Since 2012, the USAID Vietnam Forests and Deltas program (VFD) has been helping the Government of Vietnam develop and operationalize a national Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) program that has already directed over USD $500 million to forest owners as financial compensation for maintaining forest cover. For example, Vietnam’s hydroelectric power plants now reward upstream forest owners whose trees keep soil in place, avoiding the sediment buildup that drives up operating costs.

Sơn La Dam in Vietnam. Hydroelectric power plants reward forest owners whose trees keep soil in place.

One focus of Winrock’s work is creating monitoring systems and procedures that capture the impact of the PFES program. While monitoring systems may not sound glamorous, they are crucial to answering an essential question — does PFES work? Recent studies indicate that payment for ecosystem services schemes do reduce deforestation. However, these studies are limited in scope. With PFES implemented throughout its 44 provinces, Vietnam has an incredible opportunity to understand if PFES is effective.

The challenge? Figuring out what data will help answer the question, and how to collect it. Currently, the Vietnam Forest Protection and Development Fund (VNFF) only collects three data points — the number of households receiving PFES payments, the dollar value of total payments made and how many hectares of forest PFES includes. While these are important from a process perspective, they give no information about PFES outcomes. The Vietnamese government believes that PFES payments both reduce deforestation and have a positive socioeconomic impact on households. To assess if that is true, VFD is working in three provinces — Son La, Thanh Hoa and Lam Dong — to articulate what PFES is trying to achieve, how to measure it, and how to track all the information. The result is a comprehensive list of expected results and indicators to help VNFF better understand its progress.

Staff trainings have helped explain the benefits of a strong monitoring system.

The process has been steady — initially, staff from VNFF and provincial forest funds were nervous that monitoring would be used in a punitive way. Winrock worked with staff to help them understand the benefits of a strong monitoring system and eventually turned anxiety into support from forest fund staff. After training, each participating province worked independently to identify what PFES is trying to achieve and indicators to measure it. Now, Winrock is addressing the next challenge — data accuracy — by creating automated tools to help provincial staff review, process and update large datasets.

These tools are making an enormous difference in the ability of provincial staff to handle complicated data. Ha Minh Tam, the vice director of the Thanh Hoa Forest Protection Department, told VFD “…It took a half day for one of my staff to prepare data for one village, our province has 300 villages, so it would take us 150 man-days to complete the task. Now with the new tools, it only takes a half day to prepare data for whole province.”

In fact, one staff member, Ngo Thi Trung Thanh from the Moc Chau district Forest Protection Department in Son La province, told VFD staff that she was so overwhelmed by the idea of processing all the data that she cried. “I thought it was impossible to complete huge data preparation in one month, much less one week. I was ready to tell my boss that I quit. So when I got your tool, I cried. It is amazing, it only took me few hours to complete everything.”

The next step? Using geographic information systems (GIS) technology to ensure that the forest maps demarcating forest areas are accurate. With Winrock’s assistance, VNFF and the provincial forest funds can look forward to a more rigorous system that demonstrates how PFES can contribute to improved forest conservation in Vietnam.

Bangladesh regularly tops the list of countries most heavily affected by global climate change. With over half the U.S. population in a country the size of New York state, its vulnerability is compounded by low-lying, flood-plain geography, limited infrastructure and high exposure to natural disasters and extreme weather.

The day I landed in Dhaka, the front pages of national newspapers were splashed with former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon lavishing praise on the country for progress made on climate change adaptation, noting that Bangladesh can teach the rest of the world how to adapt to a “warmer, more violent, less predictable climate.” This provided a fitting context for the trip ahead of me — re-visiting the USAID Climate Resilient Ecosystems and Livelihoods (CREL) partners and beneficiaries across the country to get a sense of the program’s long-term impact. I was also curious to know how such a populous nation could have any space at all for nature to survive, yet alone thrive.

For any natural history buff, the Sundarbans is firmly on the bucket list of places to visit. At over 3,900 square miles it is the largest mangrove forest in the world and home to more than a hundred globally endangered Bengal tigers. This is incredibly significant, given that the global tiger population is hanging on by a thread, hovering around 3,000 individuals spanning five sub-species. Aside from this small miracle, mangroves are perhaps more widely recognized as a key asset for coastline communities and infrastructure, providing a critical natural buffer to protect against storms and tropical cyclones. Yet the benefits of mangroves do not make life much easier for the people who live close by. Scarcity of fresh water in many Sundarbans-border communities means that women and children spend two to three hours per day collecting and carrying water to the home, time lost for other income-generating activities.

Even with these constraints, the Dakkhim Chila Pebblechild doll women’s group established under CREL in Chandpai is still going strong as of July 2019, with members producing dolls to order that are sold to international markets. This, along with poultry rearing, helps supplement household incomes during the lean season. The group members want to further develop their business model and are looking at options to establish a cooperative that would enable leasing nearby land for fruit production.

Addressing the needs of local communities and those who rely on natural resource extraction will continue to be key to ensuring the long-term protection of the Sundarbans, as will engagement with the private sector to address new threats from shipping and increasing pollution from nearby industrial development. I was not lucky enough to glimpse a tiger on this visit, but with attacks on fishermen well documented I guess I should be careful what I wish for.

Satchari National Park has been highly successful at reducing illegal logging and wildlife hunting as a result of co-management activities such as community patrolling and improved awareness of the importance of biodiversity protection. Thirty-eight villages surround the site and 2,000 households are directly dependent on the natural resources of Satchari. With such high population pressure the CMC plays a critical role in helping balance the needs of local people and nature.

Satchari National Park is generating revenue from entry fees and the co-management committee’s (CMC’s) support for micro-enterprises such as making decorations for wedding parties and fattening livestock. The park also boasts basic accomodations for overnight visitors and research students.

Education and awareness campaigns have reaped results on improving the coexistence of people and wildlife in such close proximity. Now villagers regularly call on the CMC and Peoples Forum to help resolve wildlife conflict issues, such as re-releasing illegally caught wildlife or unwelcome poisonous snakes that find themselves near people’s houses. This has the additional benefit of preventing killed or caught animals from entering the illicit global trade in wildlife.

The CMC and Forest Department officials now have a positive rapport and engage in healthy debate to jointly resolve challenges — a sign that the co-management approach is working and maturing. Yet despite these successes, Shamsunnahar Chowdhury, chair of the Satchari National Park CMC and the only elected CMC chairwoman in Bangladesh, is adamant that more needs to be done to increase revenue for reinvesting in co-management. (Chowdhury is pictured above with the CMC president, a range officer from the Forest Department and the member secretary.) As a beat officer from Satchari said to me, “The next project will be the last support we need to be sustainable.”

Targeted alternative income generation strategies such as vermicomposting and dragon fruit cultivation are key to saving Bangladesh’s remaining forests and helping reduce pressure on natural resources. They also have the potential to evolve into successful microenterprises. Ashish Kumar Nath lives close to Hazarikhil Wildlife Sanctuary, just north of Chittagong. A recipient of training under the CREL project, he has scaled up his monthly production of vermicompost. This niche but relatively lucrative income source is generated by sales to nearby farmers and tea plantations who can’t get enough of this highly fertile compost.

Md. Shamsuddin, a farmer living close to Fasiakhali Wildlife Sanctuary close to Cox’s Bazaar, shows off the dragon fruit he’s cultivating behind his house. A perennial plant that can grow in most soils and bears fruit during the first year, dragon trees yield up to five tons of fruit per acre.

However, not all sites are blessed with an accessible location and infrastructure that would attract tourism revenue, and developing the institutional capacity of CMCs requires sustained, long-term investment. Fasiakhali is one site where more needs to be done before the CMC can effectively manage its natural resources. With fragile governance that has not yet had a chance to mature, there are signs that illegal extraction of forest resources could continue in some areas without further investments.

Of the 641 plant species known to exist in Hazarikhil Wildlife Sanctuary, Md. Mannan, a community patrol group (CPG) member, proudly identifies one of the rarer tree species. Important medicinal plants locally used for the treatment of malaria also grow in the 2,908-hectare site, much of which was barren land prior to the project providing support to strengthen CMC capacity and train CPG members in collaborative management activities. CPGs are often the first line of defense against illegal logging and poaching and they play a key role in sharing intelligence with the Forest Department. Incidence of wildlife hunting has declined in recent years, with reports that species such as the globally threatened Himalayan Serow (Capricornis thar) are returning to the region.

Md. Jasim Uddin is the chairman of the Hazarikhil Wildlife Sanctuary CMC. His energy for biodiversity protection is effusive as he points out different plants and bounces down the trail ahead of me to pose for this photo next to an old-growth tree.

However, remuneration to CPG members for their part-time support to patrol and protect the site is unanimously determined inadequate at just 400 Taka (approximately USD $5) per month. With tourist and visitor numbers on the rise, the CMC hopes to soon collect entry fees that can be reinvested into biodiversity protection and cover the cost of patrols by CPG members. The CMC chairman noted that CREL brought radical change to management of the site, nor was it short on ideas for improving natural resource management. He hopes to continue strengthening coordination with the Bangladesh Forest Department, improving water and electricity supplies to park infrastructure, and developing a diverse tourist experience including paddle boats, mountain bikes, eco-cottages and a visitor center.

Wetlands such as Baika Beel in the Sylhet region of northeast Bangladesh are critical for both food security and flood regulation for large parts of the country, the health of which is underpinned by an astonishingly rich array of freshwater biodiversity. USAID has made significant investments in the protection and management of such sites over the past 20 years, notably with the MACH (Management of Aquatic Ecosystems through Community Husbandry) project laying a foundation for ecologically sound management of floodplain resources.

Increased protection for fisheries under the CREL project resulted in species making a comeback that were thought to be locally extinct, such as chital fish and other species of catfish. In parallel to this, the site has a thriving water bird population with almost 200 species recorded.

Wetland management is a long-term investment and ongoing priority. Wetland sanctuaries ensure adequate water storage throughout the dry season, but expansion of nearby aquaculture farms is encroaching on these natural ecosystems and siltation from agriculture reduces water retention capacity, which requires expensive dredging operations to counter. Resource users such as local fishermen as well as regional government authorities are in need of further technical support to amend the current policy framework on wetlands leasing to enable equitable participation and improved management. The community is also pushing for a three-month closed season to enable fish stocks to rebound — but it needs additional support to help households that rely solely on fishing to find alternate income during this period.

Many of Bangladesh’s remaining forests are fragmented and persist in a largely agriculturally-dominated landscape. CMCs urgently need to engage the agribuisness sector, as run-off from farming and commercial tea plantations is a major threat to wetland ecosystems and the open grazing of livestock puts pressure on the regeneration of nearby forests. Establishing a working relationship with large companies is a daunting task to most community members. But there is hope that it can be achieved as CMCs continue to strengthen and the private sector can be successfully engaged under the co-management framework.

The long-term picture for our global climate isn’t rosy, but as the successes above clearly demonstrate, the people living closest to nature in Bangladesh have the strongest passion and commitment to protect it. Continued international support will be critical to ensure that they keep facing down these threats and prosper economically without sacrificing biodiversity. If Bangladesh can do it, the rest of the world has few excuses.

(Photos by Matthew Maltby)

This article was originally published in USAID’s Climatelinks.

In Ghana, a changing climate is affecting the production of cocoa, one of the country’s major cash crops and its second leading foreign exchange earner. USAID and Winrock International worked together to produce ECO Game: Northern Ghana to provide communities with a better sense of  land use planning and ecosystem services. The purpose of the game is to show players that more sustainable land uses lead to better long-term outcomes. A follow-up, called ECO Game: Ghana Deforestation-Free Cocoa, is currently under development and scheduled for release in late 2019.

Once an indulgence reserved for Mayan rituals or European high society, chocolate has become a treat that millions of people around the world delight in every day. The basis of this enormous industry is the small Theobroma cacao tree, which produces pods along its trunk whose seeds are processed into chocolate. These trees dominate Ghana’s once heavily forested Western Region. The country supplies 20 percent of the world’s cocoa. The commodity forms the backbone of its economy, and is the primary livelihood of over 800,000 Ghanaians.

Yet cocoa yields in Ghana are declining, with already aging farms suffering from exposure to higher temperatures and drier conditions associated with climate change, as well as pests and diseases. Sustaining Ghana’s cocoa industry, and all those who rely on it, requires a landscape-scale approach to rehabilitate farms, protect natural forests to mitigate climate change and bolster resilience, and empower communities to invest in long-term solutions.

Cocoa farm in the western region of Ghana. Photo: Gabriel Sidman

Addressing Threats to Ghanaian Cocoa

USAID’s Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana Activity is working to accomplish these objectives by combining the financial resources, political will, and public participation to reduce deforestation and promote reforestation by improving tenure security, rehabilitating old and diseased cocoa farms, and promoting participatory community land use planning.

While improving tenure security and the benefits of rehabilitating cocoa farms offer clear, direct benefits to participating communities, the role of natural forests in enhancing long-term mitigation of and resilience against climate change is a harder message to effectively convey. And given the tantalizing draw of gold mining, despite devastating environmental impacts, the imperative to bring to light the value of natural systems is even more critical.

USAID’s Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (AgNRM) project faced this dilemma in northern Ghana, where Winrock International worked to improve sustainable community land use planning. The project completed a technical study on economic benefits and ecosystem services associated with common land uses in the region, yet deep down, we knew that few would read it – not least the farmers in rural communities for whom the information was intended.

A staff member from USAID’s Agriculture and Natural Resource Program discusses impacts of land use changes with community members during Eco Game: Northern Ghana piloting. Photo: Alexandre Grais

Mobilizing a Community With Games

So why not translate results through a game? We learn best through experiences: making decisions, feeling impacts, and then linking cause and effect. Games simulate those experiences, making them a powerful, fun way to learn sometimes complex and interconnected concepts. Not surprisingly, many games have been created by the development community and educators around the world to explain concepts around water management, climate change, and sustainable development. When we first proposed the idea of a game about ecosystem services and land use planning to our local Ghanaian community mobilizer, Martin Yelibora, he was skeptical, arguing that the communities we were working with make decisions based on immediate economic needs or limitations, not on esoteric concepts like ecosystem health and resilience to climate change.

Nevertheless, Martin and his team provided invaluable support in developing the Eco Game: Northern Ghana, where players strategically select land uses to meet community needs and face natural disasters and economic or social chance events with negative or positive outcomes. Over the course of the game, players learn that selecting land uses that involve more sustainable soil, water, and other natural resource management lead to better long-term outcomes.

And soon enough, Martin was a champion of this approach. On a hot, dry day in Ghana, we huddled under a couple of shade trees while Martin introduced the game to more than 40 attentive community members. Their response was overwhelmingly positive, participating enthusiastically and discussing decisions. After the game, we were delighted to hear players have lively discussions about the impact land use choices had on food and energy production, water needs, and resilience.

We are now working to adapt the game approach through the ECO Game: Ghana Deforestation-Free Cocoa. In this game, players interactively explore challenges and balance the tradeoffs associated with rehabilitating cocoa farms and maintaining forest cover in a landscape where land is scarce, and the boom-or-bust draw of gold mining offers short-term gains. Simultaneously, players grapple with insecure land tenure, regional social and economic forces, and the realities of the climate crisis. We are in the final stages of development, and Martin is eager to roll it out in late 2019.

Click here for more information on the Eco Game.

“Between 1962 and 2016, Peru lost over 54 percent of its total glacial area.”

“More intense rain events are expected, especially during El Niño years, increasing the risks of floods and landslides.”

These were among the sobering facts about climate change that my team and I presented during workshops we delivered on behalf of the U.S. State Department-funded Private Investment in Enhanced Resilience (PIER) project in Peru recently. The PIER project is working in Peru and other countries to increase private financing for measures that bolster resilience against climate change.

In Peru — a remarkably diverse country already suffering from increased temperatures, shifts in precipitation patterns, and more frequent and intense weather events — we’re supporting the government in identifying new ways to apply its existing Obras por Impuestos  (“Works for Taxes”) program. Obras por Impuestos, also known as Oxi, allows private companies to directly finance and implement priority public investment projects in lieu of paying income taxes. Climate resilience has not been an important component in the mechanism — yet.

We worked with the Peruvian Agency for the Promotion of Private Investment (ProInversión) and the Alliance for Obras por Impuestos (ALOXI) to organize a series of workshops in the cities of Lima, Huaraz and Cusco to help participants better understand climate impacts and ways that investments could be made more climate-resilient. Participants included ProInversión staff based throughout Peru, public servants at both the national and regional level, and representatives of ALOXI member companies.

During these workshops, I could sense that participants were uneasy about the sobering information I was presenting. So my colleagues Glen Anderson and Roger Salhuana and I helped them explore how private and public actors can help reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience.

We primarily explored the types of infrastructure projects that would qualify under the Oxi mechanism:

1) Reduced exposure to climate change impacts, such as relocating infrastructure to safer areas and accounting for climate risks when selecting sites for new infrastructure;

2) Reduced sensitivity to climate change impacts, such as design changes in infrastructure to reduce damages when exposed to disasters such as floods and landslides; and

3) Enhanced adaptive capacity to avoid, confront, or recover from climate change impacts, such as by augmenting water supply through infrastructure to collect and store rainwater and glacial meltwater to better prepare for periods of water scarcity.

I walked away feeling energized by the participants’ enthusiasm for the proposed solutions and their eagerness to begin thinking about how to address climate risks.

The PIER team is currently in discussions with ProInversión, ALOXI and other workshop participants about the next steps to promote resilient Oxi projects as well as other public-private partnerships (PPPs)  — including capacity-building to incorporate climate considerations in investments, developing criteria for assessing climate risks in PPPs, and working with regional partners to promote resilience in specific Oxi projects.

There are still many hurdles to tackle before climate adaptation is mainstreamed into private sector investments in Peru, but I’m hopeful these workshops served as a meaningful step in increasing the use of public and private resources to improve resilience in this vibrant country.

It’s Friday morning in Hembeti, a rural village in eastern Tanzania, and Irene Lemelo is hard at work. Members of the local community update her on their progress digging trenches for water pipes, and Lemelo answers their questions about a gravity-fed water system now under construction. When she finished her engineering degree a year ago, Lemelo never anticipated working with water projects. But after finding an internship with USAID’s Water Resources Integration Development Initiative (WARIDI), she now wants to make water the focus of her professional career.

Tanzania’s health, economy, and food security depend on sustainably managed water resources. However, water scarcity challenges are growing along with the impacts of climate change and reliable access to safe drinking water and sanitation services remains beyond the reach of many people. WARIDI addresses these challenges by promoting integrated water resources management and service delivery across multiple sectors, which improves governance and increases access to sustainable multi-use water, sanitation, and hygiene services.

The activity is taking on an ambitious effort to deliver sustainable water services to some of Tanzania’s poorest and least accessible villages. By 2021, WARIDI will construct dozens of water systems and train hundreds of local owners to operate them, bringing up to 520,000 people access to basic drinking services. The activity will also reach 750,000 people with improved sanitation services and practices as part of a national behavior change campaign. But that’s not all. WARIDI supports resilient livelihoods and strengthens local water governance and gender and social equity in water resources management.

Bringing water directly to these communities promises a significant improvement to the lives of women in the region, many of whom spend each day transporting water from distant water sources. Winrock incorporates that goal into the composition of the WARIDI team.

An untapped resource

Every year, 2,000 students graduate from Tanzanian engineering programs, only to face barriers to employment. To become registered professional engineers in the country, graduates must first gain three years of practical experience. Yet, only an estimated 800 of these students will receive enough training to qualify, the vast majority of whom are men. Recognizing this abundance of unused talent and knowledge, WARIDI bolsters construction efforts with technical expertise while also providing recent engineering graduates an opportunity to build their careers.

Lemelo was one of the first 16 young engineers to be hired as an intern by WARIDI in October 2017. She serves as a site supervisor and a community liaison between local contractors and the communities in which they work. The interns possess both the technical knowledge and linguistic and cultural background to communicate with the community and their local representatives. As a result, the interns prove invaluable in working with communities to design projects that address the community’s unique needs. Through their experience, they are learning to balance water resource sustainability with increasing demands for water-intensive private connections.

Building community relations

Just as one might ask a plumber how they fixed a broken sink,  members of the community and their representatives often have questions about the water projects under construction. They might ask about gravity-fed water systems, which use gravity to transport water from a water source at a higher elevation to a tap at a lower elevation. “What is it? How does it work? Why this one? Why do we have to help with the trench excavation? Why do we have to pay water fees? Why is this taking so long?” Lemelo and the other junior engineers’ knowledge enables them to answer questions from the community, helping the community become more self-reliant and able to maintain the systems after WARIDI leaves.

The recent graduates have gained experience that will help their careers, an especially meaningful opportunity for women. While only nine percent of registered engineers in Tanzania are women, twenty-five percent of WARIDI’s original site interns are female. Lemelo is one of four site interns promoted to the position of junior engineer, three of whom are women. The promotion gives junior engineers the opportunity to obtain practical experience while increasing their responsibilities in system design, construction oversight, and community engagement.

The next generation of engineers

“These were things I only knew theoretically,” says Grace Mujuni, one of the other four junior engineers. Mujuni studied environmental engineering and knew she wanted to work in the water sector. “Water is tangible for everyone,” she says, “It affects everyone directly.” Before joining WARIDI, she had been volunteering her skills with non-governmental organizations to gain work experience. Now she’s designing cost-effective water supply systems and is on track to register as a professional engineer with Tanzania’s engineering registration board.

While developing technical expertise has been crucial, the junior engineers say the opportunity to engage with communities has been the most meaningful experience from working with WARIDI. “It contributes to the sustainability when you engage the community and create ownership of the project,” says junior engineer Allen Masasi. His experience has also convinced Masasi of the importance of gender integration in such projects. “When you specifically include women in different levels of decision-making, it makes the project more sustainable.” 

This blog was originally published by USAID Tanzania