Thursday, May 8, 2014

Choosing protected areas to visit in Indonesia, and itinerary starting to come together in Uganda


Today we had a good meeting with the GEF coordination unit at the Ministry of Environment and a few other people to finalize the selection of the PAs. They had a complete list of possible sites and matching non-GEF ones, including the travel time and route to get to each one. It seems, however, that we essentially only have two choices. However, both of them are relatively successful and being carried on beyond the GEF project. Both are also MSPs. The other two choices are unsuccessful GEF projects, and yet their circumstances are so different that they would probably not provide a good comparison. One is a very old MSP in Aceh, which has since been overwhelmed apparently by the Asian financial crisis, decentralization policies, and the tsunami, among other things. The other one is an FSP that is more of a rural development project by the Bank, with the PA management portion of it funded by GEF. Apparently it is such a failure that according to the TE, the areas that received more funding saw higher deforestation. It seems like a good case to investigate, and yet it's so different from the other choices that it would not be comparable. What do you think?

We will hopefully see the Ministry of Forestry tomorrow (still waiting for confirmation) and find someone who can go with us to one of the PAs next week at short notice. It seems if we can bring only one person, it would be from there, because they are in charge of the protected areas and would need to connect us with the provincial-level Ministry of Forestry. Also still looking for an interpreter to come with us at short notice, since we don't want the forestry people to be doing it for us and risk a conflict of interest. We also went to the World Bank to try to get the administrative things sorted out. Apparently there is no longer a visiting missions unit that can assist us, so an official email from HQ would need to be sent to the Environment unit asking them to assist us with cash advances for the flights, accommodations and per diem of the people who will be coming with us to the PAs.

Today I also got a draft day-by-day itinerary for the Uganda visit. They will be having a meeting on Friday to finalize it with everyone who is involved in scheduling interviews and arranging the trips to the PAs and such. All in all, that is progressing well as they are very much on top of it, and I will continue to keep in touch with them as I count down to my trip to Kampala.  I will strive to post regular updates like this, and perhaps we can all do it so we can share any issues that come up that others may be able to learn from or help with.

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