Conservation of biological diversity in El Salvador shade coffee: the importance of taxonomic capacity for participatory assessments

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511676482.004

4 - Conservation of biological diversity in El Salvador shade coffee: the importance of taxonomic capacity for participatory assessments

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 December 2010

Alex Monro and

David T. Jones

Edited by

Anna Lawrence

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Anna Lawrence: Affiliation:
University of Oxford

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Summary

This chapter provides an overview of a project that took place in El Salvador between 1999 and 2002, entitled ‘Empowering local people to manage the biodiversity of El Salvador’. The project set out to support the participation of a broad range of stakeholders in the assessment of the biological diversity associated with shade coffee farms. Led by taxonomists at the Natural History Museum (NHM) and funded by the Darwin Initiative (both UK stakeholders), it sought to demonstrate that it was feasible and practical to monitor biological diversity using direct species level measurements – without on the one hand having to compromise the quality of the data generated, or on the other hand excluding stakeholders from the process. The situation of El Salvador in general and shade coffee farms in particular presented a real demand for the data and skills that such a project could generate, both to enable shade coffee to be incorporated into the biodiversity planning process, and to aid the development of national taxonomic capacity. The chapter shows how collaborations between taxonomists and the wider users of biological diversity data can result in the generation of significant taxonomic capacity. Capacity that can be used to monitor biodiversity as part of certification schemes to leverage premiums for the crop, national biodiversity action plans or local conservation initiatives.

Background

El Salvador is the most densely populated country in Latin America, with a population of 6.9 million occupying 21 000 km2 (The World Bank Group, 2007).

Type: Chapter
Information: Taking Stock of Nature
Participatory Biodiversity Assessment for Policy, Planning and Practice
, pp. 69 - 87

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511676482.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2010

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