Integrated landscape management for biodiversity protection in the Sierra Madre Oriental
Project description
Title: Integrated landscape management for biodiversity protection in the Sierra Madre Oriental (ProMIP)
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: Mexico
Lead executing agency: Agencia Mexicana de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo
Overall term: 2016 to 2021
Context
Mexico’s explosive population growth has triggered rapid urbanisation. This, in turn, is exerting severe and increasing pressure on rural areas, especially on conservation areas and ecological corridors. The rural and indigenous population, which has the largest proportion of individuals living below the poverty line, depends directly on the use of natural resources. These people are consequently the hardest hit when natural resources are degraded.
One of Mexico's biggest problems in its efforts to achieve sustainable rural development is the lack of coordination between the innumerable support programmes for rural areas, often resulting in different sectors vying for the same funds. Natural resources such as water, flora, fauna and mineral wealth are being exploited; natural habitats are being transformed into agricultural land and urbanisation is proceeding apace – all without the state setting priorities in terms of efficiency, undesirable consequences and sustainability. Integrated landscape management is to help remedy this situation.
Objective
Working together in a coordinated manner, key actors from various sectors that influence the sustainable use and management of biodiversity have carried out measures for the integrated management of landscapes in the Sierra Madre Oriental ecological corridor.
Approach
The strategic aim of the project is to establish the concept of integrated landscape management among policy-makers, institutions and across sectors at the implementation level. On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the project is providing advice in this respect to the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP). In a dialogue with the relevant national institutions, the partners have set out to develop a legal and institutional framework for sustainable spatial planning, based on the concept of integrated landscape management.
The project supports CONANP’s decentralised structures at regional level in applying instruments and strategies developed at federal level in their own planning and activities. Pilot initiatives for integrated landscape management are being undertaken at the local level. Examples include promotion of sustainable agricultural practices and improved spatial organisation and planning processes, which are implemented jointly with representatives of the private sector, municipalities and their umbrella bodies, producer associations and non-governmental organisations.
The project works primarily in the five federal states of San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Querétaro, Veracruz and Puebla, through which the ecological corridor of the Sierra Madre Oriental passes. It also provides advisory services on national policy strategies in Mexico City.
The consulting company GITEC Consult supports the project with the implementation of pilot measures in the Sierra Madre Oriental ecological corridor.
