Climate Change represents a threat to biodiversity and the provision of environmental good and services. One of the most widely used strategies to build resilience against such risks and avoid compromising future generations development opportunities is by designating Natural Protected Areas.
Such places promote conservation, restoration and the interconnection between the ecosystems that contain the planet’s biological and genetic capital.
Natural Protected Areas bring about multiple and valuable benefits that are indispensable for human settlements residing inside this areas and in the surrounding areas. Some are more visible, like the natural beauty and job-generating activities from tourism, while others are less perceptible like pollination, regional temperature and humidity regulation, soil conservation, water production and carbon sinking.
In Mexico, the United Nations Development Programme, financed by the Global Environmental Facility, is implementing since 2014 the Resilience Project. It aims to strengthen Natural Protected Area’s spatial configuration and management effectiveness throughout the country.
The toolset will help other protected areas identify financial mechanisms
Within this project, a group of CAD consultants is working with the people in charge of the state of Chiapas’ tropical forest conservation to develop methods for identifying financial mechanisms to implement a set of adaptation measures that have been identified as urgent in the complex’s Adaptation for Climate Change Programme.
The jungle complex, which includes the Cañon del Sumidero National Park and the Ocote Jungle Biosphere Reservoir, is of the utmost importance for the region. It includes five interconnected Natural Protected Areas that together create a corridor of more than 150 thousand hectares devoted to conservation.
CAD’s experience will serve to find the needed resources to bring into action the adaptation measures that the jungle complex has deemed as a priority after a long process of diagnosis and planning. But also, by systematizing the process and lessons learned, CAD aims to develop a toolset that can help other protected areas identify financial mechanisms to fund their own measures.
Main picture: Chiapas, Mexico, Pixabay CC0 Creative Commons
