Page 1 of 1 Neira, Luisa Fernanda From: Stphane Pauquet - - PDF document

Neira, Luisa Fernanda

From: Stéphane Pauquet [spauquet@parkswatch.org] Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 12:16 PM To: Neira, Luisa Fernanda Cc: Huber, Richard; Daniela Lerda Subject: In relation to RfP Component 3 of IABIN Attachments: BCID Presentation (eng).pdf

Page 1 of 1 10/15/2008

Dear Sir/ Madam, As indicated in the title, this email is in response to the "Second Request for Proposals (RFPs) for the Development of Value‐Added Tools for Decision‐Making". Before anything, let me indicate that we are aware that the deadline expired last week, and sincerely wish you that this second RfP will have attracted winning proposals. The group I represent (FUNBIO-RedLAC) was unfortunately informed too late to meet this deadline, so we assume that this call for proposals is closed. However, in the unlikely event that you might still be considering last minute applications, please allow me to send you a description of a project that was recently launched -- the Biodiversity Conservation Investments Database, or BCID -- and whose online tools, once completed, are likely to offer many of the functionalities that the IABIN may be looking for. In case you are still in search of the appropriate partner, I invite to give this document a quick read. Please take into account that this is not an actual proposal, but the description of activities that are already scheduled to take place. We'll be happy to follow suit with an actual proposal in case you invited us to submit one. FYI, funding for this project is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and there should be no problem in considering a 2: 1 matching scheme. Conversely, if the void is already filled (in which case, congratulations), consider this as a first step towards a formal rapprochement between the BCID and IABIN databases and executive committees in order to open a discussion on how best to collaborate on our respective projects. It seems that the potential synergies between these two portals are immense. For this reason, I'm also sending a copy of this email to Daniela Lerda, head of the Applied Knowledge department at FUNBIO (www.funbio.org.br) and manager of this project. Thank you for your attention and I look forward to hearing from you when you find the time,

• Stéphane Pauquet

General Coordinator Biodiversity Conservation Investments Database (BCID) Latin American Network of Environmental Funds (RedLAC) spauquet@parkswatch.org | www.redlac.org –| www.greenvest.org – (PS: I'll be out of the office quite a lot during the next few weeks, so please excuse me if I take a few days in answering emails)

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BCID

Biodiversity Conservation Investment Database for the Andes-Amazon Region

RedLAC - FUNBIO

October 2008

Project description

• I. Project Goal and Rationale

Biodiversity conservation and sustainable development have become major priorities for international aid cooperation and different donor programs. Although funding for environmental protection has increased in overall terms over the years, so have the needs for greater protection of natural resources. Conservation finance is one of the most central elements in ensuring the long term success of environmental policies and programs. In the Andes Amazon region, where this Project is being developed, this situation is no different. The complex geologic and evolutionary history of the Andes, the world’s longest mountain range, has produced an exceptionally rich and diverse landscape of species and ecosystems which depend on long term financial strategies to ensure their protection. On the eastern slope of the Andes and the adjacent Amazonian forests, the situation is no

• different. Home to the world’s highest diversity of birds, one-third of all freshwater

fish species and more than 60,000 plant species, half of which are found nowhere else, the Amazonian rainforest is one of the last remaining stretches of wilderness on the planet.

2 Unless the different players of the nature conservation community (donors, governments, NGOs, research centers, etc.) coordinate their efforts and financial investments, the region’s biodiversity, and the vast range of services provided by its natural ecosystems, will continue to erode. Increasing human populations and economic activity exert ever growing pressures on the region’s natural resources. From the slopes of the Andes to the mouth of the Amazon, loss of forests and other pristine habitats due to logging, cattle ranching, mining, agriculture, and infrastructure construction continues at rates of up to 9,000 square miles per year. Despite significant investments, conservation objectives set out for the region are still largely unmet. The lack of an integrated system to monitor investments in biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in the Andes Amazon Region has been recognized as an important limiting factor for funding and implementing agencies to coordinate investment strategies. So far, efforts to track investment flows in the region have been conducted on an ad-hoc basis, without consistent follow-up from supporting institutions. Although some efforts have been made to coordinate efforts targeted at specific protected areas (Parks In Peril, Eco-Index, ParksWatch, Amazon– Andes Protected Areas Information Database-APAD), an actual monitoring system that allows different interest groups to track conservation investments at the regional level remains to be set up. An information system capable of relating donor programs and interests with actual conservation needs and projects in the field, while also providing detailed and varied statistical data on investment trends is likely to foster greater donor coordination and increase efficiency of resource allocation by reducing the duplication of efforts, leveraging existing resources and exposing funding gaps and inconsistencies. In order to address this issue, the present project aims to develop a state-of-the- art online monitoring system of biodiversity conservation investments and funding

• pportunities (hereafter called Biodiversity Conservation Investment Database or

BCID). Characterized by simplicity and user-friendliness, this monitoring system is meant to satisfy the information needs of a wide variety of stakeholders primarily composed of donors, governments, NGOs, scientists, jobseekers, students, and aspiring volunteers. A premise of this project is that the systematic reporting and monitoring of conservation investments in the region should allow for better priority-setting and fund allocation by the donor community (national environmental funds, multilateral and bilateral donors, governments, and NGOs), resulting in increased efficiency of expenditures and more effective actions on the ground. By providing systematic information on past, present, and future investment trends and on the projects supported and proposed in the region through a structured

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• nline monitoring system, the BCID is intended to become the clearinghouse on

conservation finance data in the Andes-Amazon region. Focusing on both public and private conservation investments, the BCID will provide information on financial flows by donor category, project type, activity, location, protected species and/or habitat, among other search criteria. Moreover, the system will make it possible to highlight thematic as well as geographic funding gaps and to gauge the sustainability

• f investment trends in the region.

To achieve this objective, the BCID will be composed of the following applications:

• Fig. 1. The main user applications of the BCID

Below is a brief description of these various components:

• The ‘BCID Core’ database will provide information on past biodiversity

conservation investments and allow data consultation and analysis by means of different data visualization and reporting applications, among which an online GIS system (MapEngine), a multimedia virtual tour system (ProjectExplorer) and a statistical analysis tools warehouse (TrendTracker), all described and illustrated in Appendix 1 to 3;

• The ‘GrantNavigator’ database will list current grant programs and future funding
• pportunities so as to facilitate access to conservation finance data by grantseekers;
• The ‘GrantSeeker’ database will provide a space for project implementers to post

information on their upcoming projects and funding needs using a common grant application format to facilitate review by grantmakers. In order to provide grantseekers and grantmakers with efficient tools to access the data of their interest, both applications will allow users to list investments or projects by geographical location, ecoregion, biome, habitat, project type, proposed activities,

4 budget, benefited species or populations, etc., enabling queries to be applied at many different scales. In addition, functional relationships between the GrantNavigator, GrantSeeker and BCID Core databases will enable the provision of advanced data services, such as the transmission of automated alerts to target groups in response to specific updates or changes in selected indicators. For example, foundations will be able to request to be notified when investments within a specific region have reached a certain level so as to reorient their priorities to another region. Conversely, the GrantNavigator will allow grantseekers to be alerted of new Requests for Proposals relevant to their declared interests, while the GrantSeeker will allow grantmakers to be notified of new project descriptions meeting their investment interests and prerequisites. By relying on the data collection, monitoring, and curation capacity of the Latin American and Caribbean Network of environmental funds (RedLAC), this monitoring system will be initially applied to the Amazon and Andes region (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela, Guayana, French Guiana) as a pilot

• region. RedLAC’s mission is to cooperate among and between environmental funds,

strengthening their abilities and supporting conservation and sustainable use of natural resources in Latin America and the Caribbean. RedLAC is composed of 19 Latin American environmental funds, out of which ten funds operate in the Andes- Amazon region. Due to both its geographical distribution and level of coordination among members, this unique network is well positioned to collect and manage the data needed for such a monitoring system and to negotiate commitments among stakeholders in order to ensure its maintenance and continuous development. Once amply tested and refined, the prototype that will come out of this project is meant to be scaled up both functionally and geographically so as to become a global clearinghouse complementary of the other major global bioinformatics initiatives underway, such as the InterAmerican Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN, www.iabin.net), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, www.gbif.org), the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA, www.unep-wcmc.org/wdpa) and the IUCN Red List (www.redlist.org). The resulting system will be available in three languages (English, Spanish and Portuguese) and free of use, although access right policies will restrict the type of data and analysis tools available to different user categories in relation to data property issues and in order to avoid misuse of information. The differentiation of access rights, which can be likened to a customization of data services, is also meant to stimulate stakeholder participation by granting data providers access to unique strategic or mission-critical information.

5 GreenVest For more than eight years, members of the ParksWatch network have visited some of the most biodiverse – and most threatened – protected areas throughout Latin America to systematically assess their status and priority needs. These evaluations have served the triple objective of providing baseline information on the least studied and publicized protected areas, attracting donor attention to where it is most needed, and generating additional resources for improved park management. GreenVest can be likened to an online ‘marketing’ extension of ParksWatch, which enriches ParksWatch’s standard park evaluations (www.parkswatch.org) with captivating multimedia content in order to attract numerous potential benefactors for the protected areas featured on the website. The main objective of its interactive

• nline applications is to encourage visitors (individuals, foundations and businesses)

to make contributions for the acquisition of priority equipments and services for the park(s) of their choice through a fully transparent online donation system. A beta version of the GreenVest website (www.greenvest.org) was officially launched at the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona (October 5-14, 2008), and the actual donation system will start functioning towards early 2009. The BCID provides an opportunity to integrate this novel conservation finance mechanism with the Latin America Network of Environmental Funds: in each country, ParksWatch teams and RedLAC focal points will work in close collaboration to develop an efficient supply chain for the delivery of equipments and services to protected areas, pooling capacities and expertise in the complementary areas of park management effectiveness assessments and financial management and procurement. The ParkSupporter will be integrated to the BCID portal as the ‘last mile’ component of the database of investment opportunities, providing near real-time access to the recurrent and emerging needs of individual parks, with park rangers and park administrations as the principal beneficiaries. A seamless interaction with the other components will fully integrate this independent program within the portal and thus endow participating RedLAC members with a promising innovative fundraising mechanism for protected area support. The steps followed by the ParksWatch-GreenVest alliance and its relationship with the RedLAC network is illustrated in the flow-chart below.

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• Fig. 2. Process followed by ParksWatch in its GreenVest park support program

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• II. Project Objectives and Implementation

The overarching goal of this project is to improve and foster the coordination of biodiversity conservation investments and efforts in the developing world. Specifically, by 2010, the BCID should allow instant and accurate assessments of donor investments, current funding programs as well as conservation investment needs and opportunities throughout the region, providing analysis and decision- support tools and bridging the gap between donors and conservation practitioners in the field. FUNBIO, current coordinating body of the RedLAC, has been elected to develop the BCID system in collaboration with the region’s RedLAC members:

• Fundación Protección y Uso Sostenible del

Medio Ambiente - PUMA, Bolivia

• Fundación para el Desarrollo del Sistema

Nacional de Áreas Protegidas - FUNDESNAP, Bolivia

• Fundo Brasileiro para a Biodiversidade -

FUNBIO, Brazil

• Fundo Nacional do Meio Ambiente - FNMA,

Brazil

• Fondo para la Acción Ambiental y la Niñez -

FPAA, Colombia

• Fondo Patrimonio Natural, Colombia
• Suriname Conservation Foundation - SCF,

Suriname

• Fondo Ambiental Nacional - FAN, Ecuador
• Fondo de las Américas - FONDAM, Peru
• Fondo Nacional para Áreas Naturales Protegidas

por el Estado - PROFONANPE, Peru

• Fig. 3. RedLAC funds participating in the BCID project’s Andes-Amazon pilot phase

8 The diagram below illustrates the community of stakeholders that will either act as data providers or users of the BCID:

• Fig. 4. Data providers and users of the future BCID portal

9 The timetable below outlines the project’s agenda throughout its 2008-2009 pilot phase:

10 Appendix I - Description of the MapEngine The MapEngine will be an interactive geographic data warehouse combining standard GIS functionalities (thematic layer management, measurement tools, editing, PDF export, etc.) with innovative graphical representation and visual search capabilities in

• rder to display the BCID’s spatially-explicit data in an intuitive manner.

A preliminary version of its user interface is illustrated in Figure 1, followed by a step- by-step demonstration of how the databases will be accessed through the GIS interface.

• Fig. 1. ProjectExplorer user interface

This application is meant to become a comprehensive visual search engine for information on conservation finance, offering an integrated spatial approach to data analysis, management and dissemination. Below is a description of its main features:

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• A geodatabase composed of a mosaic of satellite images (e.g. the NASA 2006 Blue

Mable) and a set of regional and national data layers on biotic and abiotic factors relevant to biodiversity conservation (rivers and water bodies, biomes, ecoregions and vegetation classes, roads and populated places, road construction projects, administrative boundaries, protected areas, logging and mining concessions, oil exploration rights, indigenous territories, human footprint, etc.);

• Integration with the BCID core, ProjectNavigator, GrantSeeker and GreenVest

databases for simultaneous access to data on past, present and future or potential conservation investments and investment opportunities (see Figure 2 below);

• Interoperability with third party databases (IABIN, WDPA, AAPAD, Eco-Index,

etc) via automated data-sharing protocols;

• Data upload capabilities allowing authorized users to contribute information and

produce maps and representations based on a combination of personal and BCID data;

• Data download capabilities for selected data layers according to user access rights;
• Support of customized reporting functions with generation of dynamic GIS-

enabled PDF documents (GeoPDFs);

• Interaction with Google Earth and NASA WorldWind for high-resolution 3D

representations;

• Analysis tools allowing users to follow trends in conservation funding and track

potential investment or funding gaps and opportunities in a geospatial context.

• Fig. 2. Representation of the management needs of a park within Google Earth

12 The following sequence of figures illustrates a step-by-step research example of how users will be able to use the MapEngine to query the monitoring system for investments in specified aspects such as activities, projects, regions, species, habitat and ecosystem types, etc.

• Fig. 3. Basemap of Bolivia with departments and provinces
• Fig. 4. Choice of a first indicator: Private investments in

Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) projects

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• Fig. 5. Change of value range brackets modifying the

chloroplet distribution and reducing scatter

• Fig. 6. Selection of a second indicator: number of

headwater management projects within the PES category

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• Fig. 7. Customization of map representation by changing circle colors
• Fig. 8. Change of dimension of second indicator symbols (circles)

in order to cluster data and emphasize differences

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• Fig. 9. Metadata access through instant pop-up boxes

by passing the mouse cursor over the map

• Fig. 10. Choice a circular selection tool to apply

database query to a specific land area

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• Fig. 11. Application of circular query tool, forming a circle

in the northwestern part of the country

• Fig. 12. Selected provinces are highlighted and a pop-up

box indicates overall results for the selected region

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• Fig. 13. Saving the current view and data yielded by the selection
• Fig. 14. Window allowing to name view in order to

be able to generate it again at latter moment

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• Fig. 15. Interface cleaned of most tool panels in order to clarify the interface
• Fig. 16. Help box providing detailed instructions on how to use the system

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• Fig. 17 & 18. Display of the river and roads layers showing interaction

between the basemap (composed of shapefiles) and database(s)

• Fig. 19. Zoom in to view details of a given area

20 Appendix II - Description of the ProjectExplorer Adapted from GreenVest’s flagship ParkExplorer application (see http://www.greenvest.org/staging/parkexplorer/index.html for a Beta version), the ProjectExplorer will be a virtual tour system offering visitors interactive access to a wealth of multimedia content on each featured conservation project, including photo galleries, narrated slideshows, animated fly-overs, videos, sound recordings, immersive panoramic scenes, along with more ‘traditional’ materials such as summary statistics and text files. Figure 1 provides a screenshot of the application’s interface, built in Flash.

• Fig. 1: Interface of GreenVest’s ParkExplorer

Below is a series of commented screenshots describing the ProjectExplorer’s main components:

• a. Quick Facts

Summary data on the project presented in the form of charts, tables and graphs.

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• b. Panoramas

360° panoramic scenes with commands allowing allow users to visit the featured landscapes by zooming, panning and clicking on animated objects and information

• hotspots. Directional sound

recordings and a full-screen option ensure an immersive experience highly suited for environmental education purposes.

• c. Picture galleries

Galleries of impactful and expressive photos, sorted by topic and presented with captions. Thumbnails, left and right arrows and a drop-down menu allow users to browse through the different picture galleries according to their interests.

• d. Slideshows

Other picture galleries, but this time with Play/Pause functions and a narration thread tying the different pictures with one another.

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• e. Fly-overs

Vertiginous fly-overs recorded with Google Earth take visitors on interactive aerial tours with comments and photo inserts providing insight on the features they observe on the ground.

• f. Videos

This component will contain one or several short movies on each project, either presenting the project as a whole or focusing on a specific story illustrative of the work that took place or will take place on the ground.

• g. Project needs

Central component of the ProjectExplorer, the bridge with the GreenVest donation system is embodied by a “Project Needs” button inviting visitors to consult the project’s featured needs. Clicking on it opens a list of priority equipment and service needs, represented by thumbnails and short names.

23 Clicking on a thumbnail opens a short description of the corresponding item with a “See details” link leading to a more detailed description and additional resources, such as a 3D model of the featured item and a picture gallery when available. At all times, a “Take Action” button invites users to visit the donation page to fund the equipment of their choice.

• h. 3D models

This module is meant to convey the ‘ultimate’ donation experience by placing the project’s needs on a custom 3D model of equipments needs to a fully interactive 3D model of the park. Each item featured within the upper frame is also an interactive 3D model.

24 Appendix III - Description of the ProjectExplorer - TrendTracker: The TrendTracker will be a data visualization and reporting tool relying on dynamic and eye-catching Flash animations for the generation of aesthetic and intuitive dynamic charts, graphs and tables based on user queries. Filters will allow users to apply different degrees of precision to their queries, and an advanced interface will allow customized data queries for the production of highly specific data analyses. A ‘Send to Map’ button will ensure a tight interaction with the ProjectExplorer for all the charts that can be converted to maps, and vice versa. Below are a series of figures showing the types of charts that will be available with this application, with an example drawn from the UNCCD FIELD website (http://www.gmfield.info).

• Fig. 1. 2D column chart

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• Fig. 2. 3D column chart
• Fig. 3. 2D area chart

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• Fig. 4. 2D bar chart
• Fig. 5. 2D pie chart

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• Fig. 6. 3D pie chart
• Fig. 7. 2D doughnut chart

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• Fig. 8. 3D doughnut chart