The Communities, Conservation and Markets project’s (CCM) mission is to provide strategies, tools and knowledge networks that integrate sustainable agriculture and land management with conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services that contribute to rural productivity and livelihoods. Our focus is on supporting rural resource managers to sustainably manage their landscapes using ecoagriculture approaches and payments for ecosystem services (PES). Our goal is to enhance investments in rural areas and improve local and regional policies to benefit both communities and environmental conservation efforts.  

Why is the CCM important now?

Sustainable development and environmental conservation efforts at the World Bank are increasingly focusing on "production landscapes" where local people depend on agriculture and forests and a multitude of environmental services for their livelihoods. The Bank and its clients are mobilizing to address the challenges of restoring degraded lands and waters critical to sustainable livelihoods as well as mitigating and adapting to climate change and conserving threatened biodiversity. This refined focus demands innovative coordination and integration of multi-sector strategies for production, conservation and rural development. Moreover, addressing these challenges requires building on and reshaping the emerging market forces and incentives that will encourage and enable rural land managers to invest in and sustain productive and resilient landscapes and profitable businesses (including payments for ecosystem services and a variety of value chain innovations for agriculture and forested products). The CCM focuses on these market forces and incentives.

This project draws from and builds on the rich experience of diverse partners who are pioneering solutions to address these challenges and who are looking at how to replicate and scale up successful approaches. Many World Bank projects are also sources of innovation in this area and CCM will tap their knowledge and experiences in a systematic way.

Recently, the Bank has been focusing on developing improved mechanisms for financing mitigation and adaption to climate change in productive landscapes – and do so in a way that also achieves a broader range of development, poverty reduction, and conservation objectives, goals that are a basis for the CCM.

The CCM project will lead to the following globally significant outcomes:

• Strategies for significantly increasing agriculture and food output and improving livelihoods in developing countries that also achieve local, national and global biodiversity conservation.
• Strengthening institutions and communities in the development of markets and payments for ecosystem services to achieve significant new financing for conservation projects that also contribute to local livelihoods.

What can CCM do for stakeholders and sustainable development practitioners?

• Facilitate their engagement with community-based organizations (CBOs) and other civil society partners and networks working in sustainable land and natural resource management.
• Provide tools and methods for grassroots and cross-sectoral knowledge sharing about strategies, practices and market development that achieve production, ecosystem service and livelihood goals.
• Serve as a resource center by providing tools and methods for local and landscape leaders to plan, evaluate, and monitor action at a landscape scale, specifically at the interface between agriculture production, ecosystem services, and local livelihoods, and to design efficient payment schemes that address market demand and local needs.
• Provide tools and capacity building for evaluating and promoting agricultural and forestry product markets that both benefit local producers and also provide incentives for restoring and sustaining ecosystem services.
• Provide tools for evaluating and improving the effectiveness of policy frameworks at local, national, and international levels in supporting community and landscape-scale initiatives for integrated development and conservation.

Where is the CCM focused?

• Tools and methods developed by the CCM will be globally relevant
• Country activities focus primarily on tropical America, eastern and southern Africa (in collaboration with TerrAfrica), and south and southeast Asia
• Policy dialogue and analysis address national and local governance issues as well as international environmental conventions, for example the application of ecoagriculture and payments for ecosystem services in the international conventions on climate change, desertification and biological diversity.