Lessons from our work in the Andes-Amazon region

A riverside resident enters the Anuncho channel to try to harvest the catch of the day. Cocha El Dorado. Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, Loreto. Image courtesy of Walter Wust.

February 3, 2022

In 2003, our board of trustees approved the Andes-Amazon Initiative – one of the foundation’s first – with a goal to “conserve the ecological viability and aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity of the basin.”

That goal, and the initial approach to reach it, were built around an estimate that 350 million hectares would need to be managed and protected effectively. However, the challenges and circumstances surrounding the work have evolved over time, with the COVID-19 pandemic one of the latest examples. An external evaluation conducted in 2020-21 by Amy Shannon Strategic Consulting, along with an expert panel analysis and a monitoring system assessment, investigated how the initiative approached this work while also factoring in all the other elements necessary for a healthy functioning biome over the long term.

In simplest terms, the evaluation asked three overarching questions:

To what extent was the Andes-Amazon Initiative approach the right one to achieve the overall goal?
How well did the Andes-Amazon Initiative execute that approach?
What is the overall, durable impact of the Andes-Amazon Initiative over the lifetime of the initiative?

As a result, the review extracted lessons “from the many ways in which the initiative’s approach has delivered tangible benefits to territorial conservation and management systems in the Amazon, while keeping an eye toward the broader structural challenges.”

Lessons from the external evaluation and expert panel report include:

Both the evaluation and the expert panel conclude that the initiative recognized and captured a unique opportunity with its protected areas approach. The expert panel puts it this way:

“These expansive forests – large enough to sustain ecological processes fundamental to the long-term health of complex tropical communities – are crucial both in ensuring the longevity of the basin’s ecosystems, and in acting as a source of plants and animals for degraded systems nearby. Healthy forests also are essential to the livelihoods and well-being of local human communities, and to the continued vibrancy of indigenous and riverine cultures. They provide critical water resources nationally, and influence climate globally. From the perspective of conservation, environmental, social and economic importance, a more appropriate focus for the grant making of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation would be hard to envision.” The external evaluation validated the effectiveness of the initiative’s prior strategies, and highlights successes as well as challenges over the last 20 years of work. It also offers a number of recommendations for future engagement in the region.

The evaluation offered ten key findings, detailed further in the Executive Summary.

The protected areas approach captured an opportunity, and the subsequent commitment to consolidation is yielding impacts consistent with the Moore Foundation Statement of Founders’ Intent.
The Amazon biome remains at critical risk and could be lost — with catastrophic impacts on biodiversity, climate, and human wellbeing.
Durability requires both consistency and innovation.
Strong and diverse constituencies for conservation are needed and have not been consolidated.
Indigenous territories, governance, and rights require more focused attention.
The foundation has helped to mobilize additional and durable resources for conservation.
Donor coordination has made a difference, but more is needed.
Knowledge creation, monitoring and evaluation make the biggest impact when accompanied by pathways to communication and action.
Long-term gains require long-term commitments.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a grave toll — and may create opportunities.

The external evaluation and expert panel review validated the importance of the initiative’s goal, highlighted successes and challenges, and suggested future opportunities to increase impact and secure enduring gains:

“Choices made over the next decade will determine whether the Amazon biome as we currently know it will endure into the future. The foundation has made an important contribution. It has seeded and supported technical capacity. It has brought millions of acres into protected status and embraced the hard work of keeping them that way. It has bought critical time for hundreds of forest communities and countless species, despite growing pressures on the biome. Along the way, it has learned pivotal lessons about the power and limitation of site-based work, particularly in the face of powerful political and economic interests. Those lessons should inform a bold and creative path forward. There is still a great deal more to be done and the foundation still has the potential to make a real and enduring difference.”

We are sharing the executive summary for the lessons it offers to others working in the region, and for broader application of the findings to improve conservation of important intact ecosystems around the world.

A riverside resident enters the Anuncho channel to try to catch the catch of the day. Cocha El Dorado. Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, Loreto