Capitalising on conservation agreements in Peru to enhance sustainable forest livelihoodsComprehensive conservation agreements with forest-dependent native communities in Peru are providing the ideal tool to help improve local livelihoods and increase stakeholder engagement in setting up REDD+ benefit sharing.

Addressing the underlying drivers of deforestation In Peru’s Alto Mayo Protected Forest, conservation agreements signed between households and the Peruvian National Service of Natural Protected Areas are enabling families make the shift to sustainable forest livelihoods. Activities within conservation agreements include reforestation, ensuring seedling survival, protecting forests and reforestation sites, and protecting

Peru

No. 10, August 2016

animals. Families engaged in these new forms of livelihoods are considered supporters of the conservation of the protected area, receive land security, wages for managing nurseries, improved pasture seeds, improved cattle, orchards, training and capacity building. Conservation agreements use a rights-based approach rooted in a voluntary process with free, prior and informed consent; and promotes gender-responsive provisions in the design of benefit packages.

In the region, IUCN Member, Conservation International (CI) has facilitated conservation agreements to support more than 700 families to stop deforestation and reduce the negative impacts of agricultural activities. This work is encouraging families to adopt sustainable livelihoods, and promoting the importance of forests for water, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. Now, IUCN and partners are leveraging these conservation agreements to advance sustainable livelihoods and REDD+ implementation in the native community of Shampuyacu.

Conservation agreements provide an ideal entry point to advance rights-based approaches to REDD+ The Shampuyacu community, located in Peru’s San Martin region, is made up of three villages with about 220 indigenous Awajun families living across 5,000 hectares. Activities are focused on understanding how households depend on forests, and proposing livelihood-enhancing options and capacity building for sustainable natural resource management. It is envisioned that this pilot can eventually be scaled up to include 13 more Awajun indigenous communities in the Alto Mayo basin, which would expand the project’s reach to almost 900 families.

In Shampuyacu, a series of pilot activities within the conservation agreement framework –both at the family and community level − has been designed, accepted and validated by the community. These activities were designed considering:

● drivers of deforestation and forest degradation specific to the community;

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Alto Mayo landscape in the San Martin Region. Photo: IUCN

● results of several studies led by IUCN and CI including IUCN’s poverty-forest tool kit, socio-economic household surveys, conservation agreement feasibility and economic opportunities studies;

● local needs and interests based on a participatory process for validating the options; and

● the legal and institutional framework for REDD+ benefit sharing in Peru and San Martin.

Local communities become active participants in sustainable forest management and equitable benefit sharing In Shampuyacu, existing and proposed benefit sharing efforts have focused on enhancing existing governance structures, as well as creating incentives for community members to ecologically manage their land. The main actions implemented in Shampuyacu, which feed into its conservation agreement, include:

● promoting the demarcation and consolidation of Shampuyacu’s Community Reserve Forest, including more than 530 hectares of old growth community forest;

● construction and maintenance of four nurseries, providing seedlings for coffee plots and medicinal plants, as well as a means for people to engage in other conservation activities;

● improving agricultural activities through training on agroforestry systems, increasing vegetation cover in plots, and using organic inputs;

● enriching communal forests assigned to women who use non-timber forest products as medicine and materials for handicrafts (46 local women are currently leading this activity);

● restoring riparian ecosystems (areas between land and rivers/streams) with species to enhance biodiversity and promote sustainable river basin management; and

● collecting land use information to help identify priority areas for the implementation of conservation agreements.

These activities are already creating non-cash benefits, and they are expected to generate long-

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Enrichment of the communal forest is assigned to women who use non-timber forest products as medicinal plants and materials for handicrafts. Photo: IUCN

term economic benefits, including increased coffee production. IUCN’s REDD+ efforts allowed Shampuyacu to meet the conditions to apply for entry into Peru’s National Forest Conservation Programme (NFCP), through which they will receive incentives to reduce deforestation and implement sustainable community landscape management. Shampuyacu’s community monitoring plan will, in turn, feed into the NFCP’s MRV system, which has a specific component for communal monitoring.

To strengthen local governance, IUCN and partners facilitated the development of the Community Life Plan (Plan de Vida Comunal) that includes a socio-cultural and environmental vision for Shampuyacu. This participatory planning tool consolidates long-term community proposals for the protection of the environment with the preservation of native languages, governance and justice, education and traditional medicine, among others. The plan provides a more holistic vision for the community’s development, and is a broader planning instrument for REDD+ activities that enhances indigenous governance. This Community Life Plan was based on a methodology proposed by the NFCP, and the experience of implementing partner Asociación para la Investigación y Desarrollo Integral (AIDER) in the Madre de Dios region.

Pilot activities within Shampuyacu’s conservation agreement framework as well as its Community Life Plan have strengthened a conservation approach in working with native communities that avoids conflicts, and has the potential to improve “carrot and stick” incentive models that have been used in the past.

New knowledge

IUCN has been building on CI-Peru’s momentum and experience in the Alto Mayo Protected Forest since 2013 to secure community commitment to reducing deforestation and forest degradation, and to sustainable forest management. Community members have shown an encouraging level of engagement, especially among women and young people.

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Reforestation is just one of many activities included in conservation agreements. Photo: Conservation International

Having the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation for Shampuyacu (as well as the wider San Martin region) clear and validated has helped to prioritise the diverse benefit sharing options within the conservation agreement framework used in the project. A clear understanding of these drivers has also allowed local people to acknowledge their own needs and has led to evidence-based design of landscape management approaches. For example, early experience with conservation agreements has revealed that certain collective activities, such as reforestation, should be implemented by rotation between family groups, since members of the same family tend to work better when they are together.

It has been important to involve local stakeholders from the beginning and listen to their needs and expectations so that the community becomes interested in REDD+, ensuring its sustainability. Families in Shampuyacu became more engaged in actions to reduce deforestation when they were proposed with sustainable livelihood options. Promoting collaborative action between communities, government, civil society and economic investors has been essential to advance REDD+ climate change mitigation activities, as well as adaptation and disaster risk reduction efforts.

As conservation agreements mature based on the evolving needs of communities, they can provide valuable case studies to inform the design and implementation of regional and national-level REDD+ benefit sharing arrangements.

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A classic example of agroforestry. Photo: IUCN

Map of a community protected area. Photo: IUCN

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Further reading ● Conservation International (n.d.) ‘Developing a Sustainable Economy in San Martin, Peru’.

http://www.conservation.org/projects/Pages/Developing-a-Sustainable-Economy-in-San-Martin-Peru.aspx

● Cordero, D., Suarez de Freitas, G., Schneider, C. and Che-Piu, H. (2014) Considerations for REDD+ benefit sharing in Peru. Country Report. The Forests Dialogue http://theforestsdialogue.org/sites/default/files/peru_country_report_bs_english.pdf

● IUCN (2010). ‘PROFOR-IUCN Poverty-Forest Tool Kit.’ Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. www.iucn.org/content/profor-iucn-poverty-forest-tool-kit

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IUCN and REDD+Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) can improve lives, protect forests and biodiversity, and mitigate climate change. Forests serve as natural storage for carbon, and deforestation is the second leading cause of carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Furthermore, more than one billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods, and tropical primary forests are particularly high in terrestrial biodiversity.

IUCN’s REDD+ work focuses on the integration of rights-based approaches as the foundation for the design and deployment of landscape, sub-national and national climate change mitigation and forest management strategies. A pro-poor orientation delivers tangible environmental, economic, social and cultural benefits to the poor. In this regard, IUCN works with partners and REDD+ stakeholders in tropical countries to ensure that by 2020, national climate change mitigation policies and initiatives have incorporated and are implementing the tenets of right-based approaches and pro-poor principles.

With support from the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), IUCN is engaged with partners in Cameroon, Ghana, Guatemala, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru and Uganda to pilot and upscale frameworks and mechanisms that support and deliver rights-based and pro-poor outcomes.

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