Shifting Paradigms and Building Partnerships to Restore the Atlantic Forest
In this article, the Landscape Finance Lab interviews Fabianus Fliervoet, Ecoregional Coordinator for the Atlantic Forest landscape at WWF Paraguay. Through his story, we learn practical advice on how to design and lead landscape programs in transnational ecoregions.
Fabianus, thank you for taking the time to share your story. To begin, how did you first begin working in landscape conservation?
In my academic background, I focused on natural resource management for ecosystems and was always inclined to see things from a broader perspective. When I started to work with WWF Paraguay, we were independent, stable and more self-focused on the project level and while we did achieve results, I saw that we needed to embark on a new journey that would bring our efforts to scale and impact. While we achieved predictable project results for every dollar that went in, we realised that we needed to change our approach to operate in a environment that is increasingly volatile, complex, impossible to control and more interconnected economically. To do that, we would need to change the way that we tackle projects to an approach that balances short term and long term gains, keeping a focus on ourselves and the systems we work while fostering both stability and dynamism.
As I transitioned into the Ecoregional Coordinator position at WWF Paraguay, I was looking for guidance on how to scale up our work, and quickly found the landscape approach as a way for us to meet that objective. Finding the landscape approach was an “ah-ha!” moment for me, since it was a useful tool that allowed us to bring people together and start a conversation around scale and see the landscape as greater than the sum of its parts. So that’s what we did. To begin exploring the concept, we drafted a landscape idea note with the support of WWF Switzerland, which allowed us to see our work through the lens of the five landscape elements.
We found that it was really helpful to use the landscape approach to help us understand how different components are connected within the wider landscape system context. For example, in order to scale up our activities within the landscape, we would have to work on key drivers and pressures at different scales — locally, regionally and nationally. This systems thinking approach is helping us to understand and respond to complexity while driving change within the landscape, while also helping us think about how to communicate our ideas at different scales to achieve our ambitions.
Tell me about the landscape, in simple words. What’s the story? Who is involved? What’s the solution?
A landscape is a large area where a lot of different actors are involved, each coming with their own values and ideas for how to manage that large space and the natural resources it contains. Oftentimes this might lead to a conflict over the use of natural resources. In the case of Paraguay, we’re talking about agriculture and agribusiness-related challenges between large landowners, small landowners and indigenous and local communities. In a landscape there is only so much space, and we have to learn how to manage conflicting land uses such as agriculture production, freshwater provisioning and conservation, while also increasing protected areas, conserving biodiversity, creating biological corridors, and working with indigenous communities to protect their national and cultural heritage. Anytime we work at even larger scales and bring in even more actors, the level of conflict and complexity increases, which means that we must find an effective approach to manage this.
It’s in this conceptual context that I coordinate the Atlantic Forest Ecoregional Action Program. In order to manage our efforts, we use an ecoregional action plan to coordinate work between WWF Paraguay, Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina and WWF Brasil, who are all working together in the Atlantic Forest. Right now we are approaching the end of a 5 year program and we are finalizing the new action plan for the ecoregion. This means that we’ll be bringing new ideas, strategies and activities together to make sure that we can achieve impact at an even greater scale. This is where most of my energy is spent at the moment, working with other WWF offices, collaborating with external partners, working on innovation, learning from each other, sharing knowledge, and delivering inspiration.
The past year of our work was mainly spent planning, where we collaborated together in various workshop formats. In these workshops, we explored different examples of innovations in the landscape and discussed ways to collaborate together to solve problems. For the Atlantic Forest program, working with the Landscape Finance Lab is a part of our efforts to innovate. Our hope is that by working with the Lab, we will be able to incorporate different ideas from outside our three offices, from the network and from different disciplines to improve our efforts. We are really interested in sharing our experiences and learning from others to develop new business solutions in the landscape.
What does success look like in the Atlantic Forest landscape?
We envision an Atlantic Forest that is climate resilient while providing natural resources to local populations over the long term. We also want to create a landscape that connects the many isolated forest patches across the region. For hundreds of years, the landscape has suffered from the effects of unsustainable agriculture & forestry, urbanisation and infrastructure, wildlife poaching and climate change. Today, we are on the path towards reconstruction where we will restore the natural ecosystems in the Atlantic Forest biome.
Over the long term, the success of our efforts will be measured by the number of hectares of land that are reforested and conserved. In the medium term, our success will be measured by the quality of collaboration among different partners and how effectively government, business and other actors will transition into a new way of working in this landscape. This new way of working requires that we overcome preconceptions about each other to develop new sustainable business models that will achieve the restoration we are looking for.
In the short term, we will continue to collaborate with different partners and look for innovative approaches, financial resources and new business models that will help us drive impact in the landscape. Right now we need to build an understanding of the landscape approach among our partners, and develop new solutions and synergies if they aren’t currently existing. In this context, education takes the top priority. In order to transition to a new way of working, we have to work on changing norms, beliefs, values and practices that are currently present in the landscape — especially in the agricultural and public sector.
At the end of the day, we are trying to create a paradigm shift that helps people produce more sustainably and more efficiently while conserving more hectares of forest, restoring soils and vegetation, and connecting isolated forest tracts. To do this we must also harness the power of inspiration to inspire the larger community within the Atlantic Forest. It’s not only the task of business, but also government and communities to help people see a new vision for themselves in the context of a wider ecosystem. We hope to help people realise that there is a different way of doing things that is more sustainable, and more resilient than what we are doing at present. Communication will be key. Learning will be key. Working together with partners and collaborating will be key. Fostering innovation will be key.
It’s easy to inspire actors to get behind the long term vision of landscape conservation, no one would argue with that. The hardest part is the medium term — the work of changing mindsets and creating a paradigm shift. We have to recognise that we’re deeply entrenched in a system that propagates the overuse of natural resources. This has been happening for hundreds of years, and rapid industrialisation and urbanisation in recent history has continued to reinforce this system, which is built upon the idea of division between society and nature. This separation has allowed us to produce more in the short and medium term, while causing dysfunction and destruction of our social and ecological systems in the long term. For too long we have been largely unaware of these consequences. Our job as WWF is to help our partners be more aware of these dynamics and ask the question: “Can we afford to keep doing this?” This is why we need to analyse current business approaches and best practices for protecting our social and ecological systems. Using the landscape approach, we can work together to achieve the paradigm shift we are aiming towards.
What’s a time when you learned resilience through your work?
The Atlantic Forest Program brings three different Latin American countries to work together. In our diverse culture, we are often very respectful of one another, which presents us with challenges when it comes to delegating leadership and taking action. Who should take the lead? This is a question that we often face in our team. In my work I have learned that every office has expertise in different areas, and I think that we should intentionally leverage the strengths of every office and team to move our work forward.
In my personal journey, I look on the leadership role for the planning phase of the program. As a result of our recent collaboration, we have completely changed our way of strategizing towards synergy. In the past we had strategies on better management practices, protected areas, species and climate change and forest management. Now we are focusing on a wider set of issues, such as raising awareness and social change in communities, and considering multi-stakeholder approaches that might help us catalyse the paradigm shift that we are after. We have also incorporated the landscape elements into each of our strategies, which is something that I tried to push forward. I am really happy that we were able to get that on paper, while continuing to learn how to interpret what this means for our daily work. In the coming years, we will be able to reflect and learn about what worked across our different countries and share insights with other landscapes so that they can find their own ways to incorporate the landscape approach into their efforts.
In short, I have learned resilience through incorporating diversity, flexibility and collaboration as redeeming qualities in order to adapt and align oneself through my work.
How did you first engage with the Landscape Finance Lab, and how has the Lab had an impact on your work?
In recent months, a member of the Landscape Finance Lab team joined us on the ground in Paraguay, and during that time we focused primarily on having the first conversation with key stakeholders who would make a large investment of time or energy into the landscape. As we first gathered, we asked ourselves, “Who are the key stakeholders and what are their interests?” In the weeks following we had meetings where we explained the landscape approach to each of these different stakeholders, and shared how the Lab leverages financial instruments to channel funding into the landscape, while also exploring how these investments could lead to forest restoration projects.
It was really interesting to invite someone from abroad to help us explain this approach. While most stakeholders were interested in the landscape approach and the financial aspects of managing a landscape, some of the most compelling “ah-ha” moments came in discussions around the multi stakeholder platform process. When the Lab shared examples of other landscapes like Fiji, where the Prime Minister got involved, our key stakeholders got excited and started to envision ways that we could do something similar in the Atlantic Forest. They learned that this approach could serve a governance mechanism that could help align the different interests between key stakeholders in the landscape, while incorporating equity and transparency in the landscape.
At the beginning of our time together, the key stakeholders that we spoke with mentioned that there is a current conflict over natural resources, and expressed how difficult it would be to get everyone around the table. When we finished our meeting, we achieved full support from key influential stakeholders in the landscape. Moving forward, these actors are interested in helping us to begin the work of convening a multi stakeholder platform. In reflection, working with the Lab helped me to organise my thoughts and think outside the box about how we should move forward on our work. The Lab has helped me develop my ideas, and I’m looking forward to continuing our relationship into the future.
What do you need right now? How can others help your work?
Right now, I would love to learn from others about we might initiate a multi stakeholder platform — how to get different actors on board and start having further conversations on restoring the landscape. We are learning as an organisation, and although we have vast experience working with different stakeholders we would like to learn from other landscapes and countries on how they have built on their relationships with partners. We are aware that the more participants and relationships that exist in the Atlantic Forest landscape, the more resilient the landscape will be. We are learning that creating a working environment conducive to dynamism, cooperation and creativity helps innovate new solutions and synergies for how we might better connect the landscape embed resilience into the landscape.
If you could offer one piece of advice to someone getting started on a landscape program, what would it be?
There is so much information out there today. Someone leading a landscape program today needs to learn how to prioritise information, and how to learn from that information quickly to make decisions and take action on building key relationships to get the conversation rolling. At least for planning, a key skill needed in this work is synthesis. There is so much to learn from so many different sources, and we need to identify what is most relevant for us so that we might make better decisions. Teamwork, underpinned with a clear vision, common values, simple rules and collective commitment is key to start collectively managing all the parts of a landscape program.
What is the most rewarding part of what you do personally?
A key part of sustaining my own motivation is to harness the power of inspiration to engage the public and raise awareness about the landscape. This is something that we should use more often in our work, because it helps us remember why we do things. Inspiration helps us get the general public and authorities interested and involved, which helps us to meet a key goal of conservation — to foster a harmonious relationship between people and nature.
Additionally, we live in a moment full of opportunities and possibilities, however in the conservation world we often find ourselves feeling troubled. There seems to be a constant worry about how we might achieve the bold paradigm shift that we need in order to move to a more resilient system. This is a challenge that we need to keep having conversations around. It’s time that we inspire other sectors to realise that they are also part of the solution. For instance, it’s our job to help businesses realise that they are bound by the ecological system. These types of conversations are really key to helping us overcome the fear and worry we encounter in our work. It’s time to inspire governments and businesses to realise that they are connected to nature. To achieve this shift in awareness will be challenging, but that’s why we should collaborate with others to make it happen. That is the spirit of the work that we’re doing in the Atlantic Forest, and it’s my hope that this will be the thread that runs through our work in the future.
Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, Fabianus!
For more information on this landscape, check out the Atlantic Forest program profile or email Fabianus directly: ffliervoet@wwf.org.py
The Landscape Finance Lab is an initiative of the WWF (the Worldwide Fund for Nature) and made possible through support from EIT Climate-KIC and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).
