Case Studies

Pillar 1

Secure Rights Over Lands, Waters, and Resources

Securing Rights to Territories and Resources in Tanzania

Tanzania’s northern rangelands stretch across 8 million acres (3.2 million hectares) and include some of Africa’s most important wildlife migration sites, including the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater, as well as the homes of Maasai pastoralists and the Hadzabe and Akie, some of the last remaining hunter-gatherer Tribes on Earth. Population density has nearly tripled in this region in the last 40 years, which is leading to competition between land uses (mainly agriculture and grazing), threatening pastoralists and hunter-gatherer ways of living, as well as the wildlife that depend on these lands for grazing and migration. Local villages have the right to subdivide all their village land, and once land is officially given to an individual, that land can be further subdivided to sons. This law favors local and individual ownership. Additionally, the Tanzanian central government has significant authority and can expropriate land for large commercial farms if the village does not hold official title (ownership) via a Certificate of Customary Right of Occupancy (CCRO).

TNC in Africa is working with communities and partners to secure legal tenure and management rights for pastoralist and hunter-gatherer communities through collective CCRO designations. This legal tool—pioneered by partner Ujamaa Community Resource Trust and building off existing CCRO designations for individuals—allows communities to own and manage traditional lands and earn benefits from natural resource-based enterprises such as ecotourism and carbon credits. The collective CCRO provides an additional layer of protection for common pool resources that is helpful for long-term management and improved and secured grazing access over time.

By expanding this model across Tanzania’s rangelands, we are seeing more equal access and ownership, and more secure communal rights to land over the long-term as the basis for pastoralist livestock production and land management systems. When cross-border grazing corridors are kept open, livestock and wildlife become healthier, which reduces conflict between villages and can increase their revenue via sustainable livelihood opportunities. The tenure mechanism itself is linked to sustainable land management via the requirement for Village Land Use Plans and provides a basis for negotiating with government and tourism operators. Although some cases of farming encroachment exist, when tested, the courts have ruled in favor of the CCRO and easements. Over the past nine years, 5 million acres (~2 million hectares) have been put under Village Land Use Plans (the first step in obtaining a CCRO designation). In the entire landscape, 4.2 million acres (~1.7 million hectares) of rangelands have been protected via 80 CCROs and two Wildlife Management Areas (areas of communal land set aside exclusively as habitat for wildlife by member villages), with additional CCROs covering 370,650 acres (~150,000 hectares) expected by June 2022. The success of CCROs demonstrates a pathway for preventing land conversion that could lead to loss of grazing areas.

However, there are still ongoing challenges that must be resolved. Even after land use plans were demarcated and CCROs were formed, there was some overgrazing in CCROs. TNC’s holistic grazing management program aims to promote best grazing approaches in the CCROs, such as rotational grazing, blocking systems, and bunched herding that can reduce grazing pressure on CCRO lands. The program will also help secure inter-village grazing agreements that seek to connect CCROs with other grazing areas. While CCROs are increasingly recognized as legitimate by local stakeholders, there are ongoing governance challenges and a need to ensure that all CCROs are equally respected.

f84e85ab62d656741f92c9b041151def_original-web

Addressing Water Scarcity Through Indigenous Rights in the Colorado River Basin

The Colorado River Basin is one of the United States’ most iconic landscapes, home to the Grand Canyon and an array of diverse traditional and Tribal stewards. It supports a wide variety of freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems that host enormous biodiversity, and it is home to many cultures, communities, and economic interests. For thousands of years, water from the Colorado River and its tributaries has been the life source for local Indigenous Peoples, and is essential to their cultural and economic well-being. Colonization of lands and waters by settlers drastically altered the ability of Indigenous Peoples to continue to inhabit, use, and care for the rivers and lands in this area. Genocide, forcible removal from ancestral lands, broken treaties, and a host of federal laws and policies designed to undermine Tribal control of resources and to assimilate Indigenous Peoples deprived them of access to the lands, waters, food, and other natural resources of the Basin. In addition, building of the extensive water infrastructure system of dams, canals, and reservoirs further degraded the natural environment and largely neglected the water needs of Indigenous Peoples, who were forced into non-Indigenous farming and ranching and life on arid reservations.

With more than 40 million people depending on its water for both agriculture and domestic needs, the Colorado River is intensively controlled, and a complex set of rules and laws dictates water management and use across the Basin’s many interested parties. Legal precedent entitles Tribal Nations to substantial, senior-priority water rightse in the Basin. However, major water-related decision making forums and processes have yet to sufficiently recognize the role of Tribal management of water and natural resources. Currently, 22 of the 30 Tribal Nations in the Basin have quantified water rights in at least one state in which their reservations are located, and control about 3.5 billion cubic meters of water per year, which is approximately 20 percent of the water in the Basin. That amount is expected to increase as Tribal Nations with remaining claims in some Basin states quantify their water rights. Significant portions of these Tribal water rights are currently undeveloped (i.e., not being exercised or used) but will likely displace current water uses when they are developed.f Despite the amount of Tribal water, many powerful actors in the Basin (e.g., federal and state governments, major water users including municipalities and agricultural businesses) have intentionally and systematically excluded Tribal Nations from efforts to protect and develop their water rights, and thwarted voluntary Tribal participation in policy negotiations. As recently as 2019, because of the unwillingness of state and federal negotiators to take a hard look at the role of Tribal water in assessing water scarcity risk and solutions, the Tribal Nations have been mostly excluded from participating in creating programs designed to reduce water scarcity risk. This exclusion has resulted in solutions that fail to recognize and respect treaty and other rights of Indigenous Peoples, and missed opportunities to work with Tribal Nations to mobilize Tribal water to address the Basin’s socio-economic and environmental challenges. These policy processes are also missing a critical opportunity to integrate Indigenous perspectives on the stewardship of resources—including Indigenous cultural and spiritual connections to the lands and waters in the Basin—to shape the future of this shared and sacred river.

TNC’s Colorado River Program works across all seven Basin states in the United States (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California), in Mexico, as well as at a Basin scale. The focus is on three strategies: working to balance water needs among the many users (including nature), improving water infrastructure and other operations to improve environmental flows, and advancing a Tribal Water Initiative. Through the Tribal Water Initiative, we are working with Tribal Nations to advance their interests and their positioning to address the pressing socio-economic and environmental challenges, by elevating Tribal voices in critical policy discussions to support their stewardship of the Basin, as well as creating innovative on-the-ground freshwater conservation projects that support more equitable and durable solutions for people and nature. For instance, in the renegotiation process of the Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and Coordinated Operations for Lakes Powell and Mead, TNC was invited to work with Tribal Nations and multi-Tribal organizations to understand and advance their goals, such as ensuring that the next guidelines reflect a comprehensive understanding of Tribal water rights.

Engaging Tribal Nations in the Colorado River Basin is changing TNC’s approach to water scarcity work. Our initial engagement is showing promising opportunities for both project and policy work to address water scarcity and environmental needs in the Basin. It also requires us to begin considering some of the critical equity and human rights implications for Indigenous Peoples in our work, including the need for reconciliation processes addressing past resource deprivation and acknowledgement of the conservation sector’s role in that legacy. We are committed to crafting solutions that do not further disadvantage vulnerable communities but, rather, build partnerships to amplify the strength and power of these communities to co-create mutually beneficial solutions and projects.

e41acd3e4209ff3119ad89d8e0d2fbca_original-web

Communal Rights in Kenyan Coastal Fisheries

Sitting at the northern edge of Kenya’s coast, the Lamu-Tana Seascape hosts rich and diverse coastal resources, including over 66 percent of Kenya’s mangroves, some of Kenya’s highest densities of inshore finfish and crustaceans, and a unique mix of Arabian Gulf with East African coral and fish species. Rare and endemic corals along with endangered fish, sea turtles, coastal sharks, and a very small number of dugong also occur here. Livelihoods of the coastal communities in the area are largely dependent on these natural resources, and with few employment alternatives, pressure and over-exploitation are increasing. Along with ongoing conflict and remoteness that have restricted development and access to markets, the livelihoods and resources in the area are at risk.⁴⁰

To increase local ownership and management of these resources, TNC, Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), and other partners are supporting communities in securing co-management rights across multiple natural resource management jurisdictions and communities to integrate a holistic resource management approach for the area’s coastal ecosystems. The “community conservancy” model, regulated under the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act (2013), has been applied broadly for community management of terrestrial areas. With the support and technical guidance of NRT and TNC, this approach has been adopted in the Lamu-Tana Seascape for coastal communities and marine areas, connecting multiple villages, fisheries, and habitats under an overarching Conservancy Development Plan. This plan incorporates important design guidelines necessary for effective coastal conservation.

Four coastal community conservancies—Kiunga, Awer, Pate, and the Lower Tana Delta—have been established, and within those conservancies multiple community resource management institutions must be authorized to provide legal empowerment to the conservancy and communities in managing the full suite of coastal resources, given the various laws and jurisdictions at play. Community-run co-management units, called Beach Management Units (BMUs), are responsible for managing artisanal fishery use and access. BMUs are supported by a legal framework within Kenya’s Fisheries Regulations (2007), and are intended to bring resource user groups and governmental bodies together to share fisheries management and conservation responsibilities. Within the four community conservancies,²¹ fisheries BMUs have been established and training conducted on leadership, fisheries co-management, and financial management. Each BMU submitted their by-laws to county governments for review and received a new BMU registration certificate, effectively empowering communities’ control over their fisheries resources. The establishment of the conservancy and associated BMUs have enabled the Pate Marine Community Conservancy to create temporary octopus closures (a type of locally managed marine area) that have led to increased participation of women in conservation activities, increased catch and size of the octopus, better market price, increased population of other fish, and improved habitat condition.

Learning exchange visits between Pate and the Kiunga and Lower Tana Delta conservancies inspired the Kiunga Community Conservancy to implement similar closures in their fishing areas within the Kiunga Marine National Reserve (KMNR). Marine protection and conservation are managed by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) in the form of marine parks, which are well-enforced no take zones protecting key fisheries and marine reserves, where subsistence fishing with traditional fishing gear is allowed and is poorly enforced. Because of Kiunga’s marine reserve designation, a more complicated, formal process, and approval at the national level was required to secure community management authority under KWS. This included completing, village-by-village, community awareness and capacity building meetings on establishing temporary octopus closures, changing the conservancy name to Kiunga Community Wildlife Association (KICOWA) to operate within a gazetted area, and presenting a letter to KWS on the community’s decision to establish temporary octopus closures within KMNR. Upon completion of this process, KICOWA successfully established two temporary octopus closures in March 2021, which were the first to be completed within a national marine reserve and a significant development in integrating a more community-based approach in Kenya’s marine protected area management.

Achieving effective management of coastal ecosystems in northern Kenya requires a complex alignment of the laws and institutions associated with each resource and tenure designation. TNC and local partners’ work has focused on strengthening governance by supporting communities in establishing and staffing the necessary institutions to collaboratively manage natural resources, and enabling synergies to be developed across the various community-led conservation institutions.

Pillar 2

Strong Leadership, Governance, and Management Capacity

Community Leadership and Institutional Capacity-Building in the Emerald Edge

At 100 million acres (40 million hectares), the Emerald Edge is the largest intact coastal temperate rainforest system remaining in the world. This band of vibrant forest and ocean stretches northward from the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, through Canada’s coastal British Columbia and the Great Bear Rainforest, to the panhandle of remote Southeast Alaska. Indigenous custodians have recognized rights and authority to these resources—thus the focus of the Emerald Edge Program has been on strengthening the capacity of Indigenous Peoples and local communities for continued good stewardship. TNC works to support community leadership and governance, as well as promote economic opportunities that improve local livelihoods, providing incentives and additional capacity for sustainable natural resource management.

To this end, TNC has implemented several specific programs meant to build a “ladder of opportunity” for Indigenous communities. The Supporting Emerging Aboriginal Stewards (SEAS) program—or “youth on the land programming”—aims to engage, develop, prepare, and empower Indigenous youth to become the next generation of place-based stewards. Young people take excursions onto their traditional territories to reconnect to the natural world, engage in customary activities, and learn from Elders. Another initiative, the Indigenous Guardians program, supports Indigenous rangers to take control of monitoring their territories and continue the work of their ancestors to manage and respect their natural and cultural resources through traditional institutions and governance structures. These rangers monitor the health of important food, social, and ceremonial species, taking account of various resource uses throughout their territory and contributing to the successful implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of community land and marine use plans. TNC and partners co-developed an Indigenous Guardians Toolkit to facilitate the expansion of the program within and beyond British Columbia. Building on the work in Canada, the Seacoast Trust project is establishing Guardian programs in Alaska and using both the toolkit and conservation financing endowment model to secure their vision for the future.

Expansion of this capacity-building program has continued across the Emerald Edge through the provision of critical technical and financial capacity in support of community visioning and land use planning for the Ahousaht Nation in British Columbia. A subsequent leadership exchange coordinated between the Ahousaht and Haida Nations helped Ahousaht leadership strengthen their negotiations with the Provincial Government and achieve more effective governance authority. The Ahousaht Nation also established a Coastal Guardian program, which resulted in a mapping effort in partnership with TNC (who provided technical mapping support) to delineate their territories and resources, including the integration of areas of cultural significance. All of this has served to bolster collective action, effective governance, and the Ahousahts’ negotiations with external stakeholders. For example, most recently, the Ahousaht Nation signed a new agreement with British Columbia to provide a joint set of recommendations to the Cabinet for implementation of their land use vision which will result in new conservation, forestry, and economic development areas and a governance agreement.

Freshwater Fisheries Management in Lake Tanganyika

For over a decade, TNC has been involved in community-based conservation initiatives and sustainable fisheries management in East Africa’s Lake Tanganyika Basin. Lake Tanganyika is the second largest lake on Earth by volume, containing 17 percent of the planet’s surface freshwater. The basin hosts some of Africa’s most iconic aquatic and terrestrial organisms and is best known for its 250+ species of cichlids, 98 percent of which are endemic. A complex web of interactions between the lake’s topography, biogeochemistry, upwelling regime, and pelagic and nearshore ecosystems has produced a productive inland fishery that supports 12 million people as a source of protein and income. Fish contributes 40 percent of animal protein in local diets, and there are an estimated 95,000 active fishers on the lake. The countries that share Lake Tanganyika—Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Burundi—have varying capacity to support fisheries management, and the lake remains primarily an artisanal and subsistence open-access fishery. Additionally, the region has high population growth and high levels of poverty, exerting pressure on an already overused natural resource.

In 2012, TNC and partners established the Tuungane Project (Kiswahili for “Let’s Unite”) in Tanzania to introduce solutions that promote healthier families, fisheries, and forests, using an integrated approach that addresses both health and environmental issues simultaneously. These holistic solutions promise more durable results than the more traditional siloed approach because the conservation practices are designed to also improve people’s lives. Fisheries management under this project has focused on establishing community Beach Management Units (BMUs) to manage fisheries resources, providing BMUs with training and tools to strengthen community leadership and capacities, developing community-based monitoring systems, and creating finance mechanisms that cover the full costs of fisheries management. TNC is also seeking to actively scale impacts across Lake Tanganyika. Partnering with The Lake Tanganyika Authority (LTA)—a Lake Tanganyika regional governing body with a mandate to promote sustainable development and management of the region’s natural resources—as well as the United Nations Environment Programme, International Union for Conservation of Nature, and Global Environment Facility, TNC aims to promote fishery co-management institutions and the establishment of community-based fish reserves (protected breeding sites) across the lake.

Strong leadership and capacity are important for establishing robust institutions and coordinating action to manage common pool resources. In Tanzania, for example, village leaders are elected every 5 years. These leaders manage the community alongside an executive committee. The BMU leaders, who manage fishing resources and bylaws, are elected every three years. Leadership terms of office requires TNC to continually build relationships with new leaders and provide ongoing training to improve BMU effectiveness, income generation, and buy-in of the communities without BMUs. Terms of leadership are designed to be staggered so senior leaders will bear partial responsibility for introducing successors to the governance practices. TNC focuses on supporting more consistent and gender-equitable leadership dedicated to effectively carrying out conservation actions at the BMU level and improving BMU finance capacity. While there is a national policy in place that mandates 30% of leadership positions must be held by women (also reinforced in BMU bylaws), women in leadership positions can still be limited in their contribution and involvement due to cultural and religious norms. To address the challenges, the project facilitates purposeful nominations of female leaders, organizes tailored trainings to increase motivation and confidence, and actively engages nominated women’s partners as part of the process.

Having strong leadership in place at the village level, clear bylaws and institutional structure, the backing of the government for difficult enforcement issues, and incentives to avoid free-riders (i.e., those who benefit without paying/putting in work) have all proved critical in those BMUs that have been successful on Lake Tanganyika. Additionally, Collaborative Fisheries Management Areas (CFMAs), consisting of a confederation of BMU networks, have been created following the Tanzania guideline. CFMAs have been successful in cases where these networks can support and work with individual BMUs through wider patrols to protect relatively large areas designated as fish reserves.

However, to make the BMU financially sustainable will require a change in policy and practice that can only be made by the Government of Tanzania. TNC, in collaboration with the government and LTA, is piloting a fisheries-based business enterprises framework, the success of which will be adaptively replicated in other parts of Lake Tanganyika to enhance durable conservation of the fisheries resources. Although the Tuungane Project has had notable successes, the community-based freshwater conservation work is only starting its journey towards financial sustainability. TNC is working with partners to use value-chain analysis and harness market incentives to ensure that fishers in well-managed BMUs receive an individual and/or common financial benefit over the longer term. The first step is to advocate to the government for the return of some percentage (10-15 percent) of the government revenues (including costs for transportation of fisheries products) which is being managed by BMUs on behalf of the District Government Authority. Project success depends on effectively engaging Indigenous Peoples and local communities in an array of roles, including as land- and resource-holders, as owners and partners, and as leaders and beneficiaries. Strengthening and establishing local institutions is viewed as fundamental to long-term sustainability and resilience, and the project is increasing its efforts in this regard.

Pillar 3

Effective Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue and Decision Making

Multi-stakeholder Dialogue in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake and Floodplains

Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake is a large, seasonally inundated lake bordering five Cambodian provinces and draining into the lower Mekong River system. Intense conflict has arisen in response to upstream-downstream competition, both nationally and internationally. Local sources of resource competition are found within the fishing sector, as well as between the fishing sector and other sectors, the latter involving conflicts among fishing and dry-season irrigated rice production. Expansion of the rice production is often backed by powerful investors from outside of local communities, creating private irrigation areas that displace customary community use.

To address fishing-sector conflict, the Cambodian government changed its national fishery policy from centralized control of large-scale commercial fishing lots to a form of decentralized co-management based on community fishery organizations (CFOs). The newness of the CFOs meant that their legitimacy, leadership, and governance capacity were low, so local competition for fishing resources initially rose as users maneuvered to secure rights under the new system or take advantage of enforcement gaps, which led to widespread illegal fishing.

To increase their governance capacity, CFOs used a participatory multi-stakeholder process to restructure management and improve enforcement. The CFOs also increased their capacity to resolve interprovincial and intersectoral disputes. In the case of the dry-season rice farmer associations, a verbal agreement was made in the presence of provincial agriculture and fisheries departments, which was later formalized by the Fisheries Administration. The CFOs also increased their capacity to petition for government support to change or allow exemptions from current regulations. This resulted in a pilot project to establish a commercial fishery under community management, with safeguards to ensure adequate resource protection and benefit sharing. The CFOs also engaged in networking among the communities surrounding the lake (through a series of marketplace knowledge events) and with a national grassroots network representing fishing communities.

The success of the participatory multi-stakeholder process was so great that a national grassroots network representing fishing communities modified its internal governance and increased collaboration with national government authorities and the formal nongovernmental sector. The Fisheries Administration also proposed incorporating the process in the implementation of ongoing fisheries reforms. These results may be generalizable to other large, open-drainage systems of international significance, such as Lake Victoria (bordered by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda) and Lake Kariba (bordered by Zambia and Zimbabwe).

Source: Ratner et al. 2018 as cited in Zhang et al. 202037

Pillar 4

Sustainable Livelihood Opportunities

Northern Australia—Sustainable Livelihoods Through Carbon Enterprises and Direct Employment in Conservation Management

Historically, much of Northern Australia existed as a complex mosaic of land and sea traditionally managed by hundreds of Indigenous clans. However, colonization left these clans dispossessed of their lands in the 19th and 20th centuries, interrupting their relationship, knowledge, and practice that underpinned patterns of environmental stewardship developed over more than 65,000 years. Without this traditional management, the savannas of Northern Australia have become subject to more wildfires late in the dry season, which burn more intensely, damage habitat for native plants and animals, and release higher levels of greenhouse gases. More recently, large areas of land have been returned to the management control of Indigenous Peoples. Native Title and other forms of Indigenous tenure and rights now cover more than 60 percent of the northern savannas. These underlying rights have served as an important foundation for partnership between TNC and Indigenous communities to secure financing and support the institutional and governance systems to sustain land- and sea-based enterprises. In fact, this case represents a compelling example of how sustainable livelihoods and conservation finance can work together to create positive outcomes for communities and the natural environment.

TNC’s Northern Australia program works with Indigenous Australians as they manage their traditional lands and renew and strengthen their connection to Country. Indigenous partners engage in participatory planning for their territories, called Healthy Country Planning (adapted by Traditional Owners in Australia from Conservation Action Planning to better fit their context and priorities). This enables them to envision a future for their lands with economic opportunity that aligns with their cultural priorities. As a key part of land management, Indigenous Australians have revived traditional fire management practices, helping restore and maintain the area’s rich biodiversity and protect important cultural sites and environmental features. By reducing destructive late season wildfires, these practices on Indigenous lands have resulted in the avoided release of more than 8 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent across more than 50 million acres (19.3 million hectares), with plans to expand the model across Northern Australia to include carbon sequestration.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions enables the community to generate and sell carbon credits through Australia’s carbon market, which creates important opportunities for communities. Traditional fire management has generated more than AUD $100 million in carbon finance, which enables groups to leverage additional investments from the government, philanthropy, and other sources. Warddeken Land Management Ltd., a community-owned company, executes financing responsibilities and other services related to land management and community well-being. The company includes board members from each clan group and a knowledge-holder steering committee representing diverse knowledges.

The company uses this financing to support a mix of community organizations and sustainable livelihood opportunities, which is key to its durability and financial self-sufficiency. Initiatives include capacity-building, infrastructure, community programs, carbon abatement enterprises, and Indigenous ranger programs. Ranger programs employ and train local men and women in land management and habitat restoration, combining Indigenous Knowledge and Western science for lasting results. The skills, management capacity, and governance arrangements developed through rangers’ programs and carbon abatement enterprises also provide a foundation for developing additional sustainable livelihood opportunities. For example, some local community members undertake fee-for-service activities, such as weed control, feral animal control, biosecurity protection, and wildlife surveys for neighboring landowners, government agencies, and the resources industry. Others develop ecotourism, cultural tourism opportunities, and bush food enterprises. This provides an important foundation for future sustainable livelihood opportunities based on culturally appropriate management of land resources.

Additional case studies on Sustainable Livelihood Opportunities can be accessed here.

Foundational Elements 1

Equitable Benefits, Impacts, and Inclusion

Women’s Leadership in the Xikrin Indigenous People of Brazil

The Xikrin Indigenous People of Bacajá, numbering approximately 1,300 people, live in 20 villages in the Trincheira Bacajá Indigenous Land, a territory spanning 4 million acres (1.65 million hectares) in Brazil’s Pará state in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest. A massive natural carbon sink and haven for biodiversity, the Amazon is undoubtedly one of the most important ecosystems in the world—and Indigenous lands are critical to its protection, comprising over 27 percent of the land area in the Amazon Basin and holding 33 percent of its carbon reserves. TNC has partnered with the Xikrin People on forest protection and livelihood opportunities for several years, and recently those partnerships have included an intentional gender focus.

Observing that their responsibilities were often seen both inside and outside the village as secondary roles, the Xikrin women (known as Menire) set out to gain stronger recognition of their roles as natural resource managers, as well as opportunities to lead other types of projects in their communities. Their goal was to organize themselves and engage supportive partners, to grow their knowledge and skills and increase their visibility within their communities and in the world of the kuben (white people). With many of their roles and interests centered on sustainable natural resource management, supporting the Menire’s vision and leadership is a natural and long-term solution to improve environmental and human well-being.

The Xikrin women began this journey for external visibility in 2013, with a diverse portfolio of sustainable resource management and production projects in partnership with the Brazilian government’s National Indigenous Peoples Foundation (FUNAI), The Nature Conservancy, the Plan for Regional Sustainable Development in Xingu (PDRS Xingu), and traditional ribeirinho communities in Rio Novo. These multi-stakeholder platforms for engagement have been key to driving and sustaining working partnerships in support of Indigenous Peoples’ voice, choice, and action throughout the region.

These women-led projects—including dress-making, flour production, vegetable cultivation, and dye creation for body paint (and more recently for painting materials such as bags and shirts)—all have the goal of supporting the sustainable management, harvest, and production of non-timber forest products, in turn promoting and maintaining a vibrant living forest. Some of these projects continue today and serve as examples for other villages, encouraging the participation of more interested families.

One project that has expanded and now includes the participation of several Xikrin villages is babaçu oil production, from the nut of a palm tree. The project centers on strengthening the Menire’s capacity to lead the management, production, and commercialization of the babaçu oil for subsistence use within the villages and for external commercialization. The oil is sold at fair prices and routed directly to consumers or stores in urban centers, cutting out intermediary buyers and adding significant economic value to an activity of cultural and environmental importance.

This project has also included the establishment of a new nhô rõny kangõ nhõ kikre (babaçu oil processing house), a small oil extraction machine, and bottles and labels for packaging the oil. Processing babaçu oil for cooking, cosmetic, and ritual purposes is a traditional role and rich cultural heritage of the Menire that dates back generations; now it is providing the opportunity for greater leadership, income, and recognition for the Xikrin women and their villages. The project received recognition from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization for women’s empowerment and autonomy in rural activities that promote healthy and traditional foods.

Indigenous women are the leaders of a promise to future generations. Mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers—all women in the community—share an important understanding of and responsibility for forest resources, which are critical for food security for the entire family, and for sustainable management of community resources. In the Xikrin People’s Territorial and Environmental Management Plan (PGTA—developed in partnership with TNC), the Menire emphasized the importance of strengthening their traditional knowledge and the commercial management of non-timber forest products, such as the piy (Brazil nut). The entire family participates in the processing of the piy, including collection, washing, drying, transporting, and storing.

TNC also supports other Indigenous Peoples in managing and commercializing resources like the Brazil nut, including the Parakanã Indigenous People in the Apiterewa Indigenous Land, neighboring the Xikrin. As with the babaçu oil project, the Xikrin and Parakanã Peoples’ established organizations are managing and selling the Brazil nut directly to the industry, for example to a bread factory, removing intermediary buyers and thereby receiving higher prices. The Parakanã People are also developing a strong commercial supply chain for their traditional crafts, selling them for an added value and to a market with stable demand. This in turn provides a constant flow of income that goes directly to the women, who use it to improve the lives of their families and villages and ultimately to strengthen Parakanã autonomy on their land.

An enabling condition that has contributed to success in these places has been the presence of secure demarcated land rights. Although far from fully secure of encroachment and illegal entry and extraction by outside actors, the fact that the Xikrin and Parakanã territories are demarcated makes for a more stable starting point for these efforts. Additionally, the support of long-term partnerships and strong multi-stakeholder platforms has been an important component of this work. For example, Indigenous Peoples from different lands are coming together in collaboration on sustainable livelihoods initiatives, to achieve greater scale and impact, and to connect with mechanisms such as the selo Origens Brasil® for sustainable certification. One of the ways TNC Brazil supports continued multi-stakeholder engagement is through maintaining a cooperative agreement with FUNAI, to ensure FUNAI and TNC objectives and actions are collaborative, complementary, and align behind shared goals in support of Indigenous leadership and self-determination throughout different ethno-regions.

The increasing visibility of Indigenous women’s leadership in Indigenous associations and institutions at all levels across Brazil is leading to large-scale results: Today, the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) and the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), for example, are represented by strong women leaders who promote both Indigenous rights and environmental sustainability at national and regional scales.

When the connections among conservation activities, gender equity, and Indigenous rights are understood, acknowledged, and supported, conservation activities have a much higher potential for generating positive social impacts and contributing to more enduring conservation outcomes. And key to this success is centering the vision and leadership of the Indigenous women themselves, and valuing their process for involvement of the men, youth, and other members of the community, with TNC and other partners playing a supportive role. Supporting Indigenous women to thrive in ways they determine as culturally responsive and aligned with their vision for the future is critical for ensuring the conservation of millions of hectares of ecologically critical lands across Latin America and around the world.

Foundational Elements 2

Strong Connection to Knowledge and Place

Connection to Knowledge and Place in Mongolia

Mongolia is dominated by an expansive grassland ecosystem that remains sparsely populated to this day. The people of Mongolia are ethnically homogenous, with some cultural or lifestyle differences based on ecosystem, such as grasslands, mountains, or forests. There is strong traditional culture, lifestyle, and practice linked to pasturelands and livestock. Herders are nomadic, residing and grazing animals in different areas depending on season/time of year.

An important element of Mongolian culture is respect and reciprocity for nature in daily life. As part of this, many people have a strong sense of spirit in the landscape, and they practice associated rituals.

“In our traditional culture, if someone respects nature, nature gives back success and luck. So, ceremony and daily life relate to these concepts. Mongolians have always believed that the land and the resources don’t belong to them, it belongs to the spirit. From back in 13th century, they believed in Tengri, a heavenly being… the major belief was that we had that spirit in every mountain and river and these resources belonged to him not to herders. You have to politely ask the spirits to use the useful features like water and grass and animals and herders do that by doing a worship ceremony. So, in every community, there is a special place where people go and worship. That culture was one of the important foundations of Mongolians’ perspective on nature.”

-Gankhuyag Balbar on Mongolian culture and spirituality

People’s culture has been affected by centuries of political and economic changes, most recently in natural resource laws. Over the last three decades, Mongolia has undergone a rapid transition from a centrally planned, highly subsidized economy, to a democracy with an increasingly free market. Post-1990’s, Mongolian society and politics changed with the rise of mining, agriculture, construction, and tourism sectors, which led to more property rights and an individualized economy. This represented a new cultural shift, as there was not previously a notion of “private land ownership” in Mongolia—everything was common property.

Despite these changes, the nomadic way of transfering local knowledge continues within and between families. Transfer of knowledge, beliefs and respect for the natural world is maintained through stories, songs, epic poems, and through their traditional skills and practice of hunting and herding.

“The parents are teaching their children in practice… at three to five years old it’s a big thing to get your kids to ride horses. Parents are excited… once you start them riding horses, you would be helping your parents to take up the livestock. They teach them everything. They teach about plants, what plants are good for animals and what plants are bad. Grandparents and grandmothers are the best teachers because they have the knowledge, and it is very important to them that they transfer that knowledge to their kids so that they can be a successful herder.”

-Gala Davaa on intergenerational transfer of knowledge

In 2012, the Mongolian parliament approved a law for community-based natural resource management based on collective rights. Much of TNC’s early work with communities centered on awareness-raising about these rights and how to exercise them. Working together, herders formed community-based natural resource management contracts and community-based organizations (CBOs). The establishment of CBOs is facilitating trust-building, mutual respect, cooperation and collective action, and unity amongst people that historically lived very independently, far flung across a vast landscape.

Community-based natural resource management training and planning provides Mongolia’s traditional people an avenue to elevate their knowledge in the modern system for enduring ties to their lands and ways of life. As such, connection to place and continuation of this culture is at the forefront of community-based conservation in Mongolia.

Contributions and quotes by TNC Mongolia staff Gankhuyag Balbar and Gala Davaa

Indigenous Knowledge in Alaska

People’s connection to place in Alaska is represented from the tundra and sub-arctic, to the forested, mountainous southeast rainforests. Indigenous Peoples’ connection to place, culture, and knowledge is ancient and modern, driving towards a future of community stewardship of healthy lands and waters. In Alaska, across generations spanning thousands of years, connection to place transitioned with natural cycles. Elders describe a nomadic lifestyle with camps for spring, summer, fall, and winter. The people would follow different life cycles, moving where they needed to be to sustain themselves in accordance with natural laws, customs, spiritual beliefs, and sustained knowledge systems. They were adaptable, constantly in a cycle of preparation for the next season.

“Being in right relationship with your place was primary. As much as the land cares for us and provides us sustenance, it’s also our responsibility to care for the lands and ‘resources.’ Stewardship is just that constant practice of care for and being cared for by your natural landscape. That symbiotic, reciprocal relationship continues today being transmitted across generations.”

-Andrea Akall’eq Burgess (Yup’ik)

Across Alaska, Indigenous Peoples use cultural and traditional knowledge to demonstrate active management for sustenance, wellbeing, and livelihoods. One example is around their relationship with salmon, as a relative.

“Indigenous Knowledge instructs you not to catch the first wave of fish, you’ve got to let that first pulse make it to the headwaters and then you can work on your harvest… A recognition that even if we’re hungry for fresh fish in the first pulse, you must let it pass, respecting those who are the strongest most resilient species, that know where to return, and ensuring they reach it to the headwaters so their descendants can return in future years in healthy numbers.”

Pre-colonial Yup’ik people were recognized for having a “zero footprint” for their sustainable lifeways, packing up camp and leaving the land in such a way it looked “untouched,” knowing from original instructions that this practice would allow for migratory birds and other key species to return. However, changes brought on by colonization have been devastating.

“We had to put a lot of our practices away, we had to put a blanket on top of our spiritual and Indigenous Knowledge, we had to hide it before it was completely criminalized and lost. They say that we’re now in the time of taking the blanket off because it’s becoming safe again, and our youth desire that knowledge, thankfully it’s surfacing and being applied again.”

“The healing movement is front and center. You can’t talk about language or protection of land or any number of things without healing also coming hand in hand and how people are conceptualizing this awakening. We have a phrase, ‘Tsu Héidei shugaxhtootaan, yá yaa khusgédaakeit, haa jeex’ anakh has kawdak’eet.’ Which is ‘we will now open this box of knowledge,’ and it was a recorded phrase by an Elder that is spoken down to the generations. Reverberated down.”

-Crystal Nelson (Tlingit)

This is both a desire coming from Indigenous youth themselves and the systems becoming more accepting, Elders know that healing the land and healing the people go hand in hand. It is apparent that coming together, healing the lands, waters, and peoples is about opening and remembering cultural practices and ways of knowing. This movement is emerging through Indigenous youth who are seeking more intergenerational and cultural transmission of Indigenous Knowledge, stewardship values, practices, and principles.

Foundational Elements 3

Durable Outcomes for People and Nature

Durable Conservation Through Political Commitments, Regional Coordination, and Sustainable Finance in Micronesia

The Micronesia Challenge spans 2.5 million square miles (1 million hectares) of ocean, an area nearly the size of the continental US, and supports an estimated 450,000 people across 2,000 islands, 12 languages, and five jurisdictions. In 2006, the Chief Executives of five countries and territories in the region collectively committed to the Micronesia Challenge (MC), “to effectively conserve at least 30 percent of the near-shore marine resources and 20 percent of the terrestrial resources across Micronesia.” They marked 2020 as the target date to reach this collective goal, which has shaped regional conservation efforts over the past decade.

Regional Political Commitment

High-level political commitment to the MC enabled these small, dispersed, and remote island nations to unite under an overarching, funded initiative that increased visibility globally, provided a political commitment to drive priorities, and facilitated collective (and competitive) efforts to achieve conservation gains. This commitment has endured multiple political transitions and enabled organizations and institutions to provide more effective technical and financial assistance regionally than to each individual jurisdiction. Three of the five jurisdictions have institutionalized the MC through Protected Areas Network (PAN) policies, laws, or regulations and PAN offices to sustain the efforts of the MC. The other two are US protectorates and have employed an integrated coastal management approach aligned with US laws and systems.

Sustainable Financing at Regional and Jurisdictional Level

Along with the political conservation commitments, an endowment was established, and the Micronesia Conservation Trust (MCT) was designated to manage the endowment. The regional approach enabled a reduced management fee to be negotiated, generated more diversified options for investment, helped sustain engagement and commitment among the chief executives, and secured immediate pledges by TNC and Conservation International (CI) that built credibility in the effort. Sustainable finance plans were then developed for each jurisdiction that identified existing and potential sources of funding as compared to the total start-up and management costs to achieve the MC goals. It was determined that the gap could be filled by investment interest from a $56 million endowment, to complement local sources to be developed or secured in each jurisdiction. As of December 2020, the total endowment fund grew to nearly $25 million.

Each jurisdiction has pursued activities to secure additional funds. Palau has established a mechanism to disburse MC funds to PAN sites, typically managed by local communities, community-based organizations, or NGOs, if they meet certain criteria. Palau’s tourism Green Fee was also established to generate additional funding. A similar model is under development in the Federated States of Micronesia and Republic of the Marshall Islands. Across the region, additional community-level finance mechanisms have been developed in specific project areas, such as a conservation easement and endowment fund, and nine “One Reef” conservation agreements that provide participating communities with on-going financial support for management of near-shore marine resources.

Since the launch of the MC, conservative estimates show that supporting NGO partners (MCT and TNC) leveraged approximately $45 million in grant funds to support implementation of the MC across the region, and the jurisdictions leveraged approximately $17.5 million in grant funds as well.

Progress and Outcomes

An evaluation conducted in 2020 identified several opportunities to strengthen progress and implementation of the MC. For example, more substantial investments towards the infrastructure of the MC would improve regional level coordination, communication, and collaboration. This includes dedicated executive leadership for the coordination mechanism, clearly defined terms and roles, strengthened governance processes across the regional platforms, and a more formally coordinated approach or plan to accomplish the goals of the MC among jurisdictional agencies, organizations, and partners. Additionally, a more bottom-up planning approach could increase engagement of jurisdictional leaders—including legislative/cabinet, agency leadership, and traditional leaders—in initial design and launch, strengthen alignment with local and community priorities, and speed institutionalization of the MC across jurisdictions. Finally, a more robust and transparent reporting system and communications related to sustainable finance that provides each jurisdiction an annual review of their endowment, benefits derived, and other fundraising and capacity development activities could help address frustrations in not meeting the goals of the sustainable finance plans locally and regionally.

Lessons learned for this case study are based on an evaluation of the Micronesia Challenge completed by lead author Meghan Gombos upon reaching the 2020 timeframe. The evaluation and summary document were funded by TNC and the Pacific Islands Managed and Protected Area Community, and are a product of the Micronesia Challenge Steering Committee.

Acknowledgements | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy