The Chocó region of Colombia, which encompasses ten million hectares extending the entire length of Colombia’s Pacific coast.

Colombia’s Ministry of Environment and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), working in partnership with nearly 50 national and local NGOs, Afro-Colombian grassroots organizations, universities, and scientific research groups. Approved by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) for an allocation of US$ 6 million.

The Chocó possesses the greatest plant biodiversity on the planet. Twenty-five percent of the plant and bird species living in this region are endemic, meaning they are found nowhere else on earth. The region also, however, has the country’s highest poverty rate, which has fostered high rates of deforestation and unsustainable resource extraction.

This project seeks to support a development strategy for the Chocó based on scientific knowledge as well as management options guaranteeing biodiversity conservation, while promoting sustainable uses by local people. When this project began, the Chocó was targeted for massive industrial development with no provisions for biodiversity conservation, sustainable practices, or local consultation.

Feedback comments from a work plan distributed to more than 150 groups suggested that a broad, inclusive consultative process would be necessary to address complex social, ecological and economic dimensions. A consensus was built among diverse and often contentious interests. The local community became the project’s primary designer and implementer, effectively reversing traditional development processes.

Subcontracting the project implementation to local community groups guaranteed their participation, and provided them with the training and capacity building needed to make biodiversity conservation sustainable. Local ownership of the project was integrated into a multidisciplinary approach designed to address all the socioeconomic, scientific, institutional, and political factors involved. Project coordinators helped local groups formulate project proposals, and implementation is now distributed among nearly fifty organizations.

Land resources management, consumption and production patterns, economic growth, forests, poverty, and capacity building.

• The project is a successful model of inter-institutional coordination and genuine community participation in decision-making, which can be replicated elsewhere in Colombia. An alternative strategy to the original industrial development plan for the region has been formulated.

• Indigenous and Afro Colombian territorial rights and participation in the decision-making process were formalized through institutional and legislative agreements;

• An Institute for Environmental Research in the Pacific and a Comprehensive Regional Information System were created to coordinate and manage information on all investment projects in the region, provide scientific and resource-related information to participating parties, and assist the Ministry in developing appropriate policies for the region;

• Local people trained as parataxonomists helped create a biological information base, and regional ethnic groups manage two traditional research centres;

• Local communities are supervising pilot projects on commercialising renewable extractive reserves, such as traditional medicines, aquaculture, fruits and other agro forestry products;

• Cooperation between all participating groups helped fill information gaps regarding the region’s tremendous biodiversity reserves;

• Development has begun on a national policy on biodiversity ownership to protect intellectual property rights of traditional knowledge bearers.

• The need for stakeholder representation to be an official part of the process in order to ensure genuine ownership and participation. An "Expanded Project Team", including members of local communities, served to fully incorporate communities in decision-making at both project coordination and national steering committee levels;

• The importance of decentralizing responsibility to the project area. Working groups of local and regional government institutions, community organizations, and NGOs were formed to develop "Territorial Programs." These focused conservation planning and identified management activities responsive to local needs and issues of conservation and sustainability. Provided the tools for resource use and development in the Chocó.

Mahenau Agha
United Nations Development Programme
One United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017
Tel. (212) 906-6112; Fax (212) 906-6998
Email: mahenau.agha@undp.org
Webpage: http://www.undp.org/gef