Pilot project promotes landscape restoration and involvement of multiple stakeholders

• Initiative carried out by WRI and CATIE seeks to involve institutions, organizations, and the private sector in the cantons of Turrialba and Jiménez in a pilot initiative that began this year
  
  
  

On Thursday, September 12, a meeting was held on the CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center) campus, where representatives from key institutions in local landscape management participated. The purpose was to introduce them to Costa Rica’s National Landscape Restoration Strategy, established for the period between 2021 and 2050, and to begin their involvement in the next steps of the pilot restoration plan in the Turrialba and Jiménez areas.

The meeting was attended by representatives from the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC), the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG), the Reventazón River Basin Management Commission (COMCURE), and the Aquiares Coffee Estate.

The project, coordinated at CATIE through the Climate Action Unit in collaboration with the Environmental Economics and Sustainable Agribusiness Unit (UEAAS/EfD), aims to develop a governance mechanism that enables partnerships with key stakeholders in landscape restoration in Costa Rica.

This goal will be achieved through a participatory process that allows for the capture, visualization, and generation of information that facilitates decision-making and compensates stakeholders for their contribution to these environmental improvement processes through agreements between parties.

Evelyn Chaves, a sustainable agribusiness specialist at CATIE, emphasized the importance of involving all stakeholders present in the territory, who contribute with their restoration efforts to maintaining ecosystem health, population well-being, and economic development.

"For this reason, it is important to integrate and make these initiatives visible in national accounting and establish support and collaboration mechanisms among all parties, especially led by SINAC," Chaves added.

For his part, Róger Villalobos, a restoration specialist at CATIE, stated that "the Turrialba and Jiménez areas were chosen because they represent a landscape with diverse land uses, along with many institutional and private efforts to restore ecosystems and their services."

Villalobos added that "for several years, work has been done on restoring biological connectivity within the Central Volcanic-Talamanca Biological Corridor, one of the country’s priority corridors."

He also noted that "a landscape vision is part of what we are able to build through local agreements."

The project, titled Design based on participatory governance system thinking for establishing partnerships for the capture, visualization, and generation of information on restoration initiatives in Costa Rica, is funded by the Government of Canada through the World Resources Institute World Resources Institute (WRI), in support of the national restoration strategy led by SINAC.