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Global Conservation Program Partner:
EnterpriseWorks/VITA (EWV)
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EnterpriseWorks/VITA helps community-based forest
management groups in the Philippines improve their
incomes and conserve their forests by strengthening
resource management and enterprise skills of their
members. |
Around the world, many rural communities earn income from their traditional lands by harvesting and selling natural products such as bamboo, grasses, rattan, spices, and essential oils extracted from forest plants. Often, these small scale natural products collectors have no recognized legal or economic protection to continue harvesting the resources their families have gathered for generations. In many cases, they also lack the capital and business skills necessary to develop enterprises to process and add value to their raw materials, thereby increasing their incomes.
USAID currently supports EnterpriseWorks/VITA (EWV) Natural Products Program in the Philippines through a cooperative agreement for “Capacity Building for Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM).” This program helps develop community-based enterprises that serve a dual purpose—improving rural livelihoods, and helping conserve globally significant biodiversity. Through the “enterprise-based approach to conservation,” the cooperative agreement with USAID helps EWV to organize and empower small producers to gain economic control of their natural resources by helping them secure land and resource tenure, providing business assistance, and promoting improved resource management techniques such as biological monitoring, and defining sustainable off-take levels. As a result, traditionally marginalized populations are managing their natural resources for improved livelihoods and conservation.
EWV’s activities in the Philippines and Nepal concentrate on establishing sustainable local processing enterprises outside of protected areas. Improved access to processing facilities allows producers to bypass layers of middlemen traders and increase profits. Small increases in cash can make a huge difference in the standard of living of remote villages. Project interventions have enabled communities to stop and control agricultural burning, restrict slash-and-burn agriculture, stop illegal loggers, and use scientific information to devise and enforce sustainable harvesting protocols for natural products.
The Philippines
The bio-geographical isolation and fragmentation of the Philippines, a nation comprised of more than 7,100 islands, created a high degree of endemism—many of the species here are found nowhere else on Earth. Unfortunately, within the past century most of the Philippines’ forests have disappeared. Consequently the plants and animals that live in these forests have become increasingly threatened. This combination of vast, but increasingly threatened biodiversity, makes these islands a conservation priority.
Some of the most intact remaining forests of the Philippines are on the island of Palawan and the Sierra Madre Mountains in Northeastern Luzon. Both of these areas possess globally significant biodiversity. As part of USAID’s Global Conservation Program, EWV is working with community groups there to address the underlying threats to forests including governance shifts, economic forces and a lack of local capacity. This work is taking place within the context of a national land tenure program administered by the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources that enables communities to gain tenure to an area of old growth, secondary, and/or denuded forest. By helping community groups establish profitable enterprises that depend on conserving the natural resource base, EWV aims to promote biodiversity conservation while providing a sustainable source of income to local producers. Successes include:
- Assisting communities to bring over 300,000 hectares of forest and mixed use land under improved management
- Capacity building of five CBFM federations (representing over 120 CBFM groups) with training in resource inventory, perimeter survey, land use planning, annual work planning, resource use permit preparation, and environmental compliance.
- Networking of these groups and linking them to service providers for long-term sustainability.
- Training in biodiversity threat evaluation and biological monitoring, preparation of community maps and updating of biological monitoring plans, as well as enforcement of biological inventory standards.
- Formation of task forces in both regions comprised of government agencies, local government, community groups, the private sector, and local NGOs that will coordinate and implement biological monitoring, conflict resolution, policy review, and monitoring and compliance of CBFM requirements.
Nepal
During the first phase of the Global Conservation Program, USAID supported EWV’s efforts in the rugged mountains of western Nepal. The subtropical, temperate, and alpine forests of Nepal’s western Himalayas contain great botanical diversity both in terms of species richness and endemism. This region contains some 7,000 species of plants, 40% of which are found nowhere else. Many of these plants are important sources of medicine. This complex ecosystem is threatened by over-harvesting of valuable plants, over-grazing, and the unregulated collection of wood and fodder. The goal of EWV’s Nepal program was to conserve the globally significant mountain biodiversity of the region through community forest management linked to enterprise development.
Many Nepalis in this region earn their primary cash income by gathering these plants, and selling them to traders for pennies. EWV and its local partner ANSAB—Asia Network for Sustainable Agriculture and Bioresources—worked with local communities and the Government of Nepal to train collectors in sustainable harvesting techniques, develop a plan to ensure biodiversity conservation, secure rights and privileges over the land, and process the harvested plants to earn more money. The program helped community forest user groups to develop forest management plans that gained official recognition—for the first time in Nepal—of communities’ legal access to non-timber forest products (NTFPs).
By the conclusion of GCP support to this project, successes included:
- Starting over 460 natural products enterprises in Nepal which generated over 41,000 jobs (50% for women and 50% for men) and over four million dollars in revenue.
- Helping to bring 43,630 hectares of community forest under improved management.
- Incorporating non-timber forest products into community forest management plans; NTFPs were officially recognized for the first time.
- Improving conservation measures such as biological monitoring and sustainable harvesting being implemented by community forest user groups.
More information is available at EWV’s website.
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