Going beyond terrestrial PAs

We had decided to limit the evaluation to terrestrial PAs so as to narrow the scope and the nature of the system we are dealing with. However, from interviews in the past week, I have realized that it is worth giving attention to areas beyond terrestrial PAs at a national scale, especially in Uganda. I am sharing this with you in case you find the same issues in your countries, which is quite likely.

Wetlands

I discovered that in Uganda, wetlands are not a part of the PA system. Yet a GEF MSP just finished last year with the aim of creating a new category of PAs--community conservation areas or CCAs--that would place wetlands within the national PA system. An entirely different agency is in charge of wetlands, so it was a good thing I saw this in the project documents and decided to interview that agency, otherwise this story might have been lost. Obviously, none of the other agencies thought to mention it as this was not under their jurisdiction. At present, the Wetland Management Division is in the process of getting a Wetlands Act passed that will classify wetland areas as protected. The other interesting thing I learned was that this MSP that was implemented in 6 communities (considered successful) was a replication of an SGP project in one of the PAs that we will be visiting. The government is now planning to scale up the project by developing an FSP (with cofinancing perhaps from Japan) that will further promote this approach in wetlands across the country.

Areas Outside PAs

Again, we had decided not to include projects that deal mainly with mainstreaming biodiversity conservation in production landscapes. But what everyone keeps saying is that forest cover and biodiversity are decreasing OUTSIDE PAs. And in fact, there are more wildlife and forests outside of the PAs. Another recurring response here is that with the population still expanding, eventually it will be hard to protect the PAs  once people have used up all the resources outside. Here are some video clips on continuing challenges in Uganda's PA system, from my interviews with the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

Fortunately, GEF's more recent projects here involve landscapes and corridors. The project implementers (UNDP and NGOs) sound very optimistic about the outcome, but the terminal evaluation and government tell a different story. The main concern is that livelihood options offered as well as payment for ecosystem services do not provide enough of a long-term incentive to private forest owners to preserve their forests and the biodiversity in it. This seems to make it critical to know the state of biodiversity outside the PAs as well. The TE, for example, said that deforestation actually accelerated during the GEF project, and the reviewers attributed this to unmet promises made to the private forest owners.

My personal concern is that if they're relying on payment for ecosystem services ($27.50 USD/ hectare/ yr, which is not much in itself), what will happen when the money runs out? Who will keep paying the people? The other thing about that is that when you motivate people with money, they will always want more and more. Not because they're greedy (though there is that, too, for some) but because prices of basic necessities will keep going up (and fast!), and the alternative economic incentives for the forest will then grow higher and higher compared to what they are getting paid. It will just be a race to the bottom, a bidding war of who pays the highest price for which use. I personally believe that changing people's mindsets is the key so that the motivation driving conservation is the conviction that forests are important to their future and need to be protected; paying people to secure their own future seems to me like cultivating a feeling of entitlement, i.e. all these foreigners should pay us because they have the money and we're the poor victims. Already these people expect to be paid just to show up to a meeting. But hey, what do I know. I just hope the people who invented Payment for Ecosystem Services know what they are doing and are considering the long-term effects on people's character and attitudes, not just on climate change.

The good news is that a follow-up REDD project that is not funded by GEF (because the government of Uganda did not want to fund it) has taken lessons from the GEF projects on how to make Payment for Ecosystem Services more successful. For example, as part of the revised approach, they are establishing village banks as a source of capital, especially for emergencies, which was the biggest reason people who joined the scheme would cut their forests.

All in all, the story of GEF support in Uganda is a good one. However, the main driver seems to be tourism--if an area has the qualities that can earn revenue, it also attracts support from government, NGOs and donors. Not just that, but it tends to be able to fund itself as well in terms of infrastructure and enforcement. If an area has NO touristic value, then good luck to the wildlife there. Will update this hypothesis after I go visit the PAs.

I saw the same thing in my limited experience in Indonesia--everyone seems to be flocking to the same PA when providing support, to the total neglect of the neighboring one. This appears to be the "Matthew effect", common in complex systems (basically most of real life): For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. (Matthew 25:29). In the meantime, in your respective countries, why do you think some areas attract so much support, while others hardly get any support?

Some midstream clarifications on using the data collection instruments

Tim was asking me some questions about the templates, and I thought it might be helpful to post my reply to him here, since he's probably not the only one with those questions.

Why are the questions repetitive?

As mentioned in the Guidance Note, the sections in the templates are intended to be redundant so as to ensure that different aspects of a phenomenon are covered by asking the same question in different ways. However, it CAN get tedious to fill out the tables when certain things come up again and again.

For example, the category of "threat reduction" in the country template (document 3A) under the Environmental Change table (Section IIA), may identify "decline in poaching" as a reduced threat, with "improved enforcement activities" as a contributing factor. "Improved enforcement" might also show up in the table for Change in Capacities, if the improvement in enforcement occurred during the period that GEF support was present. It may also show up again in the Timeline (Section IIB) if this improvement in enforcement started as a result of a specific event or driver, and then again under Management Inputs (Section IIIA) if law enforcement training and equipment were provided as a specific contribution of one of the actors.

To avoid the exercise from getting too tedious, you can either a) copy and paste whatever you've already typed into the boxes where the answer might also be relevant, or b) provide a reference such as "See non-GEF factors in Environment Change, 'threat reduction'" in boxes where the information is also relevant, to avoid repeating the information. The point is, do whatever makes sense for you--the bottomline is that you are able to capture all the information that you have collected.

Let me know if this helps. Have you found a better way to make the process easier? Please share your experience  in the comment box below!

Change starting when?

Another question that may be common is: from when do we start assessing the change? There are two sub-sections assessing change, Section IIA - Direct Changes and Causes and Section IIB - Indirect Change and Causal Pathways.

The first, Section IIA, is meant to document changes that occurred during the period of GEF engagement. So it's important to know when GEF support began and when it ended, and then ask what the state of things  was before this period, and what the state of things is at present or immediately after support ended. The change may not always be a result of GEF support (or not only of GEF support), and this is exactly what we want to find out. GEF support may have funded certain activities that are expected to lead to that change, but asking this question will help us see if indeed it was those specific activities that directly contributed to it.

The second, Section IIB, is meant to document longer-term changes, so we can see if GEF did indeed contribute to major change, or if the events were already headed in that direction anyway. This is where GEF contribution will be more nuanced, as we know that there are so many other larger actors and drivers shaping the sequence of events in a specific context. Perhaps GEF provided the last extra push needed for conservation to be prioritized rather than economic gain. Perhaps GEF came in to lend some sort of credibility when other donors were having second thoughts about continuing their support for PAs in the country. Perhaps the momentum for change started way back when the country gained its independence. Perhaps some other donor or even government would have provided exactly the same kind of support. These are the sort of things that will not emerge unless we look at the long view and ask the question "what might have happened had GEF support not been present?"

What do we do with the Preliminary Analyses?

The Preliminary Analyses forms (document no. 4A, B and C) are meant to help synthesize the information organized in the templates as a bridge between data collection and the analyses that we are going to be doing in June. So filling out the 5 sets of preliminary analyses (PA system + 4 PAs) is very important, as these are what we will be presenting to each other during the calibration workshop.

The country and PA templates will continue to be important as references that we can use to clarify data as needed during discussions, as well as compare answers to specific categories across the countries and PAs. So it's likewise important to make sure the information in the tables is well-presented and understandable. We also plan to aggregate information organized in the templates (quantified, as much as possible) as evidence in the report to support our findings and recommendations.

Below is a flowchart of how the different documents feed into each other. You can click on it to make it larger.

Hope this helps and do share your thoughts below!

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.