Biodiversity Conservation in the Productive Landscape of the Venezuelan Andes

PDF B Project Description: The full scale project will conserve the montane forest biodiversity and related ecological services of the Venezuelan Tropical Andes. Forming part of the North Andean Bioregion, this area has globally significant biodiversity and is at the highest priority level for conservation. Venezuela is proposing a long-term, three-part programme to secure this conservation. Phase I of this programme will fall principally under the GEF 3 Strategic Priority 2: Mainstreaming Biodiversity in Production Landscapes and Sectors and focus on the Merida Cordillera where slightly over fifty percent of the montane forest habitat remains. Sixty percent of this montane forest habitat forms part of the existing and potentially productive landscape and is currently under no form of conservation-oriented land use. The main emphasis of intervention for Phase I is thus to strengthen biodiversity conservation management at the landscape level. The project is expected to achieve this objective through five interrelated lines of action, to be further detailed through PDF B resources, as follows:- [i] Demonstration of sustainable agricultural practices and alternative livelihoods in locations selected to form sustainable-use corridors nested within the existing productive landscape; [ii] Mainstreaming biodiversity concerns into the major productive sector in this region, including reviewing regulatory and normative frameworks, addressing the commercialisation of biodiversity derived products and developing the related institutional and capacity building requirements for these elements to be successful; [iii] Adaptive management tools to facilitate the implementation of conservation measures from a bioregional viewpoint; [4] Capacity building of stakeholders in the productive sectors, local governments, communities, enforcement institutions and protected areas managers to effectively participate in and deliver improved conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity across the broader landscape; [v] the establishment of biological corridors through conservation-set asides under different protection regimes and ownership providing increased connectivity between existing protected areas. June 30, 2005 Full Size Project Description The goal of the project is ‘To increase the biodiversity value of the productive landscape of the Mérida Cordillera. In this respect the project will contribute to the goal of endogenous development sought by the Government through its programmes and plans. The principles of endogenous development include the recuperation of traditions, respect of the environment and equitable forms of productive organization, allowing the conversion of natural resources into products which can be consumed, distributed and exported. The goal of this project is relevant to these principles in that it implies the combination of environmental protection with the furtherance of local people’s development needs, working with, rather than against productive systems, in a dynamic landscape in which the local human population forms an integral component. The objective of the project is ‘Farmers’ systems in the coffee/cattle-rearing zone of the Mérida Cordillera remain BD friendly’. To this end the project will seek to harmonize biodiversity conservation and productive sector activity by ensuring that proposed measures actually enhance and diversify livelihood improvements and secure overall project sustainability. In this regard project activities will involve supporting the perpetuation of traditional patterns of resource use and production - where these offer both livelihood and conservation benefits - while in some cases, alternatives to currently unsustainable activities will be tested, promoted and duly replicated.