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In Ladakh and Sikkim, India, the Snow Leopard Conservancy (SLC) and Khangchendzonga Conservation Committee (KCC) carry out PES schemes for the conservation of the snow leopard
. In the ‘Himalayan Homestays” programme, households benefit from tourism in return for their conservation efforts. About 10-15% of homestay profits go into a village conservation fund that supports tree planting, garbage management and establishment of a village wildlife reserve. The fund can be accessed, to establish e.g. predator-proof corrals, pay a fulltime herder to guard livestock in high summer pastures, or insure livestock like yak through a national livestock Insurance scheme. On average $230 is generated during four month tourism season. KCC in Sikkim worked at broader scale to conserve ecological balance.
A lesson learned is that when economic returns are tangible communities assume their role as conservation partners and serve as effective environmental stewards
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High food prices have brought into sharp focus an existing global food crisis that affects almost one billion people
. Lasting solutions to the problem include adequate investment in agriculture, fairer trade, the redistribution of resources, and action on climate change.
But hungry people cannot be fed on the hope of long-term solutions. Governments, supported by aid agencies and donors, must act now to provide systematic emergency assistance and longer-term support to those in need, and to better protect people in chronic poverty against shocks such as drought, floods and market volatility.
Here are some of the top recommendations of this report: Governments in developing countries should promote a shared understanding of hunger and vulnerability and of appropriate responses. They should also ensure affected communities have the necessary access to income and food through locally appropriate, social protection measures. Donors and international organisations should support through finance and technical assistance the active role of the state, investing in national capacity for a sustained response to hunger and supporting regional initiatives. They also need to increase funding for cash transfers to needy families and reduce the emphasis on in-kind food aid. International non-governmental organisations (INGOs) should strengthen local and national mechanisms of prevention and response to food crises rather than just delivering aid to people. They need to support local civil-society organisations to participate in shaping and implementing national food, agriculture and social protection policies.
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The majority of California’s freshwater comes from the Sierra Nevada, falling in winter as a thick blanket of snow that slowly melts in spring, delivering enormous quantities of fresh, clean water to fill the state’s rivers and reservoirs in support of its cities, industry and agriculture
. As the Earth’s climate warms up, more of this water will fall as rain rather than snow which will run off immediately in large winter pulses that will increase flooding and are likely to be beyond the storage capacity of the existing reservoir system. Meanwhile there will be much less snowmelt that recharges streams and helps keep a reliable water supply for people and wildlife in summer and autumn. These changes are a monumental challenge for the people, economy and environment of California. An innovative solution may help provide part of the solution to this problem: mountain meadow restoration and conservation.
This business plan maps out a 10 year programme to restore and conserve meadow habitat in the Sierra Nevada. This plan puts emphasis on the first 5 years, during which it focuses on implementation of strategies that will further build the economic and scientific rationale that meadow restoration and conservation is worth pursuing on a large scale as well as building the capacity and model projects to make future expanded efforts possible. Contingent on success in years 1-5 and expanded funding to all partners in this effort, Years 6-10 will focus on implementing work on a sufficient scale to ensure appropriate restoration and management of the majority of degraded Sierra meadows. This business plan will guide every aspect of the Foundation’s anticipated $10-15 million in grant-making associated with this landscape habitat feature over 10 years. Ultimately, the hope is that the strategies and activities described herein are adopted by the broader community of agencies and organisations working on similar goals and shared responsibility for the additional $200 million or more of investments identified as necessary to restore degraded meadows.
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Local Voices Global Choices is an interagency initiative supported by Action aid, British Red Cross, Christian Aid, Global Network of CSOs for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), International federation of the Red Cross, Oxfam, Practical Action, ProVention Consortium, Save the Children, and Tearfund
.This report contains a number of case studies from around the world, which highlight what can be achieved when local voices are respected and different actors come together to form strategic partnerships to work collaboratively to reduce disaster risks.
Case studies analysed include:
- community involvement in the vulnerability and capacity analysis and formulation of community action plans: case study from Malawi;
- building community resilience to both foreseeable and unforeseen hazard events by increasing their livelihood options and means of self-protection: case study from Nepal;
- learning about sustainable agriculture practices and carrying out land adaptability testing in order to select the best crops to grow in the changed soil: case study from Philippines;
- create and train pastoralist communities to build new sale yards and operate Livestock Market Associations (LMAs): marketing disaster risk reduction case study from Kenya;
- using radio programmes to spread disaster risk reduction messages to communities: case study from Afghanistan.
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The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is an international financial institution and a specialised United Nations agency dedicated to eradicating rural poverty in developing countries
. Working with poor rural people, governments, donors, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and many other partners, IFAD focuses on country-specific solutions to empower poor rural women and men to achieve higher incomes and improved food security.
One of the challenges IFAD continues to face in agricultural and rural development work is identifying effective ways to involve poor communities, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable, in planning, managing and making decisions about their natural resources. This is especially important in dealing with pastoralists, indigenous peoples and forest dwellers that find themselves and their livelihoods disproportionately threatened by climate change, environmental degradation and conflict related to access to land and natural resources. The ongoing uncertainties brought about by climate change and climate variability (such as the timing and intensity of weather patterns) increase their vulnerability and intensify pressure on their resource base and conflicts among resource users. Because a key asset for pastoralists, indigenous peoples and forest dwellers is their knowledge of the local environment, an approach is needed to ensure that this collective wisdom will influence their capacity for planning and managing natural resources.
To address these concerns, IFAD, in collaboration with the International Land Coalition (ILC), has implemented since October 2006 the project ‘Development of Decision Tools for Participatory Mapping in Specific Livelihoods Systems (Pastoralists, Indigenous Peoples, Forest Dwellers)’. Participatory mapping is not new to IFAD; it has been undertaken to varying degrees in a large number of projects. However, within the institution there remains limited knowledge about how a systematic approach could contribute to addressing conflict-related issues and improving community ownership in sustainable environmental and natural resource management. This project aims to i) create a better understanding of the potential for participatory mapping to empower vulnerable groups to sustainably manage their resources; and ii) develop an IFAD-wide approach to participatory mapping to enable a more systemic implementation of these activities within IFAD-supported programmes.
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What opportunities are there at farm and local community level to increase the incomes of small-scale farmers? This series of booklets aims to raise awareness and provide decision support information about opportunities for increasing the incomes of small-scale farmers
. Each booklet focuses on a farm or non farm enterprise that can be integrated into small farms to increase incomes and enhance livelihoods.
The booklets are primarily aimed at people and organisations providing advisory, business and technical support to resource-poor small-scale farmers and local communities in low- and middle-income countries. They are also intended for policymakers and programme managers in government and non-governmental organisations.
The enterprises selected are considered suitable for smallholder farmers in terms of resource requirements, additional costs, exposure to risk and complexity.
This booklet covers how to earn non-farm income from non-wood forest products
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The Farmer Field School (FFS) approach emerged out of a concrete, immediate problem
. At the end of the eighties of the last century farmers in Indonesia were putting their crops, their health and their environment at severe risk through massive abuse of highly toxic pesticides promoted aggressively by the private industry and government. Pest species were becoming resistant and in some cases resurgent. What was called for was a large-scale decentralised programme of education for farmers wherein they become “experts” in managing the ecology of their fields – bringing better yields, fewer problems, increased profits and less risk to their health and environment. The Integrated Pest Management Farmer Field School (IPM-FFS) and a corresponding large-scale Indonesian programme were developed in response to these conditions. The genesis of integrated pest management (IPM) was a response to the emergence of problems associated with the reliance on chemical controls for insect pests by governments, extension systems and farmers. The search for solutions to these problems led to the development of a more holistic view of what constituted an agro-ecosystem and how human interventions could either enhance or disrupt one. FFS alumni are able to not only apply IPM principles in their fields, but also to master a process enabling them to help others learn and apply IPM principles, and organise collaborative activities in their communities to institutionalise IPM principles. A good farmer field school process ensures these outcomes. The educational concepts underpinning the FFS approach are drawn from adult non-formal education. These concepts have been found to be relevant across the many countries and cultures in which the FFS approach has been used, and have proven to be empowering for farmers.
Central to the popularity of FFS programmes is an appropriate topic and methodological training of the people who organise and facilitate farmer field schools. To be a successful FFS trainer/facilitator, one must have skills in managing participatory, discovery-based learning as well as technical knowledge to guide the groups’ learning and action process. Without an adequate training of trainers (ToT) programme, the subsequent FFS programme will fall far of its potential. Season-long in-house (residential), and field-based, training-of-trainers courses in which all activities should follow an experiential learning approach have proven to be an effective model for building the required technical capacity of trainers and for changing their attutudes towards that of facilitators of bottom-up change, whereby previous extension methodologies and lecture-type approaches conflicting with the FFS approach had to be essentially ‘unlearned’.
In general, farmer field schools consist of groups of people with a common interest, who get together on a regular basis to study the “how and why” of a particular topic. The farmer field school is particularly suited and specifically developed for field studies, where hands-on management skills and conceptual understanding (based on non-formal adult education principles) is required. So what are the essential and original elements of a farmer field school? Below is a list of elements that commonly appear in the generic FFS approach:
- the group
- the field
- the facilitator
- the curriculum
- the programme leader
- financing
The paper looks at the achievements and impacts of Farmer Field Schools in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, South America and the Carribean, the Near East and north Africa, central and eastern Europe and in western Europe. Case studies from sub-Saharan Africa (Mozambique and Kenya) and Pakistan are presented
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Climate change affects poor people in particular, because of their weak adaptive capacities
. Development projects of all kinds can strengthen or weaken those capacities and at the same time, they can influence greenhouse gas emissions. It is therefore important to evaluate the impacts of development projects on adaptive capacities and climate change mitigation. This process is called climate proofing.
Climate proofing forms the basis for measures to improve projects in the face of climate change. This Assessment Report presents the results and the lessons learned from the climate proofing of two community-level rural development projects in Honduras. The analysis was conducted with the new Climate Proofing Tool from Swiss Interchurch Aid (HEKS), which is based on CRiSTAL, an adaptation tool. Both projects are run by local NGOs in southern Honduras, and are supported by HEKS.
The analysis also shows that both projects have a beneficial impact on adaptive capacities, but that much more should and could be done. Focal areas highlighted include:
- natural resources need more protection, as they form the very basis of people’s livelihoods;
- physical resources such as dwellings and roads have not received any support so far, but are important in the climate context, too;
- financial incomes are crucial in coping with climate change, and alternatives to increase and stabilise incomes are needed;
- human and social resources also facilitate adaptation and require adequate support.
The experience made in this first application of the Climate Proofing Tool also shows the high need for a careful application, particularly regarding stakeholder consultations. Many questions arise in the wider implementation of the tool within an organisation as a means to mainstream climate change into development cooperation, where it is very important to have clear responsibilities, sufficient resources and long term planning
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Latent and violent unrest has plagued Nepal since the process of parliamentary politics was reintroduced in 1991 after 50 years of monarchical rule
. This document focuses on grassroots experiences and understandings of governance and citizenship, and the implications of these for state building in post-conflict Nepal. This study asks how poor people understand citizenship, how do they experience and practise it, what barriers do they face and how do they think these could be overcome?
The authors also explore poor and excluded groups’ vision for a New Nepal following Jana Andolan (the People’s Movement ), the November 2006 peace agreement and the emergence of the democratically elected government in May 2008. Overall the findings of this study suggest that many poor and excluded citizens are optimistic about the future following the peace process and are enthusiastic to participate and play a role in the reform process. The documents argues that the importance of this should not be underestimated for the challenging state building process Nepal is now embarking upon. However, in many countries emerging from conflict, governments often fail to capitalise on people’s enthusiasm for peace and to sustain the expectations of their citizens about peace dividends, especially in terms of services and accountable government structures.The document emphasises that addressing deeply entrenched social hierarchies (caste, ethnicity, gender, class) is an important priority for poor and excluded groups, as social exclusion is an important impediment to poverty alleviation and political representation.
Additional findings include:
- there is very strong support for peace among poor and excluded communities, regardless of
their experiences during and views of the decade-long conflict;
- there is strong support among poor and excluded groups for greater decentralisation;
- there was very limited donor and NGO presence in the study communities, as evidenced by the
low levels of reliance on non-state organisations. This suggests that many poverty alleviation
efforts are not reaching the poorest;
- poor and excluded groups are not habituated to social exclusion, domination and injustice;
- poor people’s priorities were first and foremost context-specific, suggesting that local level
decision-making is critical to ensure that people’s development priorities are effectively met.
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Much of South Africa is already arid or semi-arid and climate change is expected to increase temperatures and droughts and add to pressure on limited water supplies
. Poor people will be hardest hit. The South African government has been commendably vocal in calling for rich countries to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Yet South Africa is also part of the problem as the largest emitter of GHGs on the continent.
South Africa’s dependency on coal-fired power stations results in very high per capita energy use, yet still 30% of citizens do not have access to electricity. Most emissions come from just two companies, Eskom and Sasol. The report argues that conventional fossil-fuel powered development is both unsustainable in terms of climate change, and is also failing the poor. Yet South Africa has enormous untapped potential for solar power, wind and other renewable energies.
Eskom and Sasol both claim to take climate change seriously and have strategies to diversify energy supply, but in practice they continue to scale-up production based on coal. This report argues that government must get serious about implementing its renewable energy targets and keep Eskom and Sasol to their word.
Earthlife Africa is expert in analysing the energy sector and Oxfam International has contributed information about climate change impacts on poor communities. Together they recommend measures including:
- a moratorium on building new coal-fired plants after 2013;
- an immediate moratorium on new coal-to-liquid plants;
- staggered implementation of carbon taxation;
- rolling out 1 million solar water heaters by 2020;
- making energy efficiency mandatory in new housing schemes for poor citizens; and
- awareness raising about climate change and involving the public in calls for environmental justice, poverty eradication and corporate accountability.
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