Scaling Up Community-Driven Ecosystem Enterprise

The following table highlights the key ingredients for successfully scaling up ecosystem-based enterprises to reduce poverty and build resilience.

The figure, above, depicts how these ingredients interact to generate ecosystem enterprises and drive them to scale.

Success Factors for Community-Driven Natural Resource Management

OWNERSHIP: A Local Stake in Development and Enterprise 

• Enforceable resource rights
• Community demand for natural resource management
• Community investment of time, money, or other key inputs
• Participation in and influence over decision-making processes  

CAPACITY: Social, Technical, and Business Skills to Manage Resources and Establish Enterprises

• Social capacity to embrace a shared goal for resource management and to negotiate an action plan to attain it
  
• Technical capacity to jointly manage natural resources sustainably, including the ability to monitor resources and enforce rules
• Business capacity to organize an ecosystem-based enterprise and market the resulting products and services
• Local resource management institutions with the capacity to distribute costs and benefits of ecosystem management fairly
• Dynamic community leadership to catalyze demand and mediate disputes
• Intermediary support organizations to help build capacity and influence

CONNECTION: Links to Learning, Support, and Commercial Networks and Associations

• Horizontal links to other rural producers to access information, improve efficiency, and connect to markets
• Vertical links to government and the private sector to build political support, deal with bureaucratic obstacles, and connect to technical and financial support

An Enabling Environment for Scaling

SUPPORTIVE POLICY ENVIRONMENT

• Secure resource rights and fair benefit-sharing arrangements
• Progressive policies on the registration of NGOs, commercial associations, and cooperatives
• Basic democratic rights such as representation and redress
  

NONDISCRIMINATORY TAX AND REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT

• Reform of subsidies, taxes, licensing requirements, and quotas favoring large enterprises over small enterprises

COMMITMENT OF GOVERNMENT LINE AGENCIES

• Government line agencies reoriented toward service role rather than traditional top-down role
• Interagency coordination

TECHNICAL, RESEARCH, AND MARKETING SUPPORT

• Extension services for resource management and monitoring
• Business planning and enterprise development
• Market research and product development

AVAILABILITY OF FINANCIAL SERVICES AND PUBLIC FUNDING

• Public funds available for ecosystem restoration
• Private and/or public financing available for enterprise development

COMMUNICATION OF SUCCESSES

• Stakeholder engagement via site visits and testimonials
• Momentum among policymakers, funders, line agencies, and local government via media stories, research reports, and site visits