Strategy Overview
The MacArthur Foundation has been supporting biodiversity conservation in the tropical Andes since 1989. In the Southern Andes, 95 grants totaling $15.7 million have been provided in support of organizations, agencies and universities working for conservation in this globally important center of biodiversity. As a result of a strategic review carried out in 2000, the Foundation divided the Andean region into two focal areas, the Northern Andes, including areas in Colombia and Ecuador, and the Southern Andes, focused on Peru and Bolivia, effectively doubling the attention to this outstanding repository of biodiversity. Additional investments made under separate freshwater and law and policy themes have complemented the core place-based grantmaking. However, beginning with Southern Andes grants in 2005 and subsequent cycle in 2008, these thematic areas have been folded into a single call for proposals under grantmaking within the Southern Andes Focal Area.
The central goal of the MacArthur Foundation’s grantmaking in the Southern Andes is to strengthen conditions for sustained conservation of biodiversity. Additionally the Foundation seeks to maintain ecosystem processes and evolutionary options.
Grantmaking Priorities
The eastern slopes of the Andes and headwaters of the Andean tributaries of the Amazon in Peru and Bolivia are characterized by lush rainforests, isolated communities and a spectacular array of biological diversity. This richness represents a global epicenter of biological diversity, with Peru and Bolivia ranking among the top countries in the world for bird, mammal, amphibian, reptile, fish, and plant diversity and endemism. The region is also a hub of cultural diversity where hundreds of different languages are spoken. Forests in good to excellent condition cover over half of the surface of Peru and Bolivia. However, this biological and cultural wealth is increasingly threatened by a variety of forces, including spontaneous and disorganized occupation of forests by poor migrants from environmentally degraded highlands or urban centers, uncontrolled illegal logging operations, the development of small-scale mining, extensive industrial oil and gas exploitation, the expansion of coca plantations and climate change.
In order to address these threats, the Foundation will support work toward two strategic goals: 1) Conserving priority landscapes; and 2) Building and strengthening conservation capacity of local, national, and regional organizations.
The Foundation’s priorities for achieving these two strategic goals were developed in close consultation with conservation and development specialists from and working in the tropical Andean region. These priority areas and themes informed grantmaking decisions for the previous round of grants in the Southern Andes in 2002 and 2005 and will guide the next grantmaking rounds in this Focal Area scheduled for 2008.
Conserving Priority Landscapes. Grants under this strategy element should focus on conservation of protected areas, indigenous territories, and reserved lands in the eastern slopes of the Andes and adjoining Amazon lowland forests of Peru and Bolivia. Support will be directed toward comprehensive projects or multiple projects and grantees that synergistically contribute to: effective management of protected areas through centralized, decentralized, co-management, or indigenous approaches; generating biological and social information useful to guide conservation interventions; demonstrate conservation-based sustainable development models in protected area buffer zones; and enhance understanding of conservation-relevant issues by stakeholders in and around protected areas.
Special attention will be attached to strengthening protection of existing parks and reserves, expanding sound management practices beyond their boundaries to broader watershed management strategies that enhance ecosystem services and the survival of species of special concern. The Foundation is also interested in work that addresses and adapts to the likely effects of climate change on biodiversity conservation in this focal area.
During the 2005 and 2008 grant cycles, CSD support for on-the-ground conservation activities in the Southern Andes will be focused in five large landscapes:
Lower Maranon Valley (Peru)
Cordillera Azul (Peru)
Middle Ucayali Valley (Peru)
Greater Madidi (Peru/Bolivia)
Upper Mamore Basin (Bolivia)
Building Conservation Capacity. Grants under this second strategic element may be national or bi-national in scope and will invest in non-governmental, community-based, and indigenous organizations as well as research and education institutions, with a preference for those located in Peru and Bolivia. More specifically, this strategy will focus on: strengthening the capacity of higher education institutions to train a new generation of conservation researchers and practitioners; promoting the implementation of current environmental laws and improving legislation and policies for biodiversity conservation; consolidating long-term means of financing conservation.
Collectively, the three cycles of grants planned for this region (2002, 2005, 2008), should strengthen the effectiveness of public agencies, non-governmental organizations, local communities and teaching and research institutions to integrate conservation objectives in national and regional economic plans, maintain a stream of political and technical leadership, strengthen national legal infrastructure and build public constituencies for conservation, and build a capacity to adapt to climate change. A formal evaluation of accomplishments and assessment of options for future grantmaking will be conducted following the grants round anticipated in 2008.
Fundacion Cayetano Heredia (Lima, Peru)
$250,000 in support of establishing the first graduate program in conservation science in Peru. (2005)
Nature Conservancy (Arlington, Virginia) $240,000 in support of building capacity within municipal governments for planning and implementing conservation initiatives in Bolivia (over three years). (2006)
Carnegie Institution of Washington, Department of Global Ecology (Stanford, California) $160,000 in support of expanding local capability to map forest disturbances in Peruvian forests. (2005)
