Designing Conservation Agreements
A blog post by Professor Julia P.G Jones
The Comorian NGO Dahari are designing a conservation agreements programme to protect Anjouan's remaining forest AND are building in robust impact evaluation from the start.
There is a really strong perception locally that loss of forest on the mountain top is the cause of the island's water problems. We've been talking to farmers to better understand the farming going on at the forest frontier to work out how a conservation agreements scheme might work here (taking inspiration from Natura Bolivia's 'Watershared' scheme.)
Dahari are at the start of a 10-year plan and they want to learn as much as possible from the intervention. So we are seeing scheme up to allow robust evaluation of the impact of the new conservation agreements! It's been a short but super intense & successful trip. Especially happy to spend this time with Owen Lewis who is advising on the design of the forest & biodiversity monitoring aspects. Here we are together with Amélaid Houmadi, Misbahou Mohamed & Djaffar El Farouk from Dahari.
The Dahari team are so dynamic, inspiring (and fun!). Thanks for the welcome. Thanks also to Defra’s Darwin Initiative for funding this 'innovation' project, and to Dahari Co-Directors Misbahou Mohamed & Hugh Doulton for their innovative ideas & ensuring Dahari interventions are evidence-led.