Many conservation projects in the Philippines, while successful to varying degrees, have not necessarily linked with other similar or nearby conservation initiatives. The result has been scattered and isolated conservation benefits. Consequently, successes have been temporary and lacked a wide constituency of support that could have engendered the political will necessary for broadening, multiplying and sustaining conservation initiatives. Therefore, the CEPF's niche in the Philippines will be fostering civil society's support and advocacy for broad-based, coordinated biodiversity conservation on a corridor scale.
Filling this niche will require:
- improving linkage between conservation investments to multiply and scale up benefits;
- building awareness of civil society about the myriad benefits of conserving corridors of biodiversity; and
- building capacity of civil society to advocate for better protected area and corridor management and against development harmful to conservation.
Improving linkages between conservation investments will require enlisting civil society's knowledge of and interest in corridor-level conservation efforts and the alliances that will be necessary to ensure their implementation and success. Key stakeholders in this process will need the capacity to plan for corridor-level conservation, to communicate more widely and effectively, to facilitate alliances, to mitigate inevitable conflicts, to interpret relevant legal considerations, to inventory and monitor natural-resource use and conservation, and to work more effectively with and influence relevant government entities.
In the interest of biodiversity beyond the focal corridors, the CEPF also will support measures toward recovery of Critically Endangered species. This additional niche is key because it will cover areas of the Philippines increasingly overlooked for funding due to the focus of limited resources on the longer-term promise of conservation at the corridor level.
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