ISSUE
Long-term sustainability of community natural resource management projects.
DEFINITION
This measure operates at the level of projects and not individual communities. Here we consider the ecological, social and economic aspects of sustainability and in order for a natural resource management project to count towards this measure it would have to meet three criteria:
i) Clear evidence that the resource is not being over harvested.
ii) Economic net benefits for the community (not only money income)
iii) Equitable and transparent benefit distribution
RESULTS
To date participating landscapes felt comfortable reporting that four of 60 community natural resource management initiatives were sustainable from economic, social and environmental perspectives. Them are from the Tacana Indigenous Territories of Bolivia: the spectacled caiman (Caiman yacare) harvest program – a recognized management model in Bolivia, the commercial harvest of the invasive paiche (Arapaima gigas), the San Miguel del Bala Ecotourism Lodge which recently received an international Tourism Sustainability prize, and the community-based wildlife management of the Amazonian cichlid peacock bass (Cichla sp.) in the Rio Negro Landscape, Brazil.