WRI Publications Feed: Mainstreaming Ecosystem Services Initiative (MESI)

The Corporate Ecosystem Services Review: Guidelines for Identifying Business Risks & Opportunities Arising from Ecosystem Change

Suzanne Ozment — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:32:54 -0500

Summary

Ecosystems provide businesses with numerous benefits or “ecosystem services.” Forests supply timber and wood fiber, purify water, regulate climate, and yield genetic resources. River systems provide freshwater, power, and recreation. Coastal wetlands filter waste, mitigate floods, and serve as nurseries for commercial fisheries.

However, human activities are rapidly degrading these and other ecosystems. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment— the largest audit ever conducted of the condition and trends in the world’s ecosystems—found that ecosystems have declined more rapidly and extensively over the past 50 years than at any other comparable time in human history. In fact, 15 of the 24 ecosystem services evaluated have degraded over the past half century. The Assessment projected further declines over coming decades, particularly in light of population growth, economic expansion, and global climate change. Left unchecked, this degradation could jeopardize future economic well-being, creating new winners and losers within the business community.

Ecosystem degradation is highly relevant to business because companies not only impact ecosystems and the services they provide but also depend on them. Ecosystem degradation, therefore, can pose a number of risks to corporate performance as well as create new business opportunities. Types of risks and opportunities include:

Operational

Risks such as higher costs for freshwater due to scarcity, lower output for hydroelectric facilities due to siltation, or disruptions to coastal businesses due to flooding
Opportunities such as increasing water-use efficiency or building an on-site wetland to circumvent the need for new water treatment infrastructure

Regulatory and legal

Risks such as new fines, new user fees, government regulations, or lawsuits by local communities that lose ecosystem services due to corporate activities
Opportunities such as engaging governments to develop policies and incentives to protect or restore ecosystems that provide services a company needs

Reputational

Risks such as retail companies being targeted by nongovernmental organization campaigns for purchasing wood or paper from sensitive forests or banks facing similar protests due to investments that degrade pristine ecosystems
Opportunities such as implementing and communicating sustainable purchasing, operational, or investment practices in order to differentiate corporate brands

Market and product

Risks such as customers switching to suppliers that offer eco-certified products or governments implementing new sustainable procurement policies
Opportunities such as launching new products and services that reduce customer impacts on ecosystems, participating in emerging markets for carbon sequestration and watershed protection, capturing new revenue streams from company-owned natural assets, and offering eco-labeled wood, seafood, produce, and other products

Financing

Risks such as banks implementing more rigorous lending requirements for corporate loans
Opportunities such as banks offering more favorable loan terms or investors taking positions in companies supplying products and services that improve resourceuse efficiency or restore degraded ecosystems.

Unfortunately, companies often fail to make the connection between the health of ecosystems and the business bottom line. Many companies are not fully aware of the extent of their dependence and impact on ecosystems and the possible ramifications. Likewise, environmental management systems and environmental due diligence tools are often not fully attuned to the risks and opportunities arising from the degradation and use of ecosystem services. For instance, many tools are more suited to handle “traditional” issues of pollution and natural resource consumption. Most focus on environmental impacts, not dependence. Furthermore, they typically focus on risks, not business opportunities. As a result, companies may be caught unprepared or miss new sources of revenue associated with ecosystem change.

The Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (ESR) is designed to address these gaps. It consists of a structured methodology that helps managers proactively develop strategies to manage business risks and opportunities arising from their company’s dependence and impact on ecosystems. It is a tool for strategy development, not just for environmental assessment. Businesses can either conduct an Ecosystem Services Review as a stand-alone process or integrate it into their existing environmental management systems. In both cases, the methodology can complement and augment the environmental due diligence tools companies already use.

The Ecosystem Services Review can provide value to businesses in industries that directly interact with ecosystems such as agriculture, beverages, water services, forestry, electricity, oil, gas, mining, and tourism. It is also relevant to sectors such as general retail, healthcare, consulting, financial services, and others to the degree that their suppliers or customers interact directly with ecosystems. General retailers, for example, may face reputational or market risks if some of their suppliers are responsible for degrading ecosystems and the services they provide.

This publication describes the five steps for performing an Ecosystem Services Review. It provides an analytical framework, case examples, and helpful suggestions for each step. It concludes by highlighting a number of resources managers can use when conducting an ESR, including a “dependence and impact assessment” spreadsheet, scientific reports, economic valuation approaches, and other issue-specific tools.

As of 2012, an estimated 300 companies have used the Ecosystem Services Review. In addition, complementary tools and guidance now exist to help companies more fully assess business risks and opportunities emerging from ecosystem change. For example, in 2011 the World Business Council for Sustainable Development released the Guide to Corporate Ecosystem Valuation (CEV), which provides information on how to quantitatively, or in some cases monetarily, assess risks and opportunities related to ecosystem services. CEV can therefore be a logical next step after undertaking an ESR. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (2010) highlighted new examples of the linkages between business and ecosystem services. The ESR remains a fundamental starting point for companies to assess business risks and opportunities related to ecosystem change.

Global degradation of ecosystems and the services they provide threatens to alter the landscape in which business operates. The Ecosystem Services Review is a proactive approach for companies to manage the risks and opportunities that are emerging. Furthermore, by helping companies make the connection between healthy ecosystems and the bottom line, it will encourage not only more sustainable business practices, but also business support for policies to protect and restore ecosystems.

WRI developed the ESR in collaboration with the Meridian Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Five WBCSD member companies—Akzo Nobel, BC Hydro, Mondi, Rio Tinto, and Syngenta—road-tested the methodology, providing feedback and case examples. Since 2008, an estimated 300 companies have used the Ecosystem Services Review. Yves Rocher, Lafarge, and CEMEX have also contributed ESR case studies to demonstrate the experience and results of the method.

Insights from the Field: Forests for Climate and Timber

Maggie Barron — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:25:59 -0500

The Carbon Canopy is a novel partnership among companies, landowners, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that seeks to leverage markets for ecosystem services to increase the area of southern U.S. forests certified as sustainably managed. The partnership aspires to sustain southern forests for their economic, climate, water, and other benefits.

The Carbon Canopy’s first focus has been on linking forest carbon offset generation and certified forest management, wherein carbon offset revenue is designed to compensate woodland owners for the cost of certification and provide an attractive new revenue stream.
The Carbon Canopy’s experience to date provides a number of insights for other organizations seeking to build and expand markets for forest carbon offsets linked with forest certification. These insights were gleaned from the authors’ observations as well as interviews with several members of the Carbon Canopy partnership, including landowners, buyers, and NGOs. These insights apply to building demand, ensuring supply, and creating the transactional infrastructure for forest carbon offsets and certified saw timber or wood fiber.
To build robust demand, companies, NGOs, and other organizations seeking to replicate the approach of combining forest carbon offsets and certification should—
- Actively recruit buyers; and
- Secure an anchor buyer early on.
- To ensure sufficient supply of offsets and certified timber, these organizations should—
- Invest in woodland owner education;
- Make the business case to woodland owners;
- Find upfront financing; and
- Be sure to engage all parties with claims on the land.
To create an efficient transactional infrastructure, these organizations should—
- Select forest management and carbon offset certification standards early on;
- Select standards that are high quality and that facilitate market participation; and
- Leverage existing resources and landowner networks.

Gaining Ground: Increasing Conservation Easements in the U.S. South

Maggie Barron — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:29:18 -0400

Summary

A “conservation easement” is a voluntary, legally enforceable land preservation agreement between two parties wherein a landowner sells or donates the development rights to a tract of land to a qualified holding organization, such as a land trust, effectively preventing forest conversion or other stipulated activities, usually in perpetuity.
Conservation easements are attractive to conservation organizations and funders because such agreements often offer a more cost-effective means of securing land under some form of conservation status. Easements typically cost at least 40 percent less per acre than outright land purchases.
Conservation easements have four major benefits to landowners: (1) they allow the retention of private ownership, (2) they provide a high degree of flexibility in terms of meeting landowner management and conservation objectives, (3) they allow active forest management, and (4) they offer financial benefits via income, estate and property tax reductions, and potential revenues from existing and emerging ecosystem service markets.
Conservation easements have become an increasingly popular land conservation approach in the United States. The amount of land nationwide under conservation easement has grown from approximately 500,000 acres in 1990 to more than 30 million acres in 2011.
However, the southern United States currently has a disproportionately low share of the nation’s private land under conservation easement. Although the South constitutes approximately 37 percent of the private land area in the United States, to date it has only 18 percent of the country’s total conservation easement acres. The south also has a disproportionately low share of the total number of easements in the U.S.; only approximately 9 percent of the total number of easements in the country are located in the South.
Key barriers to greater uptake of easements in the South and elsewhere include: (1) landowner misconceptions about what easements are and what easement agreements entail, (2) landowner perceptions that the financial costs of easements outweigh the benefits, (3) landowner concerns about the perpetual nature of most conservation easement agreements, and (4) limited financial and staffing resources by holding entities or land trusts to purchase easements, in addition to the small number of institutional buyers.
There are three main ways these barriers can be overcome: (1) increase resources and capabilities of land trusts, (2) increase financial benefits and contract length flexibility, and (3) strengthen landowner education in order to correct misconceptions.
This issue brief is intended to provide an overview for conservation professionals and conservation funders in the South of the current status of conservation easements in the region relative to the rest of the United States, and how easement use can be increased. It is also intended for landowners interested in exploring conservation easements for their own properties. Although this brief is part of a series dedicated to southern U.S. forests, the ideas presented here could be applied to a spectrum of ecosystems throughout the United States.

Forests for Carbon: Exploring Forest Carbon Offsets in the U.S. South

Maggie Barron — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:34:42 -0400

Southern U.S. forests remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the form of carbon in leaves, roots, branches, trunks, soil, and woody debris and other plant litter through a process known as “carbon sequestration.” Through this process, southern forests and other woodlands play a role in regulating Earth’s climate and moderating the effects of global climate change.
Emerging voluntary and compliance markets often have provisions for greenhouse gas emission reductions or emissions avoided by preventing forest conversion or changing forest management practices. These reductions or avoided emissions are considered “forest carbon emission reductions.”
A “forest carbon offset” is a metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), the emission of which is avoided or newly sequestered and is purchased by greenhouse gas emitters as a cost-control mechanism to compensate for emissions occurring elsewhere. Four types of forest carbon offset projects exist—reforestation, afforestation, forest conservation/avoided conversion, and improved forest management.
Forest carbon offsets can create an incentive for southern woodland owners to engage in land management practices that retain or restore forests and bolster forest carbon sequestration capacity.
Forest carbon offset projects must meet a number of quality criteria if they are to become credible, eligible for markets, and financially feasible for southern woodland owners. The main quality criteria include: assurance that the offset is real (including handling the issue of negative leakage), additionality/surplus, verifiability, permanence, and enforcement.
Recently, a number of carbon offset standards have emerged that adhere to these quality criteria. These standards provide a detailed list of offset project eligibility requirements, or “protocols,” as well as methods for quantifying and verifying a project’s net emissions impact. These standards seek to provide consistency in determining offset eligibility and quantification, improve offset credibility, and lower transaction costs for offset providers.
At present, from the financial standpoint of many southern woodland owners, income from forest carbon offsets alone is likely insufficient to outcompete real estate development. However, depending on landowner management goals and circumstances, income from forest carbon offsets might be sufficient in some instances to help pay incremental costs of sustaining forests, such as property taxes or sustainable forest management certification.
Forest carbon offset markets, like all other markets, require robust demand, adequate supply, and good transactional infrastructure. In light of these three conditions, southern woodland owners can take several initial steps to explore and prepare for existing and upcoming markets: (1) monitor market demand for forest carbon offsets, (2) conduct a solid forest inventory to assess the potential to supply forest carbon offsets, (3) engage in project development, and (4) enroll in a credible offset registry.

Current Use Valuation Programs: Property Tax Incentives for Preserving Local Benefits of Forests

Kathy Doucette — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:59:07 -0400

Summary

This paper explores current use valuation programs as one tool for conserving and fostering sustainable management of southern U.S. forests under private ownership. The brief identifies key constraints on existing programs and suggests measures that could be implemented to enhance program effectiveness.
As a result of rising property taxes on lands under development pressure, nonindustrial private forestland owners in the South often resort to selling all or a portion of their properties to pay tax bills. Rising property taxes also reduce the profitability of timber production and induce corporate and industry landowners to engage in real estate sales as an alternative activity.
Current use valuation programs are one way that states and counties in the South are encouraging landowners to forgo unwanted development sales. Under these programs, enrolled forest and agricultural lands are assessed not at their fair market value but at their value for current uses. This lowers the tax bill for landowners, improves the profitability of timber production, and helps reduce development pressure.
Though current use valuation programs in one form or another are authorized by statute in all southern states, the programs’ general implementation and programmatic effectiveness is often limited by perceived negative fiscal impacts, minimal economic benefits to landowners relative to conversion, land speculation, and lack of promotion of sustainable forest management.
With respect to fiscal impacts, research shows that while current use valuation programs may cause a short-term loss of revenue, preserving these lands can actually result in positive, long-term fiscal benefits. This is because the cost of providing community services and public infrastructure on lands converted to residential use often exceeds the property tax revenues generated. Making counties more aware of this fact can help overcome reluctance to offer current use valuation.
Changes that can increase the overall implementation and programmatic effectiveness of current use valuation programs include state reimbursement funds for short-term reductions in tax revenues, longer covenant terms, allowances for ecosystem service management, and the inclusion of marginal or idle cropland transitioning into forest.
With these modifications, current use valuation programs can be a tool for not only keeping forest as forest but also stimulating a wide range of beneficial management activities, such as reforestation and management of ecosystem services.
This brief is designed to inform state, county, and municipal decisionmakers; land-use planners; and other stakeholders working to conserve and sustainably manage forests.

Forests at Work: A New Model for Local Land Protection

Maggie Barron — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:04:03 -0400

Summary

To date, traditional public land acquisition programs have played a relatively small role in the conservation and sustainable management of southern U.S. forests. The South trails behind other U.S. regions in both the percent of the land base and the acres per capita conserved in parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness, and other protective categories.
Working forests offer a new model for scaling up the amount of publicly protected forestland in the South. “Working forests” are defined as forests that are actively managed to generate revenue from multiple sources, including sustainably produced timber and other ecosystem services, and thus are not converted to other land uses such as residential development.
A public entity can “acquire” a working forest in two ways. It can purchase all of the property rights associated with a forest through a fee simple, or outright, purchase of the land from willing sellers. Alternatively, a public entity can purchase just the development rights to the forest through a conservation easement, leaving ownership of all the other rights in the hands of private landowners. This brief uses the term “acquire” to cover both fee simple and conservation easement purchases.
Public entities can finance working forests via public bonds, sales taxes, or other means. In return, revenues from working forests can be used to offset acquisition costs over time, cover stewardship expenses, and/or pay taxpayers “dividends” in the form of tax rebates or some other equitable revenue sharing scheme after expenses are covered.
Citizen advisory boards could shoulder much of the administrative and management responsibility for the working forest, thereby keeping management and financing local.
Revenues from timber, recreation, and other ecosystem service payments, increases in tax revenue due to higher surrounding property values, and avoided development costs are among the economic benefits generated by working forests.
Scaling up working forests in the South would necessitate further documentation of the economic benefits of the model relative to traditional acquisition programs, broadening the scale and scope of available financing options, offering favorable tax benefits, and educating woodland owners about the benefits of working forests.
This issue brief is intended as a resource primarily for local public officials in the southern United States who are interested in a more cost-effective approach to acquiring and managing public forestland. It provides readers with several economic scenarios that examine the community benefits of a working forest model and discusses the opportunities for scaling up the model in the region.

Forests for Water: Exploring Payments for Watershed Services in the U.S. South

Maggie Barron — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:35:36 -0500

Summary

The forested watersheds of the southern United States provide a number of benefits—including water flow regulation, flood control, water purification, erosion control, and freshwater supply—to the region’s citizens, communities, and businesses.
The loss and degradation of forests can reduce their ability to provide these watershed-related ecosystem services.
Payments for watershed services provide landowners financial incentives to conserve, sustainably manage, and/or restore forests specifically to provide one or more watershed-related ecosystem services. Such payments typically involve downstream beneficiaries paying upstream forest owners or forest managers.
There are three general types of payments for watershed services: (1) voluntary payments by downstream entities to upstream landowners to reduce the costs of doing business, (2) payments made to minimize an entity’s cost of meeting a regulation, and (3) payments made to generate public benefits. A number of instances of each type of payment have been piloted in the United States, Latin America, and elsewhere.
Many payments for watershed services share a common trait: they are investments in “green infrastructure” instead of “gray infrastructure.” In other words, they are investments in forests and natural, open space instead of in human-engineered solutions to address water quantity or quality problems. In many instances, investments in green infrastructure can be more cost effective than investments in gray infrastructure.
Entities that may have a business case for making a payment for watershed services include beverage companies, power companies with hydroelectric facilities, manufacturers that rely on clean freshwater supplies for processing, housing developers, public and private wastewater treatment plants, city and county governments, drinking water utilities, and public departments of transportation, among others.
These entities can pursue a number of steps to capture the potential benefits of payments for watershed services, including identifying those forests most responsible for their clean water supplies, conducting economic analyses of green versus gray infrastructure, and exploring public/private financing partnerships.
Upstream landowners can pursue a number of steps to advance— and ultimately benefit from—payments for watershed services, including developing an understanding of the watershed-related ecosystem services their forests provide, actively looking for emerging payment opportunities, and collaborating with other landowners to achieve economies of scale when engaging beneficiaries of the services their forests provide.
This issue brief is intended as an introductory resource primarily for entities that depend upon stable supplies of clean freshwater in the southern United States and are looking for cost-effective approaches to sustain this supply. This brief also provides information to southern landowners interested in potential revenue streams generated by conservation and sustainable management of forests.

Keeping Forest as Forest: Incentives for the U.S. South

Maggie Barron — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:25:05 -0500

Summary

Forests of the southern United States provide a wide variety of benefits—collectively known as “ecosystem services”—to people, communities, and businesses. For example, they provide timber, help purify water, control soil erosion, help regulate climate by sequestering carbon, and offer outdoor recreation, hunting, and fishing opportunities.
Over the coming decades, several direct drivers of change are expected to negatively affect the quantity and quality of southern forests and thus their ability to provide ecosystem services. These direct drivers include suburban encroachment, unsustainable forest management practices, climate change, surface mining, pest and pathogen outbreaks, invasive species, and wildfire.
A number of incentives, markets, and practices — collectively called “measures” — could help address these drivers of change and promote southern forest conservation and sustainable management. These measures fall into five major categories: land use instruments, fiscal incentives, liability limitations, market incentives, and education/capacity building. With such measures in place, these forests could continue to supply needed ecosystem services and the native biodiversity that underpins these benefits.
The South has experience with many of these measures. A few have been around for awhile, such as parks and protected areas, while many are relatively new, such as payments for watershed protection. However, adoption of even some of the most traditional measures is still relatively low in the South. Why is this the case? What can be done to increase adoption of these measures? Are there other innovative ideas that hold promise for more widespread application?
This issue brief sets the stage for these questions and introduces subsequent installments of the Southern Forests for the Future Incentives Series, which will answer these and related questions. This brief is designed for conservation and land use professionals, decision makers, and concerned citizens.

Mapping a Better Future: Spatial Analysis and Pro-Poor Livestock Strategies in Uganda

Maggie Barron — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:09:54 -0400

Executive Summary

Livestock represents an essential part of Uganda’s agriculture, culture, and economy. While the growth of Uganda’s total agricultural output has declined, livestock trends are up considerably. The total number of cattle, sheep, and goats more than doubled between 2002 and 2008, and the number of pigs and chickens grew by 88 and 59 percent, respectively. Beef and milk production both increased by 8 percent in 2008 alone.

Additional Resources

Mapping a Better Future: How Spatial Analysis Can Benefit Wetlands and Reduce Poverty in Uganda

Mapping a Healthier Future: How Spatial Analysis Can Guide Pro-Poor Water and Sanitation Planning in Uganda

Livestock are particularly important to the subsistence agriculture on which seven out of ten Ugandans rely for their livelihood. While income from livestock provides only one of many sources of income for rural households, people typically rank livestock as their second or third most important means of livelihood. It is not surprising then that over 70 percent of all households in Uganda owned livestock in 2008. Indeed, smallholders and pastoralists dominate the livestock sector. Farming households with mixed crop and livestock production and pastoralists together own 90 percent of Uganda’s cattle and almost all of the country’s poultry, pigs, sheep, and goats.

Uganda’s policymakers have acknowledged the importance of livestock to household incomes, the achievement of national food security and the Millennium Development Goals, as well as to employment creation and poverty reduction. Thus, as part of its National Development Plan covering 2010/11-2014/15, the government intends to boost meat and dairy production by increasing its investments in improved breeds, water infrastructure for livestock, and better management of rangeland and forage resources.

Rationale and Approach

Ensuring that government investments in the livestock sector benefit smallholders and high-poverty locations will require more evidence-based local planning supported by data, maps, and analyses. Mapping a Better Future: Spatial Analysis and Pro-Poor Livestock Strategies in Uganda is intended to address this need. To do so, it compares the latest 2005 poverty maps with maps of livestock data from the 2002 population and housing census and the 2008 national livestock census. Using these data, it examines the spatial relationships between poverty, livestock production systems, the location of livestock services such as dairy cooling plants, and livestock disease hotspots.

By providing illustrative examples of maps that can be developed with these indicators and analyses of what they mean for policy, this report demonstrates how information on the location and severity of poverty can assist livestock sector decision-makers in setting priorities for interventions.

Similarly, decision-makers concerned with poverty reduction will see how comparing levels of poverty in a given location with maps of livestock indicators can inform efforts to fight poverty.

This report is intended for a variety of audiences, including analysts and decision-makers in the livestock and dairy sectors, personnel involved in livestock research and advisory services, officials involved in national planning and budgeting, and civil society and nongovernmental organizations. It is motivated by the fact that, while there is a growing body of knowledge about Uganda’s livestock sector, comparatively little is known about the interrelationship between livestock and poverty. Two factors have contributed to this knowledge gap: (1) Household surveys undertaken to date in Uganda have not managed to break down household income into its various components so that an explicit link can be made between welfare and the role of livestock at the household level; (2) Subnational poverty and livestock data for small administrative areas have only recently become available.

The spatial analysis approach taken in this report provides a way forward. It suggests that by integrating more detailed information on livestock distribution, animal husbandry and veterinary service provision, disease incidence, and poverty, planners can more effectively design and target livestock management interventions and policies so that the benefits reach a greater proportion of poor communities and the costs associated with land-use changes or new restrictions on livestock use do not disproportionately affect the poor.

Findings

While the maps and analyses in this report are primarily designed to demonstrate the value to decision-makers of combining social and livestock-related information, they also support the following conclusions:

Maps showing milk surplus and deficit areas can highlight geographic differences in market opportunities for poor dairy farmers and help target knowledge dissemination, market infrastructure investments, and service delivery to dairy farmers.
Maps showing animal (and human) disease risk by livestock production system can help target and prioritize areas for intervention. The impact of disease on livestock and their owners differs geographically because the role of livestock in peoples’ livelihoods varies among production systems.
Mapping poverty, livestock production systems, and distribution of disease vectors such as tsetse allows a better understanding of how the disease affects livestock owners in terms of livelihoods, welfare, and food security.

Recommendations

Strengthening the supply of high-quality spatial data and analytical capacity will provide broad returns to future planning and prioritization of livestock sector and poverty reduction efforts. Priority actions to achieve this include:

Fill important livestock data gaps, regularly update data, and continue the supply of poverty data for small administrative areas.
Strengthen data integration, mapping, and analysis through regular and focused training that promotes understanding of the whole livestock production system.

Promoting the demand for such indicators and spatial analyses will require leadership from several government agencies, including the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Ministry of Local Government, and National Planning Authority. Actions in the following three areas carry the promise of linking the supply of new maps and analyses with specific decision-making opportunities:

Incorporate poverty information in livestock-related interventions and in regular performance reporting for the livestock sector.
Incorporate livestock sector information into poverty reduction efforts.
Incorporate poverty maps and maps of livestock production systems, disease risk, etc. into local decision-making.

Ecosystems, Climate Change and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Scaling Up Local Solutions

Maggie Barron — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:00:39 -0400

This Working Paper has been jointly produced by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the high-level event on Biodiversity, Ecosystems and Climate Change: Scaling Up Local Solutions to Achieve the MDGs, in support of the UN MDG Review Summit (September 2010).

Ecosystem decline and climate change together are altering the rules of development, bringing a new urgency to the MDG agenda. Because ecosystem services typically account for a substantial portion of the incomes of the rural poor, current trends in ecosystem decline threaten the very basis of their household economies. Climate change will place additional stresses on ecosystems and further intensify the challenges facing the rural poor, undermining efforts to accelerate and sustain progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

To meet this confluence of threats and attain the MDGs, rural development strategies will have to adjust. Effective strategies must enhance the livelihood opportunities of the rural poor while sustaining the ecosystem services on which they depend; must be able to achieve sufficient scale to have a broad effect; and must be designed to increase economic, social, and ecological resilience to climate change.
Three decades of development experience has shown that action at the local level—with local organizations as key actors—underpins the success and sustainability of most environment and development initiatives. Poverty reduction strategies and climate change interventions can’t succeed without being rooted in the perspectives, capabilities, and actions of local organizations.
Local ecosystem-based initiatives have a demonstrated potential to generate economic, social, and environmental benefits for the participants. There is a direct relationship between the health of ecosystems and the opportunities of the poor to build assets, increase their food security, improve their health, reduce risks, and have more secure lives— in short, to achieve the MDGs.
Scaling up such local ecosystem-based initiatives is necessary if they are to achieve sufficient impact. This requires effectively channeling resources and developing capacity at the local level, combined with supportive policy and institutional reforms at higher levels.
Now is the time to act on the potential of local action and to tackle the challenge of scaling up successful ecosystem-based approaches to poverty reduction and the threats of climate change and ecosystem decline. Interest in local approaches is growing; funding for local efforts at climate change adaptation is increasing; and the international community has renewed its commitment to achievement of the MDGs. A joint effort to provide the enabling conditions for scaling up local ecosystem-based initiatives could be an effective route to localizing the MDGs, sustaining ecosystem services and biodiversity, and improving rural adaptation to climate change.
An action framework to scale up local ecosystem-based initiatives should include five key elements.
- Forging an enabling policy environment that provides the poor with secure resource rights, market access and fair regulations, and a voice in local and national decision-making.
- Building local capacity and providing support services, to ensure that local groups have the skills and support they need to sustainably manage local ecosystems and run successful enterprises.
- Ensuring equitable access to finance, from both traditional sources and from emerging sources of environmental and climate finance, so that local groups have sufficient investment and operating capital to carry out their plans.
- Facilitating learning and knowledge sharing, in order to share best practices, speed up the innovation cycle, and to inform policymakers and policy processes.
- Adopting a programmatic approach to scaling up that goes beyond a project-by-project focus to adopt a comprehensive and coordinated effort among government, NGOs, international development agencies, and the private sector to foster the enabling conditions for scaling.