Grouped projects

Designing for viral behavior change among IP and LC conservationists and their neighbors

This methodology was specifically designed for behavior change and lateral spread between and among IP and LC, whether adjacent smallfarmers, around the borders of game parks, and between Indigenous groups and their smallfarming neighbors. Thus grouped projects are encouraged, and the design of grouped projects are specifically addressed.

Grouped projects benefit biodiversity as animals range outside the borders of conserved areas, and ecosystem connectivity is a clear global conservation target (Vilar et al. 2020).

Projects can begin as, or convert to grouped projects, at any point in their progress. It is understood that IPs have an international right to ongoing consent, and both groups LCs desire shorter-term contracts specifically so they have the freedom to adjust to changing scientific standards or undesirable business relationships. Thus projects are allowed to reduce crediting area as long as the 1-year minimum crediting period has been met.

Biodiversity is enhanced at the intersection of ecosystems, so it is possible a grouped project in the same geographic region may extend laterally to cover new ecosystems or indicator species. In this case, the project must provide segmentation and adjust the Project description and Baseline assessment if applicable. For instance, a wetland project extends into marine ecosystems, and when those projects are grouped, it enhances both environments. However, the indicator species may not be the same for those types of adjacent grouped projects.

Once a BCP has implemented scalable infrastructure for the monitoring and reporting, scaling should be fairly straightforward. Updated Project boundaries can be provided during verification times if the Monitoring plan remains internally consistent.

As a note, given 5 year retroactivity, and clear monitoring data in the Leakage area, there is a strong financial incentive for neighboring lands to convert to conservation, and claim retroactive crediting. This is by design, should be encouraged, and contributes greatly to the 20% growth in conserved areas and behavior change in hunting of rare animals (jaguar and harpy eagle) witnessed in the pilot project for this methodology.

In BCP projects using this methodology in de novo sites, it is strongly encouraged to start with a small area, prove the model sufficiently to IP and LCs first with tangible results then grow laterally year-over-year based on conservation successes and earned-trust.