Socio Bosque Program Ecuador

In 2008, the government of Ecuador launched the Socio Bosque Program, a national conservation agreement scheme based on incentive-driven voluntary actions to protect native forest areas and other types of native vegetation from deforestation. The program is implemented on the ground in six Ecuadorian provinces: Esmeraldas, Morona, Napo, Zamora Chinchipe, Santa Elena, and Pastaza. For each hectare of forest cover maintained, it offers annual payments to poor private and communal forest landowners. Capacity building activities support the implementation of the Program on the ground. This Program is particularly relevant as Ecuador has one of the highest deforestation rates in Latin America. Since 2000, Ecuador has lost 4.7% of its tree cover. Main reasons for this loss are expansion of agriculture, oil exploitation, logging, mining but also institutional factors such as insecure land tenure, and weak public institutions. Though primarily addressing rural areas, the combination of environmental protection and poverty alleviation goals is the distinctive feature of the Socio Bosque program and makes it a good example of a national incentive program to enhance multi-functional NBS.

Overview

Type of instrument:

Economic and fiscal instruments›Payments as rewards/for ecosystem services, subsidies, incentives

Challenges addressed

Ecologic connectivity
Soil quality
Green space management (e.g. accessibility)
Flood risk: pluvial and fluvial / soil permeability
Heat stress and heat island effect
Landslide risk
Air quality
Social cohesion
Social equity
Nature appropriation / stewardship
Reconnection to the biosphere / environmental education
Human health, comfort and well-being

Consideration of nature-based solutions:

The Program relates to multi-functional NBS as it aligns the environmental target of forest conservation with socioeconomic ones, specifically poverty alleviation, with a focus on poorest rural landowners and indigenous communities. The overall aim of the project is to preserve 3.600.00 hectares of native forests and other forms of native vegetation. The Program concludes 20-year contracts with individual "partners", i.e. municipalities or private individuals. The amount of monetary incentives received by individual landowners is calculated through a regressive formula that guarantees higher a relative remuneration for smallholders. For the first 50 hectares, participant contractors receive $30 for each hectare covered, and subsequent lower remuneration. By maintaining and restoring fundamental services of forest ecosystems, such as carbon sequestration and storage, the program contributes to climate change mitigation. It further fosters climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction and resilience of local communities by containing run-offs, limiting flood risks and increasing infiltration and water storage.

Targeted (peri-)urban areas:

Allotments, community gardens or agricultural areas

Green areas for water management

Other

Good practice characteristics:

Effective

Support multifunctional NBS

Locally appropriate

Potential to be replicated / upscaled

Innovative

Policy business case

Inclusivity

Governance

Government body/bodies

Initiating body:

National Environment Ministry of Ecuador

Instrument design:

Details about how the instrument was designed:

The overall programm is being administered by the National Environment Ministry of Ecuador. However, the decentralized autonomous regional governments play a key role in linking the national-level program with participants on the ground. According to the Organic Code for Territorial Organziation, Autonomy and Decentralization (2010), these regional governments are responsible to ensure participation and involvement of the citizenry in the decisions related to the development of their respective territories.

Instrument implementation:

Type of involvement:

Local communities are the core of the implementation of the Program. To be eligible for selection as beneficiaries by the Ministry of the Environment, communities or individuals must fulfill a set of 10 criteria, including proofing their legal landownership. The Program foresees consultations with those that are dependent on the forest resources before and during the implementation of activities. The Program further applies a participatory monitoring and evaluation process, in which local communities are asked to file annual review reports.

Type of non-governmental actors involved:

Citizen councils or consultation for co-planning (e.g. workshops, surveys)

Implementation of NBS (e.g. with government funds)

Citizen monitoring and review

Targeted actors:

Private: household, real estate developer, business , financial

Citizens or community groups (CBOs), NGOs

Financing

Sources of funding:

Public national budget

Loans by KfW and Global Conservation Fund

Budget:

Above 10 000 000€

Details about instrument financing:

Total estimated costs of the project are about about €145 million. Currently, Socio Bosque annual payments to participating communities amount to about €7 million. Until 2011, the Ecuadorian government had exclusively financed the program with own funds. Since 2012, the German development bank KfW is co-funding the project with a total amount of €21,5 million. Additional funds are provided through the Global Conservation Fund.

Monitoring, evaluation and impacts

Is a monitoring framework in place?:

Yes

The compliance of the Program beneficiaries is checked periodically and before the payment of the next installment. The government monitors individual progress by analysing satellite imagery. In addition, participants have to prepare annual spending and progress reports. These reports also provides details of the compliance of individual interventions with the social goals defined in the Program.

Did an evaluation take place?:

Yes

Several evaluations of different aspects of the Program exist. These include evaluations provided by international donors (e.g. evaluations by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Inter-American Development Bank) as well as periodic reviews and status reports by the Ecuadorian government itself.

Achieved outcomes and impacts:

By 2016, the Program had contributed to the protection of over 1.5 million hectares of its 3,6 million-hectare goal through 2,800 20-year agreements with private landowners and communities. As a result the deforestation in Ecuador has declined from 77,000 to 44,000 hectares annually between 2008 and 2016. According to a 2018 evaluation by UNDP, the Program is on track to achieve its poverty reduction goals. In 2014 alone, the Program released $10 million in incentive payments to beneficiaries. Of those resources, about $6 million went to indigenous peoples and other collectives. In total, over 173,000 individuals benefited from the Program in 2014 (161,000 of those beneficiaries being members of indigenous peoples and other collectives). However, data about the distribution of these benefits within the communities is still sparse, and thus, the Program's effects on alleviating social inequality cannot be assessed in detail.

Success factors and lessons learned:

Socio-ecological research and international donors have largely depicted Socio Bosque as a good example of an incentive program for forest conservation which is aligned with overarching policy efforts on poverty alleviation and land management in the country. The Program is particularly targeting low-income regions with high rates of indigenous population to tackle poverty challenges and thus follows a spatially-differentiated approach. In practice, this requires rigorous balancing of environmental aspects and economic efficiency as well as social equity. Trade-offs may appear in relation to access to the program and the distribution of incentives within the respective communities. A key barrier is the issue of land distribution. Direct involvement of the poorest is often undermined by informal or missing land rights, which are a precondition to project participation. To address this challenge, the national government aims to regularize land ownership and plans an ambitious land titling program to improve the land tenure situation. Although the Program is primarily addressing forested areas of the country, the underlying incentive structure has a high potential to be replicated also in peri-urban areas with a prevalence of vulnerable populations in Ecuador, and beyond. However, to be suitable for peri-urban areas, the focus of the program on native forests would need to be widened to secondary forests with high ecological value more prevalent in peri-urban areas.

Sources and further information

References

List of references:

Ministerio del Ambiente, Agua y Transición Ecológica del Ecuador (2013). Proyecto Socio Bosque. Available at: https://www.ambiente.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2015/07/SOCIO-BOSQUE.pdf (Accessed: 20 July 2022).

Ministerio del Ambiente, Agua y Transición Ecológica del Ecuador (2022). Proyecto Socio Bosque. Available at: https://sociobosque.ambiente.gob.ec/ (Accessed: 20 July 2022).

Bueb, B., Tröltzsch, J., Reichwein, D., Oldenburg, C., Favero, F. (2021): Case Studies of Sustainable Adaptation Pathways. Appendix to the Paper "Towards Sustainable Adaptation Pathways: A concept for integrative actions to achieve the 2030 Agenda, Paris Agreement and Sendai Framework". Climate Change | 48/2021. Dessau-Roßlau: Umweltbundesamt

Global Forest Watch (2022). Ecuador. Available at: https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/country/ECU/ (Accessed: 20 July 2022).

De Konig, F., Aguiñaga, M., Bravo, M., Chiu, M., Lascano, M., Lozada, T., & Suarez, L. (2011): Bridging the gap between forest conservation and poverty alleviation: The Ecuadorian Socio Bosque program. Environmental Science and Policy, 14 (2011), 531–542.

Oppla (2022). Ecuador: The Socio Bosque Program. Available at: https://oppla.eu/casestudy/18372 (Accessed: 20 July 2022).

KfW Entwicklungsbank (2022): Programm Waldschutz (Sociobosque) und REDD. Available at: https://www.kfw-entwicklungsbank.de/ipfz/Projektdatenbank/Programm-Waldschutz-Sociobosque-und-REDD-27003.htm (Accessed: 20 July 2022).

Perafán, C, Pabón, M. 2019. Comunidades sostenibles: Evaluación socio cultural del Programa Socio Bosque. Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). Available at: https://publications.iadb.org/es/comunidades-sostenibles-evaluacion-socio-cultural-del-programa-socio-bosque (Accessed: 20 July 2022).

United Nations Development Program (2018). Environmental and Social Assessment of Ecuador’s Socio Bosque Programme. Available at: https://www.ambiente.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2018/09/ESA-Socio-Bosque-Ecuador-Report-11-09-18-f.pdf (Accessed: 20 July 2022).

United Nations Development Program (2018). ANNEX A: Matrix for the Proyecto Socio Bosque de Conservación: Policy, Law and Regulations Analysis alignment with UNDP SES Standards and Cancún Safeguards. Available at: https://www.ambiente.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2018/09/Annex-A-to-ESA-Socio-Bosque-Ecuador_PLR-Analysis-11-09-18-f.pdf (Accessed: 20 July 2022).

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