Project Title: GPI programme development

Grant Agreement Nr. WGP2 - 05GPI 66

Agreement holder:
   Dr.Herbert Diemont
   Alterra,
   P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands

Country/region: Global

Activity period: 01/ 09/2002-31/12/2004

Documentation and products available:


Background:

The Global Peatland Initiative is a partnership of non governmental organisations, science agencies and the peat based industry, which has in 2 years time achieved global attention for peatlands. Peatlands comprise about 40 to 50 percent of all wetlands, but have so far received little attention. This is surprising as peatlands have a major effect on the global climate and are important with respect to global biodiversity. On a regional scale peatlands are important for the hydrology, acting as a water reservoir buffering periods of drought down-streams. Available information indicates that there is high a high co-incidence of poverty in peatland areas. In many regions of the world these relatively poor soils were the last to be targeted for development, and generally with low levels of productivity and often with significant environmental degradation. As such they form a last resort at the rural frontier in the developing world. This has major implications for peatland management and conservation, as environmental degradation and poverty can be mutually re-enforcing. Poverty-environment issues require innovative approaches to break this vicious circle.

Brief project description:
The project provides the Steering Committee of the GPI the possibility to further develop the partnership and co-ordinate actions. This includes also advice and support to proposal proponents in developing their projects, ensuring that particular attention is paid to the socio-economic aspects and issues. In addition, the project enables the Steering Committee to effectively communicate the lessons learned from the individual projects and the GPI programme as a whole to the conventions, governments and amongst the networks of the individual GPI Steering Committee members, including the peat based industry. The tasks under the project are: GPI programme steering, project assessment, project development, fund raising and communication.

Results:

Expected
Outputs and Results achieved
Objectives and results:
  1. Project assessment.
  2. Project development
  3. Fund raising
  4. Communication
  1. The GPI Steering Committee physically met twice during phase 2, in October 2002 and November 2003. At the Nov. 2003 meeting representatives of the Ramsar secretariat (Tobias Salathé), IMPESA (Piet-Louis Grundling, South Africa), Grupo Paramo (Robert Hofstede, Ecuador), Global Environment Centre (Faizal Parish, Malaysia), and Wetlands International-China (Ms Zhang Xiaohong) were welcomed as observer.
    At the Oct. 2002 meeting, the steering committee reviewed the 34 proposals that had been received and made decisions on approval and funding. Over half of the projects were approved subject to revision. In early 2004 some more proposal were received, which were reviewed electronically. In the end from a total of 39 applications, a total of 24 were approved and subject to Grant Agreements issued by Wetlands International. Each project was allotted to a member of the GPI Steering Committee to ensure regular communication and supervision of each project, and to provide advice on revisions and implementation if necessary.
    A detailed account on the results of the projects of GPI Phase 1 can be found on the GPI website, developed under this project. A summary of the achievements of the projects will be communicated (post project) at the IPS symposium on Wise Use of Peatlands (June 2004, Tampere, Finland; Diemont et al. in press) and will be made available on the GPI website.
  2. The GPI steering committee has developed two new project proposals. One is developed by Wetlands international, to develop the Biorights concept for peatlands in South-east Asia, and has been submitted to the European Commission (Programme on Tropical Forests and other Forests in Developing Countries). The other project has been developed by Alterra and deals with rehabilitation of tropical peatlands (in particularl the former Mega Rice project in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia). The project also involves the new partner in the GPI Steering Committee, the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID).
    The GPI steering committee has been active in developing the certification of peat products and has been involved in peatland policy in Indonesia, Russia and in the EU. A new proposal on peat certification is in development with the Dutch peat-based industry in consultation with the Ministry of LNV.
  3. So far funding has been received from DGIS to a total amount of Euro 1,520,000. The GPI partnership has raised with local partners through the individual GPI projects a total co-financing of Euro 4,239,000. GPI Steering Committee members implemented fund raising missions to the European Commission (Dec 2003) and Washington based conservation agencies and donors (Dec. 2003). A proposal was submitted by WI to DGIS as part of a TMF bid.
  4. A side event of the GPI was organised at the Ramsar CoP8 in 2002, attended by .
    The GPI website is now available as planned. It is managed by the International Mire Conservation Group. So far, it provides information on all GPI projects of Phase 1. Information on phase 2 will be placed on the website as soon as the Final Report is released.
  5. A side event of the GPI was organised at the Ramsar CoP8 in 2002, attended by . The GPI website is now available as planned. It is managed by the International Mire Conservation Group. So far, it provides information on all GPI projects of Phase 1. Information on phase 2 will be placed on the website as soon as the Final Report is released.
Evaluation
The Global Peatland Initiative has proven to be useful as a public-private partnership. Such partnerships should not be regarded as a magical tool to achieve sustainable development or “wise use” of natural resources such as peatlands. Their value is mainly in providing a platform for a variety of development and conservation sectors and stakeholders to work together constructively towards a better understanding of each other’s interests and towards agreements on issues that require inter-sectoral cooperation. In this respect it is important that sustainability or “wise use” is not only an opportunity, but may involve opportunity costs for some of the stakeholders on local and regional levels. For instance, in poverty trapped regions it should be acknowledged that without attempts to solve the economic and social problems one can not expect much attention to environmental problems (see Verhagen et al, this symposium), while at the same time poverty issues may augment poverty. To solve such discrepancies it can be useful to clearly identify and assess the opportunity costs through such partnerships, enhancing credibility of the fundraising approaches to donor agencies.
The paradigm of “wise use” or sustainable development provides the partnership with a tool requiring the industry to internalize environmental and related social issues within their operations, whereas environmental non-governmental organizations are required to internalize economic and related social issues in their environmental objectives.
In this respect the partnership could be directed more towards the peat based industry. So far too little emphasis has been given to the initiatives and contributions of the industry with respect to achieving wise use. A case in point are the investments made in rehabilitation of exploited peatlands and the efforts made for instance by the Canadian peat industry to support the science community. The GPI could also contribute to the debate of peat as a renewable or non-renewable source of energy.
Another most important challenge of the partnership is to contribute to the de-coupling of poverty and degradation of peat resources in the world. To really address environment-poverty issues, generally longer-term programmes are necessary. It is a pity that for bureaucratic reasons the GPI was able to only finance short-term activities. In this light, the achievements of the partnership have been significant, but to achieve sustainable results some of the initiatives started by the GPI will require longer-term follow up funding.
In operating along these lines we believe that in the end the GPI partnership can provide added value towards achieving the ultimate goal of its partners: the wise use of peatlands. So far, the GPI partnership has proven its value, and it is clear that without the joint expertise of its partners and their networks it will be much more difficult to positively influence the policy frameworks of the different conventions and governments.
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last update: 20/07/04