Objectives

To promote a model for integrated community-based conservation and protected area management applied to the peatland area and its forest ecosystem of the RoC Lac Télé Landscape.

Other

Note: Disbursement data provided is cumulative and covers disbursement made by the project Agency.

Target Groups

The project is designed to strengthen and develop on-going efforts in the Republic of Congo, as well as in the greater Congo Basin region to conserve globally significant biodiversity within forest landscapes and sustainably manage a big tropical peatland found within the country, and extending into neighbouring countries. The project will, however, deliver tangible economic benefits to local communities within target areas. This will be achieved through developing and implementing land use management plans, improving the legal and policy framework, improving environmental management within project area to help maintain existing livelihoods and develop new options related to ecotourism, NFTP and organic cocoa value chains, sustainable wildlife management and agriculture as well as reducing social and economic costs of environmental degradation, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and wildlife crime. The cost of human-wildlife conflict will also be reduced by the demonstration of practices that will avoid these conflicts at village level including ecological solutions through bee hives for honey production, and by the protection of habitat in the project area as elephants will be kept away from VTs due to their remembering of bee mass attacks. More specifically the project will work with key production sectors within the project area and in related transboundary landscapes to strengthen sustainable livelihoods practices. The introduction of CBNRM, SLM, and SFM is expected to trigger more efficient management of natural resources reducing cost of exploitation or increasing yield in the long-term, this includes for instance sustainable land management practices increasing soil productivity, and agroforestry practices introducing new sustainable agricultural production options for local communities. For instance sustainable integrated land management through agroforestry, multiple use sustain yield tree crops, orchard fruits, aquaculture, honey bee production along with wildlife oriented ecotourism and hotspots permanent monitoring, rural entrepreneurship activities for small business services will provide upwards of 2,500 environmentally friendly jobs for sustainable inclusive green growth. The project will thus contribute to increase local communities’ income in the long term including income from sustainable agriculture through the creation of agricultural products collect, transport, processing and trading and develop their partnership with private agricultural companies, which could commercialize their processed production. The proposed intervention will also support the development of direct or indirect revenue generation from conservation activities for local communities; appropriate revenue generation mechanisms compatible with the protected areas status and ecological characters and responsive to local community needs will be analyzed. Mechanisms will include ecotourism, handicrafts, and derivatives of sustainable non-timber products to which value has been added. The project will also facilitate targeted communities, relevant common initiative groups, community-based organization, as well as authorities to establish community tourism enterprise to promote ecotourism, tourism based small businesses, services and products as alternative livelihood source. Eco-tourism initiatives have the potential to create around upward of 750 direct jobs if the area manages to attract at least 2,000 tourists a year through the support of this project and relevant long-term partners within the ministerial and non-governmental organization spaces. A major aspect of the project concerns law enforcement strengthening and anti-trafficking activities on the ground. The related activities undertaken during the project will trigger a stronger and more efficient legal mechanism with better crime scene management and criminal investigations, as well as a stronger capacity of PA managers and patrols to prevent and address wildlife crime in the project area. Local communities will thus benefit from an improved security in the zone, with better surveillance of routes and hubs preventing armed groups from freely entering the area. The project will support social cohesion in the regional transboundary area by fostering increased cooperation between stakeholders over essential issues concerning natural resources management and wildlife crime. Consultations platforms will enable stakeholders to negotiate and solve issues concerning logging concessions for instance. In this process indigenous people and small local communities will be given the opportunity to participate to the decision-making process to ensure their fair representation and appropriation of the development process of the zone. These communities will also receive support to develop community based forest management through the biological resources access. According to the government’s 2010 report to CEDAW, women produced approximately 90% of food products for household consumption. In 2016, the government reported that women accounted for 70% of the agricultural workforce but own only 25% of agricultural land usually in small holdings. This project is carefully integrating gender mainstreaming considerations to ensure that the project benefits are fairly distributed across genders with special emphasis on women for capacity-building activities on SLM and alternative livelihoods. Women will benefit from the introduction of alternative livelihoods creating agricultural jobs and alternative source of income. They will also participate as full members in decision-making, access to project resources, and in contributing to feedback on project implementation processes and directions.

Objectives

To reduce land degradation and conserve biodiversity in agricultural landscapes in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, by promoting sustainable agricultural production, supply chains and public- private finance

Other

Note: Disbursement data provided is cumulative and covers disbursement made by the project Agency.

Target Groups

The integrated project approach recognizes that achieving global environmental and adaptation benefits that will be sustained in the long-term requires local populations –farmers and residents in the micro-landscapes– to realise socioeconomic benefits, especially in the short and medium term.At farm scale, these benefits come through three project interventions. First, the implementation of practices that increase soil nutrients and enhance the soil’s water retention capacity will lead to improved productivity. It is recognized that these benefits will take time to come through. Shorter-term economic benefits from the farm can be derived from crop diversification, which is a feature of both sustainable agricultural systems promoted by the project. The process of sharing technical knowledge and building farmers’ capacity to apply natural solutions to the issues they face on farm is an important benefit in a context of the majority of farmers managing small plots of land, without access to extension services and opportunities to learn the results from alternative approaches to farm management (Output 2.1.1). The project will also harness new technologies that can save time and money for farmers (Output 2.1.2). Farm workers will benefit from a healthier farm environment, and those that work on certified farms will have the additional protection that the Farm Requirements’ Social Chapter of the 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard provides through its criteria on employment terms and conditions. Those criteria align with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, relevant ILO conventions, and other multi-stakeholder concepts such as living wage, which has been developed in coordination with the Global Living Wage Coalition[1].Second, the project’s contribution to farmer organization (Output 2.1.3) and insistence on social inclusion will create the conditions for developing improved access to services and markets. An effort (small because of available resources) will be made to upgrade business management skills. Third, the strong focus in the project on market development (Output 3.1.1) will generate preferences and favourable terms in company supply chains to source from the project landscapes.At landscape scale, the benefits would also be social and economic. Community members will be given a voice and an operational structure through which to contribute to the land management plans. The target areas may be forested areas that are under threat and have value for the communities, including, in Karnataka for example, Sacred groves, and watersheds of the Kaveri river and its tributaries. Economically, communities in the micro-landscapes will benefit from innovative sustainable use of natural resources that conserve the resources and also offer employment and income opportunities.It is this process of mobilization of people’s skills, knowledge and interest and channelling them to sustainable land management that achieves the benefits for both the people living in the project landscape and the natural environment on which they depend for their livelihoods. In this way, the project activities will generate GEBs and contribute to climate change mitigation. It will sequester carbon in soils, improve soil organic content through composting, mulching, and cover crops, as well strengthen farm resilience to extreme drought. Sustainable agriculture will reduce pollution due to agrochemicals, including in downstream water bodies, making them more secure for human need. [1] https://www.livingwage.org.uk/living-wage-commission

General

Project will support improved connectivity between protected areas of the Trifinio region by strengthening management and communication tools, and the ability of key stakeholders to use them, for the Montecristo Trifinio Trinational Biological Corridor. Project activities include working with local, national and trinational stakeholders and platforms to create a series of detailed maps (mapping of all 7 sub-corridors, land use changes, coverage maps by ecosystems to better identify ecosystem goods and services, and water supply and sources) in order to support decision-makers to carry out land use planning, identify priorities for conservation actions, and guide future funding decisions. Project will also design, carry out and evaluate a communication campaign directed towards local communities and governments about the critical importance of the biological corridor and the services it provides.