Communities Connect

Communities Connect is a community and civil society-owned platform, supported by the GEF Small Grants Programme, where communities and organizations can freely share their valuable resources and learn about effective solutions that other communities have developed to address similar challenges.

This booklet introduces a dozen innovative renewable energy technologies, including a variety of improved cook stoves, bio-briquettes, biogas plants, improved kilns and distillation units. It also reflects the success of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in promoting these technologies at the grassroots level.

Since the year 2000, the Community Management of Protected Areas Conservation (COMPACT) initiative of the UNDP/GEF Small Grants Programme (GEF SGP) and United Nations Foundation (UNF) has been working with communities near eight current/proposed World Heritage Sites in Africa, Asia, Meso-America and the Caribbean. Through extensive on-the-ground experience, and a participatory methodology that integrates a scientific approach, COMPACT is demonstrating that community-based initiatives can significantly increase the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation in globally significant protected areas while helping to improve local livelihoods.

In this report, launched in March 2006 at the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 8) in Brazil, the SGP and the Equator Initiative collaboratively present thirty case studies from their portfolio to document and draw preliminary lessons from the successes of community-based biodiversity enterprises. While these cases are selected from across Latin America and the Caribbean and initially emerged from an international workshop in Merida, Mexico, they offer valuable lessons for a global agenda.

This publication captures and profiles the portfolio of biodiversity-based products, commodities and community experiences pertaining to the sustainable use, marketing and certification of biodiversity. The catalogue of biodiversity-based products from SGP's Latin American & Caribbean portfolio demonstrates the linkage between the sustainable use of biodiversity, community empowerment and poverty reduction. The catalogue is being replicated at the global level with the Progreso Network as part of an on-line platform.

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