Story from Marcia Brown and Vinaya Swaminathan, Foundations of Success
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) invests more than $250 million each year to conserve biodiversity around the world. Since 2012, partner organizations Foundations of Success, Environmental Incentives, and ICF International have worked with USAID’s Forestry and Biodiversity Office to use Open Standards principles and tools to increase the agency’s capacity to design, monitor, evaluate, and improve the impact of their global biodiversity conservation and natural resource management programs.
Just as this project, called Measuring Impact, was winding down in August 2018, we received the exciting news that the Forestry and Biodiversity Office had awarded a follow-up contract for Measuring Impact II (MI2). The MI2 contract focuses on the countries of highest priority for biodiversity conservation, which include Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Indonesia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Madagascar, Kenya, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, and regional missions in South America, Asia, and Central Africa. In addition, “buy-in” contracts secured by the first phase of the Measuring Impact project support biodiversity programming in a number of USAID operating units, including the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, the South American Region/Peru mission, USAID Madagascar, and USAID Colombia.
The interest in and continuation of our partnership is a testament to USAID staff values and commitment to adaptive management principles. Though the expanded scope of MI2 is reaffirming and inspiring, meeting the rapidly increasing demand has been a challenge. We have solicited the help of CCNet coaches in the Latin America/Caribbean region to fulfill the many requests for strategic planning and workshops and plan to do the same in Asia and Africa. As MI2 progresses, we will work together to ensure we make the most of these high-profile and far-reaching opportunities to influence the practice of conservation across the globe. For more information about MI2, contact Vinaya Swaminathan.
