Indigenous and Community Biodiversity Conservation (COINBIO)

The overall goal of the project is to achieve more effective biodiversity conservation in the states of Oaxaca, Michoacán and Guerrero by promoting the sustainable protection and use of biodiversity by indigenous communities and ejidos. Specific project objectives would be to: (i) establish and strengthen community conservation areas on lands with high biodiversity value that are communally owned by indigenous communities and ejidos; (ii) promote activities that generate income by and for program participants from the sustainable use of community biodiversity in the community conservation areas, as well as in adjacent forestry and multiple use lands; (iii) consolidate the institutional and technical practices for establishing community-based biological corridors and establish priority corridors within and across the three states; (iv) increase the organizational and administrative capacity of interested communities to protect and sustainably manage biodiversity on their territory both within community conservation areas and adjacent lands; (v) improve social participation in biodiversity conservation through networks of communities across the three states; (vi) identify, and to the extent feasible promote, mechanisms of sustainable financing for landscape-wide conservation, including markets for ecological services and for financing recurrent costs of protecting the internationally significant biological resources owned by the communities; and vii) strengthen the capacity of state SEMARNAP delegations to promote community conservation and the establishment of biological corridors and coordinate efforts to achieve the above objectives.