Foster civil society participation in regional decisionmaking on select policies and investments to promote the conservation and sustainable development of the Selva Maya and the Selva Zoque and Chiapas/Guatemala Highlands corridorsGovernment investment in conservation and development in the Selva Maya and the Selva Zoque and Chiapas/Guatemala Highlands corridors will grow significantly in the coming years. New investments aim to promote economic development and increase income for the rural poor. If designed and implemented well, they hold real potential for helping arrest land and forest degradation. Conversely, some projects will fund major infrastructure—roads, deepwater ports, power transmission lines and hydroelectric dams—which could well introduce new threats to the region. At the same time, the continuing process of decentralized financial decisionmaking will give state and municipal governments control over hundreds of millions of dollars.
Given this dynamic, civil society engagement in decisionmaking processes is critical to ensure that development proceeds democratically, in a way that incorporates the needs of all stakeholders and the environment. Civil society, particularly environmental NGOs, occupy an important and unique position as the principal advocates for the interest of the environment and biodiversity. Given these needs, CEPF will invest in empowering civil society to engage in high-level decisionmaking processes for priority investments and policies through five linked and mutually reinforcing investment priorities.
- CEPF will support the promotion of policy reforms related to the most critical issues for conservation where civil society can make a difference: agriculture, infrastructure development, forest fires and tourism development. These four issues together have the strongest influence on the welfare of biodiversity in the two corridors. CEPF will initially identify appropriate NGOs that are interested in working collectively, through strategic alliances that are designed to be proactive. To ensure that these alliances have a firm analytical basis to develop their positions and strategies, CEPF will initially fund assessments to gain better understanding of each issue and to identify priorities and opportunities for action. Based on this analytical work, the alliances will develop and implement strategies whereby the NGO community can work collaboratively on high priority actions that will achieve the greatest benefits for conservation. CEPF will fund capacity building exercises and technical assistance where necessary to ensure that civil society has the wherewithal to effectively influence policy change and development investments.
- CEPF will support civil society participation in policy-making fora and collaborative networks at the highest levels, including the CCAD, the Central American System of Protected Areas (SICAP), the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, the Mesoamerican Initiative for Sustainable Development and national governments. Civil society will play an active and advocacy role in the consultation process to ensure that biodiversity considerations are integrated into the future development plans of the two corridors.
- CEPF will aim to support conservation-based enterprises that show promise of generating environmentally sustainable sources of income for communities that otherwise could be agents of deforestation and environmental degradation, focusing on ecotourism and conservation coffee. In the region, a multitude of initiatives have been undertaken, however, dialogue and collaboration between the operators of these enterprises has been virtually non-existent. Furthermore, little attention has been paid to scaling these initiatives up to the extent required to play a meaning role in threats amelioration. To address these shortcomings, CEPF will support the creation of associations of conservation-based enterprises for ecotourism and conservation coffee with a view toward supporting their success and scaling up their operations. CEPF will support the identification and sharing of share lessons learned and best practices, evaluate their potential to address critical threats at the appropriate scale, promote greater collaboration in areas such as marketing to build synergies and strengthen capacity to improve their operations so that they can reach levels needed to play a larger role in mitigating threats.
- CEPF will support the introduction and use of innovative conservation financing tools into the region, such as payments for environmental services, and incentive payments. Collaboration will be sought with the Western Altiplano Natural Resource Management Project, which works on building environmental service markets. Several potential opportunities exist for promoting market-based incentives for sustainable conservation financing. CEPF will support the identification of viable opportunities in the corridor for promoting such projects, including technical assistance and capacity building to develop potential projects and policy instruments.
- To ensure that accurate information is generated about the state of biodiversity and the trends, CEPF will support corridor-level monitoring of trends and parameters considered important in biodiversity conservation in partnership with other organizations working in this arena, including the MBC. CEPF will support partner efforts in the collection and analysis of relevant data with a view toward promoting information sharing. CEPF will fund efforts to disseminate findings to key decision makers and donors. CEPF investment in monitoring will complement similar efforts planned for Southern Mesoamerica.
Collaborate with other donor-funded projects to facilitate and operationalize successful conservation activities in Northern Mesoamerica's eight most important key biodiversity areas
CEPF has identified the eight most important areas for conservation in Northern Mesoamerica. If these sites can be secured, a considerable share of the Mesoamerica hotspot's biological diversity will be conserved. The challenge, however, is two-fold. As noted in the profile, five key biodiversity areas—Selva Zoque, Sierra Madre de Chiapas, Lacandona, the Gran Peten and Cuchumatanes—are expected to receive significant new investments over the next five years. However, these new investments will not address several critical threats, such as planned infrastructure projects. In addition, although the three remaining key biodiversity areas—Sierra de las Minas, Laguna del Tigre, and Chiquibul/ Montañas Mayas—will also be affected by development policies and investments, they are projected to receive negligible funding. Despite these dramatic differences in funding levels, civil society and local governments have a critical role to play in conserving all eight key biodiversity areas.
Through this strategic direction, CEPF will allow the high-level policy work conducted under the first strategic direction to trickle down to the field, and conversely, allow the lessons learned in the field to trickle up to the policy level through networks that are vertical in nature. CEPF will support four investment priorities:
- CEPF will support a network of key stakeholders within each corridor that represent the conservation interests of the eight key biodiversity areas. This network will help ensure that members develop and work toward common objectives of consolidating key biodiversity areas that key programs are well coordinated, and that lessons can be shared with the ultimate goal of strengthening the corridor. This investment priority will be focused at a more operational level and include as members local NGOs and community groups, governments and park services, among others. Furthermore, these corridor-level networks will interact with the policy-level networks in the first strategic direction to ensure that these two levels of action are working to maximize synergy and communications.
- Bottlenecks to ameliorating threats not only occur at the policy level, but also at the local level. Thus, CEPF will help build local government and NGO capacity, as appropriate, in three areas where municipalities play a critical role in threat amelioration: forest fire prevention and control, enforcement of land tenure laws and titling, and prevention of illegal hunting and timber harvesting. CEPF may build this capacity through training, procurement of equipment, land titling surveys and improved enforcement.
- CEPF will fund activities to ensure that infrastructure projects are designed to incorporate biodiversity and community interests. Targeted projects will be identified, training courses in economic and environmental impact analysis will be delivered, an economic and environmental impact analysis of each target project conducted and the results will be communicated to decisionmakers and the public. Special attention will be paid to roads and dams, which present the most immediate threats in the corridors.
- Protected areas coverage remains inadequate in some key biodiversity areas, such as the Selva Zoque. CEPF will support analysis to identify the location of priority sites for increased protection, and assist in laying the groundwork for declaration of new private and public protected areas and municipal reserves. CEPF will then provide support to identify sources of funding to manage these areas.
Support priority conservation actions in three priority key biodiversity areas
Management of three priority key biodiversity areas—Sierra de las Minas, Laguna del Tigre and Chiquibul/Montañas Mayas—currently lacks funding to meet the most minimal of needs, despite the areas' high biological value. CEPF will concentrate funding in these areas through a limited number of high priority actions to ensure adequate management presence and capacity for conservation. CEPF will support activities that provide a stronger foundation and justification for future conservation investments. These core set of interventions include three investment priorities:
- In Sierra de las Minas, developing a system for payments for watershed services, enhancing conservation stakeholder coordination and reducing timber harvesting.
- In Laguna del Tigre, investing in fire management, conflict resolution and economic alternatives to deforestation.
- In Chiquibul/Montañas Mayas, introducing alternatives to and enhancing sustainability of xate harvesting and improving protection of the Macal River valley.
Support efforts to prevent the extinction of Northern Mesoamerica's 106 Critically Endangered Species
While conservation of habitat has been an important investment theme in Northern Mesoamerica in the last 10 years, species conservation has received minimal funding. Moreover, species-specific funding has focused on large umbrella species such as jaguar and the scarlet macaw, species that although regionally threatened, are not globally threatened. Less well known Critically Endangered species, such as the six amphibians supported in Cuchumatanes and the two rodents in Lacandona, have received no conservation investments and remain in critical danger. Regional, or even site-specific conservation actions are rarely enough to protect such small, often locally endemic species. CEPF will invest in efforts to prevent the extinction of Northern Mesoamerica's 106 Critically Endangered species throughout the region (including in El Salvador and Honduras) through two investment priorities:
- CEPF will provide small grants to increase knowledge and understanding of the 106 Critically Endangered species and their management needs, including distributions, resource requirements and conservation status. Investments will build capacity for their management through targeted training in their conservation, development of conservation strategies and direct field conservation and protection projects.
- CEPF will increase coordination of species-protection efforts through the exchange and consolidation of data and information.
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