Report 2004

Contents

1 AVINA 2004 highlights

10 President’s message

16 Growing small business

22 Think globally, litigate locally

26 A global network of “permanent agriculture”

32 Corporate social responsibility – reaching out from a small center

38 Weaving nets along the coasts

47 AVINA in numbers

54 Directors

55 Offices and contacts

Cover photograph:AVINA leader Cadudzzi Salasand friends on the coast ofPichilemu, Chile, where edibleseaweed is being dried for exportto the Far East.

AVINA ANNUAL REPORT 2004 1

AVINA defined its vision “AVINA 2010,” in which promoting and facilitatingnetworks among leaders has become a driving force for achieving socialchange. This annual report highlights the achievements of several of ourpartners within this network-centered focus.

AVINA redefined the role of its operations in Europe to concentrate ontransatlantic ties and networks that help to achieve AVINA’s mission andobjectives in Latin America.

We decided to begin operations in Colombia and to redefine AVINA’sstrategy for Mesoamerica (Central America and southern Mexico), which willincrease the number of representations and service centers from 24 in2004 to 27 in 2005.

AVINA disbursed $32 million to its partners in 2004 and, in line with itsheightened focus on networks, reduced the number of individual approvedprojects by 22% while reducing commitments by only 4%.

The year 2004 witnessed several important changes in roles andresponsibilities:

■ Peter Cleaves left AVINA and its Council in December after more thanseven years of creative and dedicated service to the organization.

■ Antonio Lobo was appointed the regional representative for Europe andBrazil, in addition to his responsibilities in the area of InternationalNetworks.

■ Valdemar de Oliveira became regional coordinator for Colombia andlocal representative for Curitiba, in addition to his responsibilities aslocal representative for Recife.

■ Enrique Piedra Cueva was appointed regional coordinator forMesoamerica, in addition to his responsibilities as local representativefor Montevideo.

■ Rafael Luna was appointed the local representative for Mesoamerica.

AVINA began to develop its Sustainability Scorecard as a means oftransforming its 2010 vision into operational terms and of monitoringprogress toward the achievement of strategic objectives.

AVINA began to simplify its internal processes in order to free up time andhuman resources for closer collaboration with partners.

AVINA 2004 highlights

2 AVINA ANNUAL REPORT 2004

“This way of thinking is causing usto consider ourselves less afoundation and more anorganization that works with ourpartners to promote social change.”


“…it is calling upon us to do so with some healthy

modesty, as we recognize themagnitude of the challengesinherent in such a pursuit.”


“…water, marine-coastal issues, and socialresponsibility – all areas where AVINA has already

invested considerable human and financial resourcesin recent years – will remain top-tier priorities.”


“AVINA believes it can also include newbusiness models at the bottom of the pyramidthat allow the poor to participate more fullyin local and regional economies.”


t would be easy to be discouraged by the challenges facing Latin America.Statistically, the region is improving. But change is happening so slowly thatat current rates of progress, only after the year 2200 will Latin America reachthe Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the proportion ofpeople living on less than a dollar a day.1

Countless problems, including persistent corruption and weak rule of law,hinder existing development efforts. And in a region that already has theworld’s highest income disparity, a recent widening of that disparity in manycountries means that the growth that is achieved often does not reach thepeople who need it most.

In the midst of these daunting circumstances, we also continue to see whatAVINA’s founder Stephan Schmidheiny has referred to in the past as “islands ofhope.” Anecdotes from our partners abound, from success at judicial reform inArgentina to the saving of a national park in Paraguay and the introduction ofnew models of public education in Bolivia. These are some of the many storiesthat keep us going, and these islands of hope have been instructive in the refine-ment of AVINA’s strategy and visionfor the future. Yet positive as they are,they should not distract us from thesearch for fundamental progress.

During 2004, all of AVINA partici-pated in a strategic reassessment todefine a vision of “AVINA 2010.” Weevaluated our own performance, listened to feedback from our partners, andanalyzed the rapidly changing world around us. The results of our assessmentconfirmed that AVINA should not change its basic mission: partnering withleaders of civil society and the business sector in their initiatives toward sus-tainable development. They also confirmed that our new strategy should not somuch change our direction as build on approaches we have found to work.

Networking is one such approach. The examples mentioned above, as well asthe five articles in this report, show incipient cases where a key element towardachieving social change involved connecting the efforts of leaders to create move-ments greater than the sum of their parts. Our experience has shown us that an

President’s message

I

…in a region that already has the world’shighest income disparity, a recent wideningof that disparity in many countries meansthat the growth that is achieved often doesnot reach the people who need it most.

1 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr etal. Human DevelopmentReport 2004, p.133(United NationsDevelopmentProgramme, 2004, New York)

explicit leader-in-network focus, in whichAVINA promotes and facilitates networks ofleaders across regions and themes, offerssuperior means for catalyzing processes ofsocial transformation toward developmentin Latin America that is truly sustainable.

I believe AVINA must strive to achieveno less. We must justify our existence byfocusing on what it would take to reversethe negative trends confronting the regionand to accelerate the positive ones. “Islandsof hope,” important as they are, will notlead to changes in systems and structures.Our field experience is challenging us to bemore ambitious and to seek societal changeat a systemic level. At the same time, it iscalling upon us to do so with some healthymodesty, as we recognize the magnitude ofthe challenges inherent in such a pursuit.

Last year I wrote in this section aboutAVINA “helping leaders forge themselvesinto a powerful network – the social changeequivalent of a vast electric grid spreading light and power throughout theregion.” Electricity remains a helpful image to describe our strategic transition.Instead of generating “power” in the form of funding or other scarce resources,AVINA now seeks to become a key connector in the grid. Knowledge, ideas, andguidance join financing in the flow of resources. AVINA works together withother power plants, including our partners, and energy flows in all directions.

This way of thinking is causing us to consider ourselves less a foundation andmore an organization that works with our partners to promote social change.AVINA is more and more acting as an alliance builder, a broker of opportunities.We have reduced the average grant size and decentralized our decision-makingprocess. We continue to search for ways to add value to leaders beyond the



financial support we provide. As I first mentioned last year, whereas today ourspending is still predominantly directed toward “grant-making,” I predict thatby the year 2010 it will focus on providing ever more value-added services forleaders and networks.

In order to effectively achieve these aims, we recognize that AVINA will needto sharpen the focus of its efforts. Thus, for the first time since our founding, wewill focus on certain thematic areas within the broader umbrella of sustainabledevelopment. Rule of law and transparency, water, marine-coastal issues, andsocial responsibility – all areas where AVINA has already invested considerablehuman and financial resources in recentyears – will remain top-tier priorities. Wewill also continue to focus on business andsocial entrepreneurship, management ofnatural resources, education, and income-generation initiatives. In so doing, weightwill also be given to local differences andconditions.

One new networking opportunity in particular that AVINA is exploring is“business for social inclusion,” commonly referred to as business at the bottomof the economic pyramid. From the business perspective, this type of activityaims to help the poor meet their needs while also benefiting the company’s bot-tom line. From the developmental perspective, AVINA believes it can alsoinclude new business models at the bottom of the pyramid that allow the poorto participate more fully in local and regional economies. In collaboration withour corporate partners at GrupoNueva, AVINA plans to look seriously at both ofthese perspectives as additional avenues for bringing the VIVA concept to life.

AVINA is reaching inwards as well as out. In 2004, we started a two-pronged,coordinated effort to achieve operational excellence; our goals are to streamlineour operations and to align procedures with our new strategic orientation. Inessence, this effort aims to focus AVINA operations more sharply on the manage-ment of local, regional, and international strategies for achieving social change.

The first dimension is to clarify and simplify AVINA’s internal processes, aneffort begun in the third quarter of 2004, which we expect to complete by

…today our spending is still predominantly directed toward “grant-making,” I predict that by the year2010 it will focus on providing evermore value-added services for leadersand networks.


mid-2005. Through a mapping of its value stream, AVINA will eliminate severalprocesses and streamline others in order to ultimately arrive at a clear new set ofstandard procedures. The second dimension of the operational excellence effortis to transform the Annual Operating Plan into a three-year Strategic Plan.

This plan is the first step in the larger and more holistic process of creatingan AVINA Sustainability Scorecard. This management tool will help us to betteridentify, measure, and focus on AVINA’s priorities and in doing so to align ourentire operation toward the achievement of AVINA’s vision for 2010. In 2005,we will initiate a participatory process for creating a global strategy map, whichwill provide the foundation for also implementing the Sustainability Scorecardin our local offices.

As I reflect on my first full year in the presidency of AVINA, I take pride in thecommitment and hard work of our staff and our many partners in LatinAmerica, and I thank them for their valuable contributions in 2004. I also feelencouraged that the reflection process that went with it has provided AVINA

with a clearer vision and sense of direction. We recognize that the path wechose will not be easy, but we believe that our founder, the VIVA Trust,GrupoNueva, our partners, and Latin American society in general deserve nolesser effort on our part. ■

BRIZIO BIONDI-MORRA


“I also feel encouraged that the reflection process thatwent with it has provided AVINA with a clearer vision…”


n 1983, fate placed a Panamanian archbishopnext to a Swiss industrialist at a luncheon inEurope. They talked.

In 1984 in Panama, Archbishop MarcusMcGrath and Stephan Schmidheiny launched theFoundation for Economic and Social Develop-ment (FUNDES in Spanish).

FUNDES, which today has offices in 10 LatinAmerican countries, champions the cause of theowners of small and medium-sized companies,typically with from 5 to 100 employees. There areabout 600,000 such companies (small and medi-um enterprises, or SMEs) operating formally in theFUNDES target area, and some 70,000 of thesehave registered as FUNDES clients.

In the 10 countries, SMEs account for two-fifths of total formal employment and a third ofGDP. About half are in or near the big cities. Yetwhen one adds in all the SMEs in the informal sec-tor – operating outside regulations and outside of

national statistics – it is clear that these business-es, along with micro-businesses of one to fivepeople, hold the key to sustainable economicdevelopment in the region. They offer the mostpeople the best chance of meeting their own andtheir families’ needs.

However, SMEs have been poorly served inLatin America and elsewhere. Governments tendto ignore their real needs while burying their oper-ations in bureaucracy, which explains the largesize of informal sectors. Banks mainly ignore themin favor of the bigger companies.

So FUNDES began as a credit guaranteeagency, essentially going to a bank with an SMEowner seeking a loan and offering to guaranteerepayment of a percentage of the loan. FUNDEShoped that the banks would realize what goodcustomers these small entrepreneurs are andseek to do more business with them.

The entrepreneurs proved reliable customers,

Growing small business

I

A “production line” of wooden chairs at a workshop in El Salvador. FUNDES associations of between 7 and 15 entrepreneurs help companies join forces to attain common objectives thatthey would not be able to attain on their own and to be more competitive on the national orinternational market.

Making wickerfurniture in a workshopthat is part of aFUNDES strategicassociation of furnituremakers in El Salvador.About 40 of theseassociations, which havebenefited more than 400business people, areinvolved in areas such astourism, agro-industry,light industry, and crafts.


In the Buenos Aires silversmith workshopof Juan C. Pallarols, many of the toolsused every day are 250 years old, used

and repaired by many generations. Thecompany is not a typical FUNDES client,being more secure and famous than most.But it is a small business with small busi-ness problems. Pallarols manager and part-ner Mirta L. Molinari explains:

“Our company is small, but is steadilygaining in prestige. Our business contacts,not to mention important individual clients,

mean that our staff must be ready to respondwith sensitive, personalized attention. When Ifound out about the FUNDES Customer Ser-vice course, I thought it was important tosend those employees who were directlyinvolved in first contacts with customerseither over the phone or personally.

“This first experience was very gratify-ing, and after it we organized a meeting inwhich, in addition to sharing experiences,FUNDES proposed distinct ways to improveinternal and external communications. From

then on I tried to promote the participation ofcertain employees in other courses.

“Opening up to new ideas has alwaysseemed important to me; one should nottake refuge in the company thinking thatthings should not change. This is one of the main defects some of our small andmedium companies have: we keep workingas we began. Today experience shows usthat growth is based on training at all levels,and in small companies the challenge iseven greater.”


but the major banks have never really gotten overtheir preferences for large companies. A FUNDESreport said starkly, “A basic premise provedwrong: under the real, dominant conditions, thebanks had little incentive and little real interest inFUNDES clients.” Worse, the guarantee approachturned out to be a relatively expensive way toreach relatively few people.

“We now know, with hindsight – always 20-20– that credit guarantee wasn’t what was most urgently needed,” Stephan Schmidheinyexplained. “When we conducted an impact analy-sis a few years into the project, it came to light thatwe weren’t achieving the results we’d hoped for. Itwas then that FUNDES went out and finally askedits clients the all-important question: What do youneed? And they gave us the answer: education,training, consulting.”

Another surprising finding of FUNDES’ mid-90sresearch into its operations was that “our ownclients let us know that FUNDES’ services shouldhave a price that reflects their value,” the reportsaid. The organization realized that it had been toomuch of a charity in the beginning. To be takenseriously by business people – and to be financiallysustainable – it had to be more business-like.

The organization was once run out of Switzer-land, but a 1998 meeting of all country directorscreated FUNDES International (FI) in San José,Costa Rica, and that meeting reported that“FUNDES has evolved from being a Swiss organi-zation operating in Latin America to being a LatinAmerican network with Swiss help.” (FUNDES alsochanged its title to “Foundation for SustainableDevelopment,” but this allowed the Spanishacronym to stay the same.)

AVINA not only helps to fund FUNDES, but itprovides strategic advice to strengthen the organi-zation and assists it in establishing relationshipswith AVINA leaders.

Each national general manager is responsiblefor what FUNDES does in each country, while FI isdedicated to research and development and helpsto coordinate and stimulate this network. Thenational organizations offer at least 40 differentbusiness courses and 10 different consultingprograms. The FUNDES network has run radio pro-grams in Panama, Guatemala, and Chile and atelevision program in Chile. It offers a course inGuatemala in the Mayan language of the indige-

Some of the tools on thewalls of the Buenos Airessilversmith workshop of JuanCarlos Pallarols have beenused, and repaired, for over250 years. The company ismore affluent than mostFUNDES clients, but it hasthe same small businessproblems.

The Pallarols’ companymoved from Spain toArgentina, bringingcenturies-old techniques with it and passing skillsdown from generation togeneration.


Luis Armando Castro of FUNDES ElSalvador has been establishingalliances of similar companies:

“A strategic association is aprocess by which companies joinforces to attain common objectivesthat they would not be able to attainon their own, to be more competitiveon the national or international mar-ket. These associations are made upof between 7 and 15 business people.

“FUNDES in El Salvador has been

responsible for setting up 40 associa-tions that have helped more than 400business people, involved in areassuch as tourism, agro-industry (rabbitbreeding, tilapia farming, raw sugarproduction, milk products, shrimp,indigo dyeing), light industry (leather,shoemaking), chemical productionand crafts (textiles and furniture).

“We have been working with atourist group in Nahuizalco, managingto get 11 small-business people to

cooperate. Originally they were strug-gling individually and having no majorimpact. Now they are offering a pack-age that is bringing more tourists tothe village. The group is organizingSunday markets with typical food,crafts, and furniture at competitiveprices and of high quality. We aretraining them in service and customerattention and marketing. This helpedthem to win first place in a nationalcompetition.”

nous people. It has listservs, interactive websites,and an Intranet.

Yet while FUNDES once took pride in this “cartof integrated products,” it has since moved on,according to FI Executive Director Rene Bronsil:“the sale of products has become the sale of solu-tions. And these solutions must be adapted to thegroup or the business.”

Rene describes FUNDES as working on fourlevels. At micro level are the business people andcompanies it serves; these are also its partners.The meso or middle level involves institutionalevolution and strategic collaboration with otherorganizations. The macro level involves trying tochange the business environment of Latin Ameri-ca. The meta level includes all the others under theoverall goal of “promoting entrepreneurship.”

That macro-level work, the Business EnablingEnvironment Program, may eventually prove to beFUNDES’ most important contribution to LatinAmerican business. It is notoriously hard to get alicense to operate a business in the region; youmay have to spend months visiting scores of regu-latory offices and pay a large part of an averageannual income in fees.

Dr. Juan del Granado, the mayor of the Boliviancapital of La Paz, described how he found out froma World Bank report that his city was one of theworst in terms of the time, money, and energy ittook to get a city business permit. In partnershipwith the International Finance Corporation (IFC), LaPaz created a municipal development plan thatmade the permit process more transparent, less

“FUNDES is a strange creature –a civil society organization thatsupports business. Usually thesupport is expected to flow in theopposite direction, a trickle-downfrom corporations to citizens’groups. One could almost say thatFUNDES defies the laws ofgravity, quietly instigating amounting ‘trickle-up’ effectagainst the traditional flow ofsupport. FUNDES believes thatsustainable development beginsat the local level and works itsway up.”Stephan Schmidheiny


bureaucratic, and less prone to corruption. It inte-grated procedures and simplified requirements.

The new system managed to cut the averagenumber of steps to get a permit from 46 to 13, andthe waiting time from 17 days to four hours. Mostimportant, it stimulated business by attracting a lotmore applicants, many of whom had doubtlessbeen operating outside the law previously.

FUNDES helped with similar improvements inCosta Rica, El Salvador, and elsewhere in Bolivia,including about 30 municipalities. Such successhelps explain why the IFC, a member of the World

Bank family, went into a partnership agreement withFUNDES in 2002. Today the IFC helps FUNDES in itsmission, and also spreads to the rest of the worldthe tools and procedures developed by FUNDES.

“Perhaps FUNDES’ most significant achieve-ment over the years has been in playing the role ofpioneer in putting the SME issue on the map,”Stephan Schmidheiny noted. “When FUNDESbegan its work in 1984, SME was a non-issue thatwas virtually absent from public debate. Today theissue can be found on 10 out of 10 electoral plat-forms in Latin America.” ■

“FUNDES has contributed significantly to small and medium enterprisedevelopment across Latin America and has helped to place SME issues on theagendas of those who design and implement public policy throughout the region….A key pillar of FUNDES’ strategy is partnership with the local business community.” World Bank President James Wolfensohn

The elegant wickerfurniture being made in thisEl Salvador workshop canfetch good prices in theSunday markets, if sellersknow how to market and dealwith customers.


E-LAW amiga María Virginia “Vicky” CajiaoJiménez networking in Costa Rica beside the PacificOcean. Her legal efforts help to protect a vastbiological corridor in the Pacific and the planet’ssecond-largest barrier reef in the Atlantic.


t describes itself as a “network of friends madepossible by technology.” But it is more complexand more powerful than that. The EnvironmentalLaw Alliance Worldwide (E-LAW) is a web of 300public interest environmental lawyers in 60nations, 113 of whom work in Latin America.

E-LAW’s story began in the late 1980s whena Malaysian lawyer was battling a big Japanesecompany that was mining and refining rare earthminerals near a small village and generatingradioactive waste. Lawyers in Japan came acrossa company document that said that the refiningprocess was far too dangerous to be used inJapan; it could only be used abroad. They flew toMalaysia, handed over the document, and helpedthe Malaysian lawyer run the company out of townand bring justice to the villagers.

In 1989, the Malaysian and Japanese lawyersand public interest environmental lawyers fromeight other countries attended a conference inEugene, Oregon. They wondered aloud about thepossibilities for sharing information across bordersto protect the environment and safeguard publichealth. Someone suggested that this new thingcalled e-mail might help. Thus E-LAW was born,and this meeting explains why Oregon is the tech-nological home of the network.

The E-LAW model is based on providing net-work members with legal and scientific help with acase, when they need it and where they need it. Todo this effectively, E-LAW pioneered a system ofinformation technology “circuit riders” in variousregions. These “riders” bring technology and techsupport for computer and e-mail systems and givelocal lawyers powerful backup in taking on envi-ronmental abuses.

Not all of E-LAW’s help is virtual. In 2004, US-based Peruvian staff scientist Meche Lu traveled toBolivia to help network partners at the BolivianEnvironmental Law Society educate people fromthe remote village of Ixiamas about the impacts ofdeforestation, the dangers of gold mining in rain-forest rivers, and how communities around theworld are working to protect forest resources.Other similar examples abound.

E-LAW also helps lawyers set up and managetheir organizations and raise funds; it offers onlineenvironmental, law, and science courses, and setsup task forces on cases and issues.

In order to provide these value-added servicesat minimal cost and with maximum efficiency –and to promote cohesion among members – E-LAW has developed a unique network and operat-ing structure. The Oregon-based office has a total

Think globally, litigate locally

I

Lottie Cunningham Wren, a Miskito Indian,E-LAW lawyer, helped set a court pre-cedent that may change the way govern-

ments around the world treat native lands.Lottie helped Mayagna Indians, whose forestlands on Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast were beingclear-cut by a foreign company, win a startlingvictory before the Inter-American Court ofHuman Rights.

In September 2001, the court ruled that thegovernment of Nicaragua violated the human

rights of the Mayagna by allowing the companyto cut trees on the Mayagna’s traditional lands.The court directed the Nicaraguan government tohelp the Mayagna demarcate the lands and gainlegal title to them. The forests were saved.

This victory means that an international bodyhas essentially ordered a national government torespect the fundamental human rights of indige-nous people to their traditional lands. Lottie is nowworking with communities to implement thecourt’s ruling.


The 5,000 residents of Chacras dela Merced on the outskirts ofCórdoba, Argentina, have a large,

ugly neighbor: a leaky old sewage plantwhose discharge is contaminating localwells from which residents get theirdrinking water.

E-LAW member Victor Ricco of theCentro de Derechos Humanos y Am-biente (CEDHA – Center for HumanRights and the Environment) and Dr JuanMiguel Picolotti called in E-LAW US envi-ronmental research scientist Meche Lu.Meche, Victor, and Juan had a notaryaccompany them as they took watersamples and delivered them to a locallab. The lab found that family wells had

dangerously high levels of fecal bacteria– 2,000 bacteria per 100 milliliters ofwater. There should be absolutely nosuch bacteria in drinking water, theWorld Health Organization recommends.

Victor, CEDHA, and the people ofChacras de la Merced took the resultsto court. The court found in their favorand ordered city authorities to provide,within 24 hours, 200 liters of cleanwater per person per day to the affect-ed families. CEDHA and the communityare continuing negotiations with localauthorities to provide safe drinkingwater to the entire community andclean up the river, and recently the fed-eral government has begun to improve

the treatment plant.“Being a member of the E-LAW net-

work has been a crucial element in myprofessional life,” says Victor. “It hashelped me obtain specific technicalassistance when I needed it, and thenetwork has always been by my side,providing constant, unflagging coopera-tion. Being linked allows us to knowabout and help with the work of all othernetwork amigos. From a personal andprofessional standpoint, being a mem-ber of the E-LAW network has helpedme do a better job, diversify my investi-gations and resources, and given all ofus who engage in this work the supportthat enables us to go on.”

E-LAW memberVictor Ricco, a fellowattorney, and a localwoman sample waterfrom the Suquia River,contaminated by asewage treatment plantnear the city of Córdoba,Argentina. This workwon local people theright to a supply of freshwater from thegovernment.

staff of only 10, including two scientists and twoattorneys, who are at the service of the worldwidealliance. The network itself is democratic, andmembership is by nomination and unanimous vote,which promotes a shared vision and also pride injoining the E-LAW community. E-LAW has beengoverned by the same rules for a decade and takesno positions as a network; the focus is strength-ening members locally rather than assuming positions globally.

As for E-LAW’s relationship with AVINA, BernJohnson, executive director of E-LAW in Oregon,recalls, “AVINA found us and we found AVINA at theright time. Latin American public interest lawyerswant to help build a sustainable future. AVINAforced us or helped us take a more regional view: todevelop a regional budget and regional technology.So for the past three or four years, Latin Americahas been our strongest region.” (In fact, LatinAmerica has such infuence in E-LAW that all mem-bers worldwide are known as amigos.)

In partnering with Bern, AVINA provided support to

improve the overall services provided by the Oregonoffice to Latin American members. AVINA and E-LAWalso agreed on a challenge investment to help thenetwork core toward its goal of financial sustainability.On the ground, several local AVINA representationshave also partnered with 10 E-LAW amigos in differ-ent countries to support their change agendas withcomplementary services at a local level.

Both AVINA and E-LAW see tremendous value inidentifying opportunities where work at the interna-tional level can nourish and strengthen work at thelocal level – and vice versa. As Lori Maddox, E-LAWUS associate director remarked, “E-LAW helps publicinterest lawyers give life to laws on paper, give com-munities and citizens a voice. When a communitycleans up its water and the lawyer is with E-LAW, weall learn. We amplify the impact of our victories.”

These local victories strengthen the internationalnetwork, which in turn channels learning back toother members at the local level. Ultimately, this pat-tern creates a virtuous cycle of positive change forthe environment and public health the world over. ■


The legal work of María VirginiaCajiao Jiménez (Vicky to herfriends) stretches from Costa

Rica far out into both the Atlantic andPacific Oceans.

She is working on the preservation ofthe Meso-American Reef, the world’ssecond-largest barrier reef, whichextends in the Atlantic from northernYucatán in Mexico southwards to Hon-duras’ Bay Islands, thus also lying off-shore of Belize and a bit of Guatemala.

“Through E-LAW I get information,advice, compare laws in different coun-tries. I find, for example, that the prob-lems in this little country of Costa Ricaare not so different from the problems in

big countries,” says Vicky. “I see thenthat our value, our service, is not forCosta Rica but the world. That’s when Ifeel that E-LAW makes sense.”

To the west, Vicky is working withAVINA’s partner organization, the oceanconservation group MarViva, to seewhat national and international lawscan be used to protect the newly pro-claimed Tropical Eastern Pacific MarineCorridor (covered in the 2003 AVINAAnnual Report). This ecological passageconnects the Galapagos Islands(Ecuador) to islands lying off the coastsof Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia.Furthermore, as an AVINA leader, Vickyis currently working with other AVINA

leaders and the local representation topromote informed dialogue on a newfishing law currently before CostaRica’s Congress.

Vicky is proud that she has alwaysworked as a lawyer “for the environment,and not for a company. E-LAW gave methe courage to see that I could maintain acareer as a public interest lawyer.”

Vicky shares an interest with VictorRicco in Argentina, and the entire E-LAWnetwork, in promoting in Latin Americathe 1998 Aarhus Convention, underwhich governments agree to provideaccess to environmental information, topublic participation in decision-making,and to justice.


ermaculture is really aboutfreedom – freedom fromwant,” argues André Soares,who runs the Institute of Per-maculture and Eco-villages ofthe Savanna (IPEC) in Brazil.

“It is also the basis of sus-tainability, and once you know it, you do not turnback. Once you have lived sustainably, there is noother way,” added this veteran of the UN Develop-ment Programme, now an AVINA leader.

“Freedom from want” is a compelling image inBrazil, where over one-fifth of the population ispoor. And “sustainability” is equally compelling in acountry where poor farmers feel they must overusewater, topsoil, and firewood to survive from day today, and wealthy farmers are spreading ranchesand soybean farms into rainforests and wetlands.

“Brazil is one of the largest exporters of food inthe world,” notes André. “We are the largest insoy, orange juice, coffee, beef, and many otherfoods. However, we continue to export to pay ourdebts. We are really paying our debts by exportingour topsoil, our future food.”

Permaculture has as many definitions as prac-titioners: from “permanent agriculture” (and even“permanent culture”) to broader views such as “aholistic approach to landscape design and humanculture. It is an attempt to integrate several disci-plines, including biology, ecology, geography,agriculture, architecture, appropriate technology,gardening, and community building.”

“Permaculture is not about the chicken, thetree, or the house, but how the chicken and thetree are connected so that we can feed the chickenfrom the tree and live better,” André offers.

André would add education to permaculture’sdisciplines, perhaps at the top: “the future dependson education, reaching children, young people, and

A global network of“permanent agriculture”

P“

What looks like unkempt bush is a lushgarden near Brasilia that benefits from theprinciples of permaculture, an approach toagriculture serving people and the planet.


adults, reaching out and creating new leaders.” He founded IPEC, part of the continent-wide

Permacultura America Latina (PAL) network, in1998 to establish models of sustainability suitableto the natural and social realities of Brazil. Thesemodels have become “ecoversities,” and Andréand PAL hope to establish at least five, one for eachof Brazil’s main ecosystems. The one nearPirenópolis, outside of the capital, Brasilia, focuseson the cerrado, the high, semi-arid, savanna-likeprairie that covers about 20% of Brazil.

Courses here draw from all over Latin Americaand the world. The center is associated with theUniversity of Massachusetts in the United States,Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England, andseveral Australian universities. So students comefrom almost everywhere, including, recently,Ethiopia, Palestine, and Haiti.

Courses, most of which are 90 days, in keepingwith the reality of a Brazilian visa time limit, coversubjects such as an international permaculturecertificate, the design of permaculture-basedvillages (ecovilas), building houses with mud,sewage recycling, solar energy, solar food drying,and organic food growing and cooking.

Some students bring their own tents and sleep-ing bags and camp out. Discount students bringtheir own plates and cups (“not disposable!”).Everyone must bring work boots; “we want to gettheir feet in the dirt,” says André. And students areasked not to bring domestic animals, invasivespecies, or a bad mood. There are dorms forlonger-term students.

The cerrado center is the teaching hub. Anotherecoversity, near Manaus, covers the Amazonianecosystem, where Carlos Miller, formerly an AVINA

A view of the cerrado, thehigh, semi-arid, savanna-likeprairie that covers about 20% ofBrazil and is little known outsideof that country.


André was pleased and surprisedrecently when officers of theBrazilian armed forces turned up

at IPEC’s Pirenópolis and Manaus eco-versities to study permaculture, with anemphasis on building adobe housesfrom mud brick and from plastic bagsfilled with earth.

IPEC and PAL hope to open an eco-versity in Haiti in 2005; the Brazilianarmy is already there in a peace-keep-ing, reconstruction role. Haiti is a coun-try in desperate need of permaculture.Some 80% of the people live in seriouspoverty, and 70% survive by agricul-ture, most of them on tiny plots. In

places, topsoil has been eroded tobedrock, and forests have been clearedto produce charcoal for cooking.

“IPEC plays a central role in localcommunity development, training peo-ple and creating income opportunities,reversing the trend of rural exodus,”says André. “We have recently won thenational Casa Claudia prize for sociallyrelevant architecture, for producingreference models for the future ofBrazilian housing.”

Adobe housing would be good forHaiti, but it is also good for an armyestablishing temporary quarters there:“If they build conventional, well-fortified

structures, it will be very expensive; ifthey use abandoned structures, theywill be flimsy. Mud building is a perfectsolution,” said André, who added that itwas wonderful fun to watch the armyofficers struggling with bags of mud.

“Housing is the biggest problem ofSouth America,” he said. “In Brazilalone there is a housing deficit of 4.8million houses. There is no way thebuilding industry can cope with thisdemand. Our models provide a self-help approach to the housing crisis,teaching people how to use localmaterials to build a comfortable andaffordable house.”

A close-up of the mud-in-sacks building technique that helped IPEC win the national Casa Claudiaprize for socially relevant architecture, for producing reference models for the future of Brazilian housing.


Mark Hillmann, a 28-year-oldBrazilian, is a former studentof André who found André to

be “an excellent demonstrator of tech-niques and concepts.”

Mark is now manager of projectsand research at Hacienda La Pacífica, alarge commercial farm in semi-aridwestern Costa Rica. The governmentbuilt a huge canal to bring water overthe central mountains into the region,and the canal flows through La Pacífica.So today the farm has enough water togrow paddy rice and raise tilapia, thefreshwater fish that feed largely on veg-etation. However, as more farmers usethe water, supplies may diminish. Markis trying to get the most out of the waterand the entire cycle of production.

He studied agronomy in the FederalUniversity of Rio Grande do Sul, thenadministration, and then got a master’sdegree in agro-business.

“I got interested in permaculturewhen I was looking at ways to reducecosts, because conventional agriculturejust is not sustainable or even economi-cally viable,” Mark said. “There is a

great dependency on external inputs,particularly energy.”

“I was looking for new alternativesto integrate the administrative aspectwith ecological production systems. InBrazil there are not many opportunitiesto work in this field. Through the Inter-net, I discovered various initiatives inCosta Rica, which also has a history insustainable development. Here I foundmore initiatives in sustainable or alter-native agriculture with a more com-mercial focus than in Brazil, wheresustainable agriculture has more to dowith subsistence. I found indigenouscommunities that are producing organi-cally for export.

“At La Pacífica, I am interested inseeing whether my experience inadministration and alternative produc-tion systems can be applied to a ‘capi-talist farm’ – whether permacultureprinciples can be applied on a largerscale and help convert a conventionalfarm to more sustainable practices.

“Here we have tilapia production,conventional rice production, andorganic rice production. In order for the

tilapia production to be economicallyviable – for the fish to reach the requiredsize quickly – they need a lot of food thatdoes not meet organic standards.

“In conventional agriculture, you buyanimal feed from outside. In permacul-ture, animals are part of a closed cir-cuit. Here we are growing tilapia in therice paddies; they live off algae andother micro-organisms from the soiland around the roots of the rice. At thisstage there is not much water. Then thewater level is raised; the rice is harvest-ed; the water is drained off and the fishare harvested via escape channelswhen the water level is lowered.

“Each permaculture system is dif-ferent. It is a question of getting to knowthe local ecosystem and adapting pro-duction processes to it. Permaculturerequires a greater sensitivity to localecosystems.

“There are a few similar initiativeselsewhere in the world working with riceand fish. However, these tend to be moreof a subsistence nature. I want to applypermaculture on a larger scale and con-tribute to sustainable development.”

“Permaculture is reallyabout freedom – freedomfrom want,” says AndréSoares, who runs the Instituteof Permaculture and Eco-villages of the Savanna inBrazil. Here he showsstudents the lay-out of aneco-village.


leader and now our representative in Manaus, pio-neered a permaculture approach. Thus AVINA notonly helps to fund IPEC, but through Carlos’expertise can help with advice and contacts.

Another ecoversity covers the cooler, morehumid pampas (prairie) grasslands near theUruguay border, an ecosystem better known inArgentina. There are plans for a coastal center inthe poor, arid, northeast of Brazil, and for a center inthe Pantanal, the world’s largest wetlands region.

The ecoversities are based on two modern,concrete, and global premises, says André:“humanity’s need to learn to live sustainably tosurvive the current trends of climate change, pop-ulation growth, loss of natural habitat, and socialinequality; and the fact that our current educationalsystem was not designed to produce leaders capa-ble of facing the sustainability challenge.”

“As a result, we live by a chronic lack of vision,both globally and locally.” The permaculture visionis both ecological and political in its three princi-ples: care for the earth; care for the people; dividethe surplus justly. ■

Students come from almost everywhere – including, recently, Ethiopia,Palestine, and Haiti – to the permaculture “ecoversities” to learn how to turndifficult terrain into sustainably productive farmland.

Students build a house with a long coil of mud-packed plastic. This is thesort of structure that interested the Brazilian army because it produces toughbuildings cheaply and quickly.


Corporate social responsibility –reaching out from a small center

ruguay is a small country – fewerthan 3.5 million people – and asmall economy, with a grossnational income per person of only$4,370. Yet it has developed ahome-grown and thriving group ofbusiness leaders promoting cor-

porate social responsibility (CSR).DERES (a Spanish acronym referring to corpo-

rate social responsibility) was conceived in 1999by a group of business leaders, an effort promotedby Uruguay’s Catholic University, which remains astaunch supporter of DERES and hosts its officeson campus.

“DERES is guided by a business vision and isconstantly learning,” says Eduardo Shaw, DERESexecutive director and an AVINA leader. “One of itstasks is to learn of and to get involved in otherrealities within the region and around the world soas to capitalize on different experiences andacquired knowledge.”

The group has four working “commissions,”covering fundraising, events, communications,and research and development. The latter two leadits constant learning, bringing in material fromoutside and turning it into Uruguayan products.

Since CSR was so esoteric a concept inUruguay until recently, DERES published a SelfEvaluation manual to help companies see wherethey were, and a First Steps manual to help themget started on a strategic CSR program. Eduardosays it is “maintaining strong links with the aca-demic sector… to help us define the roles andresponsibilities of business people toward society.”

It has reached far outside of Uruguay, becom-ing a member of EMPRESA, the CSR organization

U

DERES President Omar Braga admits that“early in my career I worked alone. I wasgiven a problem, and I tried to solve it on myown.” But “for me today, there is no otherway forward than to do things with others.”


that covers all the Americas, launched with a greatdeal of help from the US-based Business for SocialResponsibility (BSR). It has close ties to the influ-ential Ethos Institute in Brazil, which also receivesAVINA funding and other help. It hosts a stream ofmeetings and conferences of outside experts toadvise it, including experts from GrupoNueva, theLatin American holding company that belongs tothe VIVA Trust.

Working with the UN DevelopmentProgramme, it organized manyUruguayan companies to sign on to theUN Global Compact (between businessand society), greatly increasing the num-ber of Latin American companies thathad signed the pact.

DERES has opened negotiations tobecome a partner of the World BusinessCouncil for Sustainable Development(WBCSD), which has over 50 suchnational partners, stretching from Chinato Argentina. The WBCSD, founded byAVINA founder Stephan Schmidheiny,

uses this Regional Network both to disseminate thelatest thinking on CSR and to learn what tools andapproaches bodies like DERES are developing.

Marcel Engel, director of the WBCSD’s RegionalNetwork, notes that the key CSR issues in Latin Ameri-ca “reflect the region’s overall challenges: environ-mental degradation (in a continent with the highestmega-diversity of flora and fauna worldwide), poverty,unemployment, crime, income concentration, corrup-tion, and lack of respect for the rule of law.

Maria Emilia Correa is vice-presi-dent for social and environmen-tal responsibility at GrupoNueva,

a member of the AVINA Council, and aninternationally recognized expert on CSR.When DERES originally approachedAVINA, AVINA sent Maria Emilia to sharewith DERES her experiences with CSR.Below, she offers some thoughts on CSRin Latin America:

“Business in Latin America has alwaysbeen more focused on social issues thanon environmental issues. It may have todo with the Catholic heritage and thenotion of ‘giving back to society.’ Therehave been innovative foundations here for50 to 60 years. But this hasn’t affectedcorporate behavior.

“What’s new about CSR is that wewant to change the way we do business –we want corporations that are not corrupt,that offer safe working conditions, that are

conscious of the environmental and socialimpacts of their day-to-day operations.

“There is a lot of influence from the USand Europe, in terms of CSR norms andvocabulary, but more importantly in termsof big companies improving their supplychains in the region. This is especially truefor exporting companies.

“The real driving force for CSR in LatinAmerica is risk management, but peopledo not talk about this so much. If you listencarefully to stakeholders and practicegood corporate citizenship, you are in factcontrolling many types of risk.

“Our own company, GrupoNueva, is anodd example: we launched into seriousCSR early because we were founded by Stephan Schmidheiny. Customers areslowly beginning to realize that we are adifferent kind of company, and giving ustheir business.

“A business magazine wrote of our

forestry companies: ‘Making an early com-mitment to social responsibility has beenan exceedingly good deal for them. …theycan access demanding, premium marketsto which others don't have access.’

“Our Amanco subsidiary makes pipesand construction material. As it developedits CSR approaches, it also developed adeeper understanding of the societies inwhich it operates. For example, it realizedwhat a big problem corruption is, both as adestroyer of societal value and as a hin-drance to doing business. So it has beenworking with Transparency International tomake bidding more transparent. At the sametime, its profits have been increasing rapidly.

“Now other companies in these busi-nesses are using the vocabulary of CSR.We seem to have fallen into a leadershipposition, not by talking about or even doingCSR, but by doing CSR and making a profitat the same time.”

“DERES is guided by abusiness vision and isconstantly learning,” says itsexecutive director, EduardoShaw. “One of its tasks is tolearn of and to get involvedin other realities within theregion and around the worldso as to capitalize ondifferent experiences andacquired knowledge.”


Omar Braga, president of DERESand director of the constructioncompany SACEEM, likes to explain

how he progressed from being an aloofengineer to becoming a humane championof social responsibility.

“The [engineering] faculty didn’t pre-pare us to deal with people's problems;technically I was very capable, but at thehuman level, zero. But in SACEEM theywere capable of putting up with me for 10years, until I became aware of other valuesystems and another culture, and the goodit does one in seeing the company fromthis perspective. I was a company employ-ee, and from the inside I learned to respectpeople, the environment – and I learned ofhuman values.

“Early in my career I worked alone. Iwas given a problem, and I tried to solve it

on my own. Over time I realized that thiswas no use. If the objective is to find logi-cal, broad, global solutions, one is obligedto share, get involved, become part of theworking environment and work as a team.For me today, there is no other way for-ward than to do things with others.

“If you are socially responsible, you areeconomically viable as a company. It is anerror to think that CSR is a cost; for me it is aninvestment. The company is what the direc-tors are and do. We must transcend simpleeconomic viability, which in itself is not suffi-cient; it’s necessary but not sufficient.

“Each company has a main focus forits CSR actions. SACEEM, as a construc-tion company, seeks to improve the qualityof life of its employees and their families.One realizes that with this action yourreturns are greater.

“If CSR exists only inside of the com-pany, the much sought-after sustainabilitywill never be achieved. It is necessary towork with other business people and soci-ety. If your company is the only one to putCSR into action, it will end up failing. Youmust transmit and spread it to other com-panies and together work for the definitiveincorporation of a new way of being anddoing by the business community.

“Today there are still business peoplewho don’t believe in this; they think it’sidealistic. But for SACEEM, CSR repre-sents an indispensable management toolin achieving the necessary competitiveconditions, and the commitment to soci-ety’s sustainable development, enrichingthe quality of working conditions and com-munity development and caring for theenvironment through its activities.”

Omar Braga believes that “each company has a main focus for its CSR actions.” His own “seeks to improve thequality of life of its employees and their families. One realizes that with this action your returns are greater.”


“However, encouraging signs include theincreasing number of Latin American corporateleaders who are embracing CSR and are seekingsolutions in cooperation with other stakeholders tocreate more sustainable societies in Latin Americaand put the continent back on a track of growthand prosperity for all, following the lost decades ofthe 80s and 90s. But the numbers of enlightenedbusiness leaders remain small.”

Eduardo sees their numbers growing in Uruguay:“DERES members are convinced that a culturalchange is occurring, based on the principles of sus-tainable development. We are promoting a businessvision of greater competitiveness, which unfailinglyresults in a substantial improvement in the quality oflife for everyone, in particular the poorest.”

AVINA’s financial investment in DERES hasbeen small: $10,000 to help it with communica-tions and publications. AVINA has also offeredexpertise, advice, and contacts in the CSR field.

AVINA Council member German Cástellanosexplains that this connection is also a great help toAVINA’s own networking, in that “it gives us linksto other organizations in the social sector as wellas among companies concerned with CSR. It posi-tions us in the heart of the most progressive andcommitted elements of the private sector, who tryto reach into the countryside and work not onlywith the biggest companies, but also with thesmall and medium enterprises.”

Thus while DERES itself is a small networkbusy consolidating itself, it is part of several net-works. In Uruguay it works through organizationssuch as Junior Achievement, Endeavor Uruguay,and the national chapter of the Inter-AmericanAssociation of Economic and Financial Journalists.Internationally, it cooperates with Ethos, theArgentine Institute for Corporate Social Respons-ibility, EMPRESA, the UN Global Compact, andperhaps soon the WBCSD.

These links allow it to learn from and to teachthe rest of the world. AVINA backs it, but it alsosupports AVINA’s efforts to be part of the globalCSR set of connections and contacts. ■

For Omar Braga’s own construction company, “CSRrepresents an indispensable management tool in achieving thenecessary competitive conditions… and enriching the qualityof working conditions and community development…”


ost ocean life is born along thecoasts, and every year thisfragile meeting of land andwater supports ever largerhuman populations and morehuman activity.

By 1995 nearly half ofthe planet’s human population was concentratedon coastal land; 12 of the 15 largest cities werecoastal; and by mid-century three-quarters of amuch larger population will be living near the seas.

“Seven-tenths of the planet’s surface is cov-ered by seas and oceans. Yet the forces of changethat increasingly threaten the qualities and func-

tioning of marine ecosystems all originate on thethree-tenths that is land,” says Stephen Olsen,director of the Coastal Resources Center at RhodeIsland University. “These forces, in turn, are con-centrated at the margins of the planet’s oceans,seas, and great lakes on less than 20% of the land-space inhabited by people.”

The natural coastal zones of marsh, beach,estuary, and mangrove forest are out of sync withthe human zones of governance: village, city,province, state, and nation.

Yet along the coasts, thousands of organizations– public and private; governments, NGOs, founda-tions, and companies – try to manage varying

Weaving nets along the coasts

MBringing the crab harvest home. The forces of

change that increasingly threaten the qualitiesand functioning of marine ecosystems alloriginate on the three-tenths of the planet that island, says Stephen Olsen, director of the CoastalResources Center at Rhode Island University.

A crab catcher who plies his trade by handin a mangrove forest on the Ecuador coast. Thenatural coastal zones of marsh, beach, estuary,and mangrove forest are out of sync with thehuman zones of governance: village, city,province, state, and nation.


Cadudzzi Salas is trying to persuadethe fishing families of Chile to take astep – just a small step – back from

the ocean that supports them. Chile’s 4,000-kilometer Pacific coastline

supported some 5,000 small-scale fisher-men in the 1960s and supports about60,000 today; in total about 400,000 peo-ple depend on this precarious industry dom-inated by fluctuating fish stocks anddemand.

In the past, the fishing families movedoften to follow the fish; today the lawrequires them to settle. However, in theirrough settlements their housing may beunsafe, roads impassable, drinking water

dirty, healthcare unavailable, and schoolspoor to non-existent.

“Chile is a country that has been builtwith its back to the sea, and in the measureto which we give fishing people opportuni-ties to stay and share with us their culture,we will be able to save and recuperate ouridentity,” Cadudzzi argues .

Cadudzzi has a degree in aquaculture butnever followed it into a life of science: “Myinterest in aquaculture is not in the salmon,”he explains. A fish expert interested in peo-ple, he goes into these villages and discuss-es the issues fishing families face on land.The villages draw up “cause and effect”charts; they begin to list solvable problems;

they delegate responsibilities. One villagemay focus on getting government healthcare,another on building a bridge.

Other projects have involved solar power,purifying and recycling seawater, securingland titles, and planting gardens and trees.They form their own non-profit organizationsand commercial organizations to get betterdeals for their catch, for a major part ofthese communities’ problems are caused bythe onslaught of the big commercial fishingfleets against which they must compete.

Once Cadudzzi has helped them getprojects going, each community sets upteams of permanent monitors, local com-munity leaders, to lead activities but also to


aspects of coastal development and resource use,with varying degrees of efficiency.

To be successful, these efforts would have tobe integrated, long-term, learning from one anoth-er, and teaching future generations what they havelearned. Yet such projects usually work in isolation,with varying visions and goals, have two- or three-year project lifetimes, and do not write up andspread the results of their work.

It was this reality that led Stephen and EmilioOchoa of EcoCostas in Guayaquil, Ecuador, toestablish the Collaborative Learning Network forIntegrated Coastal Management (CLNICM). Itsgoals are to train its members to organize theirwork and assess their experience using commonframeworks and language, to identify the condi-tions in which good practices bring success, toadvocate for effective governance strategies, andto achieve social change through collective action.

These are ambitious goals, but they start withsimple acts such as meeting together, and in thosemeetings developing The Notebook, a standardevaluation tool that allows integrated coastal proj-ect leaders to compare approaches and results.

“The integrated approach has been very helpfulfor AVINA leaders as well,” said Carlos de Paco,representative for the AVINA marine program.“Most of our non-marine leaders understand inte-grated social change in a neighborhood: improvingschools, roads, sewage treatment. They nowunderstand integrated coastal programs as similar,but slightly different – integrating beaches, fish-eries, sewage treatment, etc.”

Carlos explains that leaders for social changeoften find the sea a good place to start gettingcommunities involved in civic action. It seems atfirst an easy, innocent issue, no more complexthan cleaning up a beach. But the network teach-es that coastal issues extend “from ridge to reef”– all along the paths of the waters running frommountains to sea. So coastal managementinvolves issues of farming, water use, garbagedisposal, and sewage treatment far inland. Com-munities get more sophisticated as they get moreinvolved in the issue.

Stephen, as might be expected, is a marine biol-ogist; he has run the center for more than 30 years.He admits that biologists do not necessarily makegood project managers or communicators. Emilio,however, is an educator, who knows how to take

The coast of Chile where Cadudzzi Salas has been working tohelp fishing families help themselves to have better houses, roads,schools, healthcare, and marketing systems.

travel to other communities to see whatdoes and does not work. Cadudzzi is estab-lishing a mobile, multi-media unit to travelamong the communities to both collect andspread information.

This is the epitome of “integrated coastalmanagement,” and Cadudzzi is an importantmember of the Collaborative Learning Net-work for Integrated Coastal Management.He is using it and other contacts to try tospread his work to Peru and Brazil.


lessons learned and spread them. The two havebeen working together for more than 10 years.

AVINA not only funds their network, but alsohelps it organize its management systems andcommunications so it can evolve efficiently.

The network contains at least one AVINAleader in each country where AVINA works, andinvolves leaders outside of AVINA and outside ofAVINA’s geographic scope, such as Cuba and BajaCalifornia. Since these are members of their ownnetworks, CLNICM is a network of networks.

“For years northern aid agencies have beenpouring money into coastal management in thedeveloping world with no way to evaluate and

During the military dictatorship of the1970s, some 300,000 hectares ofUruguay’s grasslands, wetlands, and

lagoons were declared a UNESCO BiosphereReserve. At about the same time, vastcanals were dug to drain grasslands, wet-lands, and lagoons to improve agriculturalproduction.

The result was poor pastureland, moreland under rice production, and the ruin ofUruguay’s best beach as the canals filled thesea with muddy water.

In the meantime, the Biosphere Reservehas grown to 3 million hectares but hasnever really been controlled by the govern-ment. In 2000, the parliament voted to pro-tect it but did not pass a law to make it aBiosphere Reserve, the category used todelineate the area 25 years earlier. All landsin the area remain privately owned.

It is a spectacular case of dis-integratedcoastal management.

In 1993, Carlos Fagetti took a govern-ment job in the reserve areas and did asocio-economic study of the local population,learning firsthand about the problems andpossibilities of these communities.

In 2002, AVINA began to back him to getpeople involved in eco-friendly lagoon activi-ties, and to try to show that a number ofsmall projects could be more productive,and sustainable, than massive projects.

“We worked with the organization ofsmall fishermen who have lived in the parkarea for over 50 years,” Carlos said. “TheAssociation of Small Fishermen of theCoastal Lagoons was established to repre-sent their interests and as a strategic moveto consider forms of conservation andsustainable development of the naturalresources in the park area and to improvethe quality of life.”

They farmed rheas (smaller Latin Amer-ican cousin of the ostrich) and producedmeat that could be sold for $4-$6 per kilo.They raised free-ranging capybara (theworld’s largest rodent, at 40kg), but ran

A seaweed collector’shome on the coast ofChile. In the past, thefishing families movedoften to follow the fish;today their housing maybe unsafe, roadsimpassable, drinkingwater dirty, healthcareunavailable, and schoolspoor to non-existent.


Carlos Fagetti (foreground) helps a fisherman harvest farmed oysters based on technology borrowed from nearby Brazil;exchange field trips were focused on farming shrimp in circular plastic mesh enclosures.

into a law that said meat could be sold onlyfrom cage-raised capybara. They did betterwith free-range wild boar. They improvedlagoon fisheries and raised and soldorganic vegetables.

They also borrowed technology fromnearby Brazil to farm shrimp in circular plas-tic mesh enclosures, feeding them choppedfish and pellets.

“We thus established contacts with theUniversidad de Río Grande in Brazil, and we

organized visits of Uruguayan farmers toBrazil, and vice versa – together with a littlesoccer on the side!” Carlos explained.

Today fishing families are supplying oys-ters and other creatures to expensiverestaurants in the main tourism centers ofPunta del Este and La Paloma.

The Protected Areas law passed in Feb-ruary 2002 foresees the creation of localadvisory commissions to move forward onconcrete management measures.

“AVINA has allowed us to see othercoastal marine management efforts andpublic/private interaction. We have startedto establish links with other groups alongthe Atlantic Coast. We are part of the net-work of Stephen Olsen and Emilio Ochoa,”says Carlos. “But we have also found part-ners, friends, compañeros who are imple-menting projects in the beautiful cold ofsouthern Argentina and in immense andmulticolored Brazil.”


compare results,” Carlos explains. “One thing TheNotebook helps you know is when a communitytakes over the coastal management issue andowns it.” So aid agencies are watching the CLNICMwork very closely; and Stephen is already talkingabout taking it to Africa and Asia.

In Latin America, AVINA supports a marine net-work along Brazil’s coast. Carlos Fagetti and col-leagues are beginning to think about covering all of

the Uruguay coast. A network is developing allalong Argentina, and Cadudzzi Salas is spreadinghis work from northern Chile down toward thesouthern tip. Maria Elena Foronda and colleaguesare orchestrating the effort in Peru, and Emilio withhis partners in Ecuador.

This suggests the possibility of one powerfulnetwork covering much of the Latin Americancoast, all working from the same Notebook. ■

A wetsuited diver battles the surf on the Chilean coast to harvest seaweed. This is onetype of “fishing” in which locals can out-compete the big commercial fleets that make lifehard for artisanal fishing villages.

Oysters bound for theexpensive restaurants of Santiago. Chile’s4,000-kilometer Pacificcoastline supported some5,000 small-scalefishermen in the 1960sand supports about60,000 today.


Fishermen bringing home thecatch in Uruguay. The oyster farm isbehind them in the lagoon. Otherprojects have involved raising hugebirds and rodents for market andgrowing organic vegetables.


AVINAIN NUMBERS


0

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

2000& prior

2001 2002 2003 2004 Total

146,670

146,670

42,163

188,833

38,102

226,935

33,016

259,951

31,872

291,823

291,823Total by year

Cumulative

Cumulative disbursement ($000)

Disbursements ($000)

2000& prior

2001 2002 2003 2004

Focusing on projects and networking activities

In 2004, AVINA increased the cumulative disbursements to $291 million. As it focused more on helping leadersto network, AVINA reduced disbursements to projects from the previous year by more than $1 million. Asignificant part of our investments – $2.2 million, representing 7% of the total – has been spent on networking,meetings, links, and activities among leaders. As a consequence of our focus on networks, next year ouraccounting system will capture a breakdown of our disbursements by type of networks.


76 BRAZIL

42 CHILE

39 ARGENTINA

36 PERU

26 PARAGUAY

15 MARINE INITIATIVES

12 URUGUAY

10 BOLIVIA

5 SPAIN & PORTUGAL

5 INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS*

2 CENTRAL AMERICA

1 ECUADOR

Approved projects by country, 2004

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2000& prior

2001 2002 2003 2004 Total

Total 269

450 201 235 344 269 1499Projects approved

Cumulative approved projects (by year)

Number of approved projects

2000& prior

2001 2002 2003 2004

450 651 886 1230 1499Cumulative projects

*Strategic Initiatives was the term used until 2003.


0

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

2000& prior

2001 2002 2003 2004

Cumulative commitments ($000)

AVINA’s commitment to partners in different regions

In 2004, AVINA committed an additional $24.5 million in projects, bringing the total commitment since thefoundation began operations to $306.5 million. The commitments represent total amounts approved for projectsduring the calendar year, including scheduled disbursements for these projects that fall in subsequent years.


2000& prior

2001 2002 2003 2004

Argentina

Bolivia

Brazil

Central America*

Chile

Ecuador*

Paraguay

Peru

Spain and Portugal

Uruguay

Marine Initiatives*

International Networks**

Others

Totals by year

Cumulative

10,207

1,705

3,772

5,109

1,606

2,197

8,194

4,560

812

0

0

101,444

35,964

175,570

175,570

9,932

917

463

337

2,521

767

4,997

3,316

287

0

0

14,219

6,146

43,902

219,472

1,564

900

2,791

1,748

2,148

52

2,744

1,301

1,592

255

0

17,712

4,239

37,046

256,518

1,868

445

2,716

0

1,515

0

676

1,279

897

375

1,810

13,954

0

25,535

282,053

661

160

4,084

92

1,998

6

677

723

342

193

828

14,715

0

24,477

306,530

Totalby country

24,232

4,127

13,826

7,286

9,788

3,022

17,288

11,178

3,930

822

2,638

162,044

46,349

306,530

*The Marine Initiatives division was reported in previous years in the respective country where each initiative was carried out, principally Ecuador and Central America.

New commitments ($000)

**Strategic Initiatives was the term used until 2003.


Project payments, leader support, and operating expenses(Distributed as % of total outlay)

70% Direct project funding

22% All other office operating expenses

8% Non-financial services to partners and non-project activities

2004

70% Direct project funding

24% All other office operating expenses

6% Non-financial services to partners and non-project activities

2003

Non-financial services to partners

In 2004, AVINA representatives and staff worked more directly with our leaders and their networks, providingthem with a variety of non-financial services. AVINA’s mission to “partner with leaders” means more thanfinancial support. We continue to provide our partners with non-financial resources in the form of time put in byAVINA staff, such as support for networking, helping partners improve their organizations, and broadening theirsources of funding. Costs allocated to time spent by our people on non-financial services was significant in2004 – $3.4 million, representing 27% of total operating expenses or 8% of total outlay.


0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

2001 2002 2003 2004

2001 2002 2003 2004

International Networks disbursements ($000)

International Networks commitments ($000)

Total

% of AVINA total disbursements

AshokaCentro Magis / Fe y Alegría FUNDESINCAEOthers

Total

% of AVINA total commitments

21,381

51%

18,843

49%

13,596

41%

13,138

41%

9843,9938,249

0993

14,219

32%

7144,3346,0873,8922,685

17,712

48%

2,0155,0274,780

02,132

13,954

55%

4,4734,7375,405

0100

14,715

60%

2001 2002 2003 2004

Our International Networks continued their important role

Our International Networks* – financially large, long-term partnerships – continued to be a major componentof our overall activities. Several long-term partners have been able to diversify their sources of support. MostInternational Networks met their counterpart funding targets, demonstrating the high leverage effect ofAVINA’s funds in these joint ventures.

*Strategic Initiatives was the term used until 2003.


AVINA FOUNDATIONP.O. Box 0832-0390 WTCPanama City, PanamaTel: +507 208 9430

Stephan Schmidheiny, Founder

CouncilBrizio Biondi-Morra, PresidentGermán CastellanosPeter Cleaves*María Emilia CorreaRaúl GautoAntonio Lobo

* Until December 2004

DIRECTORS


ARGENTINA

Buenos Aires-Service CenterCarlos OxenfordParera 15, piso 10 (1014)Buenos Aires, ArgentinaTel: +54 (11) 4816 [email protected]

Buenos AiresRaúl GautoParera 15, piso 8 (1014)Buenos Aires, ArgentinaTel: +54 (11) 4812 [email protected]

CordobaMariana CaminottiFigueroa Alcorta 318 (5105)Villa Allende, Córdoba, ArgentinaTel: +54 (35) 4343 [email protected]

PatagoniaPedro TarakCalle Tambo viejo s/n°Km. 2 Av. BustilloCasilla de Correo 132 (8400)Bariloche, Río Negro, ArgentinaTel: +54 (2944) 442126

+54 (2944) [email protected]

BOLIVIA

Santa CruzGabriel BaracattLos Flamboyanes 10, Santa Cruz, BoliviaTel: +591 (3) 343 [email protected]

BRAZIL

BrasiliaGeraldinho VieiraSMDB conj. 12, bl. A, sala 304/305CEP: 71680-120, Brasilia - DF, BrazilTel: +55 (61) 366 [email protected]

CuritibaValdemar de Oliveira Rua Visconde do Rio Branco, 1322, loja 2, Centro CEP: 80420-210Curitiba - PR, BrazilTel: +55 (41) 324 [email protected]

ManausCarlos MillerRua Fortaleza, 201, sala 12 B AdrianópolisCEP: 69057-080, Manaus - AM, BrazilTel: +55 (92) 232 [email protected]

RecifeValdemar de Oliveira Rua Ernesto de Paula Santos, 187Salas 1001/1002, Boa ViagemCEP: 51021-330, Recife - PE, BrazilTel: +55 (81) 3325 [email protected]

Rio de Janeiro-Service CenterSean McKaughanRua Barão de Jaguaripe, 46, IpanemaCEP: 22421-000 Rio de Janeiro - RJ, BrazilTel: +55 (21) 2521 [email protected]

SalvadorTania TavaresRua Marechal Floriano, 64, sala 105Centro Empresarial CanelaCEP: 40110-010, Salvador - BA, BrazilTel: +55 (71) 203 [email protected]

CHILE

ChillanPaola BerdichevskyConstitución 1085Casilla de Correos 1168Chillán, ChileTel: +56 (42) 240 150

+56 (42) 244 [email protected]

SantiagoVerónica EdwardsSanta Magdalena 75, of. 907Providencia, Santiago, ChileTel: +56 (2) 231 [email protected]

COLOMBIA

BogotaValdemar de Oliveira Tel: +55 (81) 3325 [email protected]

COSTA RICA

San Jose-Service CenterAurelia GarridoP.O. Box 3988-1000,San José, Costa RicaTel: +506 210 [email protected]

San Jose-International NetworksAntonio LoboTel: +506 210 [email protected]

San Jose-Marine InitiativesRaúl GautoTel: +506 210 [email protected]

San Jose-Mesoamerica Office Rafael LunaTel: +506 210 [email protected]

ECUADOR

GuayaquilBaltazar [email protected]

PANAMA

Panama City-Service CenterJorge Walter BolañosAv. Samuel LewisTorre ADR Technologies, piso 9Ciudad de Panamá, Rep. de PanamáTel: +507 208 9430

+507 208 [email protected]

PARAGUAY

AsuncionSusana OrtizBruselas 2688 c/ Denis RoaBarrio Herrera, Asunción, ParaguayTel: +595 (21) 612 [email protected]

PERU

LimaBaltazar CaravedoAv. Camino Real 1236, piso 6San Isidro, Lima, PeruTel: +51 (1) 221 5070

+51 (1) 440 [email protected]

PORTUGAL

LisbonRosa [email protected]

SPAIN

BarcelonaCarla GalánRoselló, 174-176, 4° 1ª08036, Barcelona, SpainTel: +34 (93) 452 [email protected]

Mallorca-Service CenterIgnacio MartínApt. Postal 96, 07150, AndratxMallorca, SpainTel: +34 (971) 137 [email protected]

SWITZERLAND

Hurden – AVINA Stiftung SchweizEvelyn BraunP.O. Box 1474CH – 8640 Hurden, SwitzerlandTel: +41 (55) 415 [email protected]

URUGUAY

MontevideoEnrique Piedra CuevaMar Mediterráneo 5544Montevideo, UruguayTel: +598 (2) 606 [email protected]

OFFICES AND CONTACTS

PROJECT DIRECTORMarta Escotet

WRITING AND EDITINGLloyd Timberlake

PHOTOGRAPHYChristopher PillitzJulio Monteghirfo/Eureka Comunicación(page 11)

DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Mike Kenny/Anita Wright for

a company specializing in thecommunication of corporate responsibilityissues for a range of internal and externalaudiences.

Printed in the UK by Beacon Press usingtheir pureprint® environmental printtechnology. Inks are made usingvegetable-based oils, no film or film-processing chemicals were used. 95% ofthe cleaning solvents are recycled forfurther use and 88% of the wasteassociated with this product will berecycled. The electricity used wasgenerated from renewable sources.

Beacon Press is a Carbon Neutral®

company and is registered to ISO 14001and EMAS. Beacon has also been awardedThe Queen’s Award for SustainableDevelopment.

Printed on Mega Matt which contains upto 50% recycled fiber.

©2005 AVINA FoundationAVINA and the AVINA logo are trademarksof AVINA Foundation.All rights reserved.

Report 2004

Documents

Transcript of Report 2004