ELP Reunion in Thailand and Indonesia:

IUCN WORLD CONSERVATION CONFERENCE IN BANGKOK

Patrick Karani

28^th November 2004

"The best part of the IUCN Bangkok Conference was meeting Beahrs ELP alums.

We couldn't manage to have a get-together due to our tight schedules, but met in

small informal groups. Met Patrick Karani, Tom Outlaw, Nani Saptriani, and

Joseph Adelegan. Resource persons from the Beahrs ELP course Mathis Wackernagel of

Ecological Footprint and John O. Niles were there too." --Purabi Bose, 2004

ELP reunion in Bangkok Thailand on 17-25^th November 2004 during the IUCN World Conservation Congress (WCC) was more effective on bilateral, e-mail, telephonic as more participants were directly involved in the main congress and or conducting side events. The congress was attended by more than 5,000 participants and attempts to meet at the knowledge market place and discuss the role of ELP alums at the congress was more of a floating village market innovation as indicated in the poster below.

However, on the 17^th of November 2004, I did participate in a side event on Payment for Environmental Services (PES) aimed at sharing experiences and gaining insights. The event was in part of learning exercise and exploring more ideas on how best can the environmental services and products be paid for and by whom considering the broader picture of the beneficiaries as well. The event attracted more than 20 participants under the coordination of Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services (RUPES) and RECOFTC and PES regional coordinating institutions the Indonesian Institute for Forest and Environment (RMI), Resource Africa (RA) and Bureau for Environmental Analysis (BEA) International with the support of the Ford Foundation. Nani Saptariani (ELP ‘04) and Patrick Karani (ELP ‘03) were key participants and shared experiences on PES as indicated in the photo below.

PES knowledge is growing rapidly and there is a general consensus that PES has potential for recognizing efforts of local communities in both rural and urban setting towards management of natural resources, improving performance of the environment and adding value to socio-economic development. PES framework is comprehensive, cross-cutting and applicable to key strategic sectors for natural resource management.

As poverty and environmental degradation continuously challenge sustainable development and natural resource management, Nani (ELP 04) had some insights on how PES is being applied in Halimun (Bogor) and Lombok, Indonesia, while Patrick (ELP 03) shared some experiences with evolution of PES in African context. The biggest lesson learned after the seminar in Bangkok, Thailand and field tour of Indonesia is that PES is practical and communities involved with the process require some recognition. It is possible to replicate PES strategies at low cost but the challenges are mobilization of local communities participation, gaining trust of the participants, minimizing exploitation of the stakeholders and promoting transparency among the participants. Below, Nani and Patrick shared experiences and exchanged ideas on how some of these challenges can be mitigated and PES promoted.

RMI, Resource Africa and BEA International are documenting some case studies on PES and the results will be discussed and shared at the planned international workshop in April/May 2005, at the Kruger National Park in South Africa. Details on the workshop will be made available soon.