemala.or.id/

Baron, N. 1998. Charting their own course. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program. http://bcnet.org/results/charting.htm.

Baron, N. 1998. Keeping watch: Experiences from the field in community-based monitoring. Lessons from From the fieldField, Issue No. 1. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

Biodiversity Support Program. 1997. Advancing knowledge to achieve conservation. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

———. 1997. Evaluating the first eight years: 1988–1996. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

———. 1997–1999. Biodiversity support program performance monitoring reports to USAID. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

———. 1999. Twenty-first semi-annual progress report, October 1, 1998 – March 31, 1999. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

Analysis of Behaviors in Conservation and Development:

Byers, B. 2000. Understanding and influencing behaviors: A guide. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

East African Wild Life [sic?] LifeSociety. 1997. Draft case study report, strategic conservation monitoring and intervention: Case study of Taita Hills Biodiversity Conservation Project. Nairobi: EAWLS.

CARPE:

Brown, M. 1999. The implications of participatory mapping: The CARPE experience in Cameroon. Washington, D.C.: Innovative Resources Management, Inc.

Brown, M., D. Russell, L. Clark, and J. Landeck. 1999. CARPE lessons learned synthesis: Communities and forest resource management. Washington, D.C.: Innovative Resources Management.

Brown, M., D. Russell, L. Clark, and J. Landeck. n.d. CARPE lessons learned synthesis: Theme four [sic?] communities and forest resource management. Washington, D.C.: Innovative Resources Management.

Chapin, M. n.d. Cameroon trip reports July 25 – August 9, 1998 and November 21 – December 7, 1998. Unpublished Paper.

Ekwoge, H., H. Ebong, and G. Mbong. 1998. Proceedings of a participatory land use mapping training workshop, 23–25 November, at Mt. Cameroon Project, Limbe Botanic Garden, Limbe, Cameroon.

Ekwoge, H., H. Ebong, V. Godlove, and P. Lontochi. 1999. Report of participatory land use mapping in the Boa Plain area, South West Province, Cameroon, at Mt. Cameroon Project and CARPE, Limbe, Cameroon.

Crimea Conservation Needs Assessment:

Biodiversity Support Program. 1999. Priority-setting in conservation: A new approach for Crimea. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

KEMALA:

Biodiversity Support Program. 1996–1999. KEMALA implementation reports #1–6. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

———. 1999. KEMALA project status briefs—-April 1999. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

Ita Natalia, Mapping for resilient forest management in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Paper prepared for the meeting of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, May 30 – June 4, 2000, Bloomington, IndN.

PeFoR — People, Forests and Reefs:

Center for Support of Native Lands. 1998. Report of Central American workshop-seminar on Territorial Rights and Legalization of Indigenous Lands, 30 April – 5 May at Center for Support of Native Lands, Washington, D.C.

Chapin, M. 1997. Participatory mapping in communities of Alto and Bajo Izozog in the Kaa-Iya protected area of Bolivia. Washington, D.C.: Center for Support of Native Lands.

Kapulungan Para sa Lupaing Ninuno (KPLN). 1995. Mangyan chronicle on ancestral domain. Report submitted to Biodiversity Support Program, Washington, D.C.

Poole, P. 1995. Indigenous peoples, mapping and biodiversity conservation: An analysis of current activities and opportunities for applying geomatics technologies. Peoples and Forests Program Discussion Paper. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

Sierra Madre Project:

Davenport, R. 1997. The Sierra Madre program: Assessment and projections. Final report. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

Davenport, R. and A. Kaus. 1995. Mexico Ecodevelopment Program: Mid-term evaluation final report. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

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Gingrich, R., and E. Bustillos Garcia. 1997. Measures taken to improve the capacity, management, and administration of the Sierra Madre Program, December 1996 to June 1997. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.

Summit of the Americas on Sustainable Development Preparations:

Biodiversity Support Program. 1997. BSP final report submitted to USAID/LAC on preparations for the Bolivia Summit on Sustainable Development and Summit of the America’s Partnership for Biodiversity follow-up. Washington, D.C.: Biodiversity Support Program.