Mirjam de Koning joined the Prespa Ohrid Nature Trust (PONT) as Executive Director in 2016. PONT is a transboundary conservation trust fund dedicated to conserving the rich natural heritage of the mountainous cross border protected areas of Albania, Greece and North Macedonia. In Prespa National Park, the trust has been working closely with GFA. As the KfW funded project will end in early 2025, de Koning talks about her experiences.

PONT calls the Prespa region a “biodiversity hotspot”. What is so special about it?

The South-Western Balkans is one of Europe’s most biologically diverse regions, shaped by restrictive post-war management along the former Iron Curtain, which now forms the Balkan Green Belt. This area hosts microclimatic conditions ideal for endemic species such as the Balkan lynx and large European carnivores, for example bears and wolves. The Prespa and Ohrid lakes are among Europe’s oldest and recognized as one of the most ecologically valuable regions in Europe.

Just like GFA, you are trying to reduce the pressure on natural resources by not only promoting environmental protection but also improving people's economic living conditions. How do you do that in practice?

Through our grants to environmental actors – mainly NGOs – we promote the sustainable use of natural resources by encouraging local communities to engage in practices that balance ecological health with economic needs. This approach often involves implementing resource management strategies that ensure ecosystems to regenerate and thrive while providing ongoing benefits to the community. For instance, sustainable fishing, sustainable grazing or forestry practices such as the cultivation of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) can be adopted, which reduces overexploitation, and allows for the natural replenishment of resources. As communities become more involved in these practices, they are more likely to invest in long-term ecological health. This leads to a more sustainable economy and a healthier environment.

Can you give an example where the success of that method became visible?

Since the summer of 2022, we provided quite a big grant to the regional organization Connecting Natural Values and People, and they are sub-granting smaller grants for nature-based tourism, NTFPs, and other ideas to local NGOs, farmers and business in both Albania and North Macedonia. Up-to-date, 47 sub-grants have been awarded and are implemented with great results. Learning exchange among the sub-grantees is facilitated so that successful measures can be upscaled. Other grants go directly to the protected area (PA) authorities to implement the management plan for their protected area. For example, temporary workers are hired to assist with seasonal jobs such as cleaning and marking of hiking trails and/or fire management.

How have the works of PONT and GFA complemented each other?

GFA benefited from the additional staff to implement the many investments they planned and implemented under the financial cooperation in the same territory while PONT provided additional operational costs for that. In a nutshell, GFA’s technical assistance on the ground combined with PONT funding for operational costs and additional staff helped with the implementation of the management plan for Prespa National Park in Albania. Regular coordination and a clear division of tasks was key to success.

How did the cooperation between PONT and GFA work on the ground in practice?

Especially at the start of the cooperation, we worked together intensively with the PA authority for Prespa National Park in Albania. We learned that the management plan for a protected area is often complex and doesn’t automatically translate into practical tasks. In various planning meetings, GFA assisted to operationalize the management plan into manageable pieces. This led to the translation of these tasks into various terms of references for which additional staff was recruited. GFA staff helped with the recruitment process and the monitoring of the implementation of the additional staff financially supported through PONT. Many of the lessons learned could be scaled to other protected areas in the landscapes that are directly supported by PONT.

As the project concludes soon: How is the region around the national park doing today, how do you see its future?

Due to climate change, Prespa is unfortunately not in a good situation today as water levels dropped considerably in recent years. Besides the protection of natural habitats, agricultural systems need to be put in place that use less water and less pesticides. Of course, the wetland mapping and restoration of wetlands supported by PONT helps but the magnitude of the problem is much wider. A more multidisciplinary and integrated approach in the transboundary landscape is needed, where other sectors and ministries get involved and contribute to the solution. That is why we currently are developing the PONT Connect program to also look at the protection, maintenance and restoration of key ecological corridors outside of the protected areas to make the protected area system more functional and resilient against the negative impacts of climate change.

Can the model you have used also serve for other projects?

Galicica National Park in North Macedonia is an example showcasing the success. A bilateral KfW-funded project was implemented by GFA in this protected area many years before. PONT has supported the Public Institution Galicica National Park since 2017. Through this support, park management staff abandoned the use and sale of timber for self-financing. They have replaced signboards that needed to be replaced. They updated the management plan that was developed under the bilateral project that GFA had supported with their own human resources and they continue to implement the plan in accordance with the criteria for good management of a national park.

More information at www.pont.org

GFA helped establish conservation landscape and buffer zone approaches at the Gunung Leuser ecosystem in the north of Sumatra in Indonesia. Developing a simple financial and institutional approach and applying biodiversity conservation village laws, the project contributed to securing the storage of more than 1.0 Gt CO2 in conservation sites – 1.5 times the volume of Germany’s annual carbon emissions.

Gunung Leuser Ecosystem (GLE) is one of the richest terrestrial ecosystems in the world. At 2.6 million hectares, it is the largest carbon sink in Southeast Asia, and the only place on earth where rhinoceros, elephants, big cats (tiger) and great apes (orang utang) live together. Millions of people in villages and cities in the Aceh and North Sumatra provinces rely on the ecosystem as a key watershed and for agricultural livelihoods. This is why GLE harbours a World and ASEAN Heritage site, the Gunung Leuser National Park, worth protecting. Yet, the ecosystem as well as protected areas are threatened by forest fires, illegal logging and oil palm extensions resulting in habitat and biodiversity loss and increased carbon emissions.

Addressing these problems was the rationale of the Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Protection in the Gunung Leuser Ecosystem (BCCPGLE) project in 2015-2023, implemented by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of Indonesia (MoEF) based on co-finance of a 8.46 million euros grant by the German Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) through the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW Development Bank). Throughout the whole project duration, GFA Consulting Group supported the implementation in five districts of Aceh Province in Sumatra, Indonesia.

The project team developed a simple financial and institutional approach, that was successfully introduced in over 50 village communities bordering the ecosystem. In a first step, the team engaged in participatory processes based on free, prior and informed consent, participatory rural appraisal and land use planning (PLUP), and village development plans. This opened the path for climate and biodiversity supportive forest investments flanked by law enforcement. In a second step, the project used payments for environmental services (PES) as an incentive upon completion of community conservation agreements with nature conservation bodies. Subsequently, the GFA team supported the process of transforming key contents of the agreements including fines into biodiversity conservation village law (‘qanun desa’), endorsed by district governments.

After this initial cycle, the project released a second, performance-based payment to the village communities on the condition that they could prove sound financial management, environmental measures and effective conservation of bordering forest habitats. Towards the end of the project, one villager in Lhok Bengkuang Timur, South Aceh, looked puzzled when asked how long this new village conservation law will apply, and replied:”Forever”.

Such project achievements, among other impacts, demonstrate effective climate protection. In one of the key GLE habitats of orangutan, the Singkil Peat Swamp Nature Reserve, emissions of 1.01 Gt CO₂ were preserved according to 2023 estimates of a research team of University Syiah Kuala/Banda Aceh. The project could only cover part of the village communities bordering the Singkil Peat Swamp Nature Reserve and the Gunung Leuser National Park. Intense efforts are needed also in future to safeguard one of the most outstanding global biodiversity hotspots.

The German-Indonesian team was commended for its excellent work building on the sustained support, assistance and cooperation of the Indonesian Ministries of Finance, Environment and Forestry, the Provincial Government of Aceh, the Gunung Leuser National Park, KfW and BMUV and – last but definitely not least – the village communities involved in the project.

> More information about the project

The 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP16) took place in Cali, Colombia, under the theme "Peace with Nature". A central focus of discussion at the conference is a highly promising framework of approaches to prevent further biodiversity loss: the so-called "Nature-based Solutions" (NbS). GFA recently supported the implementation of a successful project in Colombia using an NbS approach.

NbS address "societal challenges through actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural and modified ecosystems, benefiting people and nature at the same time". As an umbrella term, the NbS framework encompasses various approaches based on these principles, one of which is "Ecosystem-based Adaptation" (EbA). EbA utilizes biodiversity and ecosystem services to reduce vulnerability and strengthen local communities' resilience to climate change.

From November 2020 to March 2024, GFA supported the implementation of the "Ecosystem-based Adaptation for Protection against Coastal Erosion in a Changing Climate” project in Colombia. Led by Colombia's Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (Minambiente) and funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) through KfW Development Bank, the project aimed to mitigate the effects of coastal erosion caused by climate change. Its objective was to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience of coastal ecosystems by stabilizing prioritized coastal areas through EbA measures in four jurisdictions of the Colombian Regional Environmental Corporations (Corporaciones Autónomas Regionales - CARs).

In close cooperation with the local communities, the project financed and implemented 11 EbA-measures, such as the ecological rehabilitation of mangrove forests, participatory beach re-vegetation, and the implementation of the seagrass management planes. The project also established, in close cooperation with the institute INVEMAR, a monitoring system for vulnerable coastal ecosystems.

> Article about the project on the webpage of International Climate Initiative (IKI).

> Within the project, a monitoring platform was set up to monitor the effects of the measures to prevent erosion.

> Watch the project video on YouTube.