Fauna & Flora International (FFI) has been working in partnership with Practical Action to adapt the latter's Participatory Market System Development approach to a biodiversity conservation context. A key output from this collaboration is a set of guidance documents, published in February 2019, to help conservation practitioners facilitate the development of more productive, fair, inclusive and biodiversity-friendly market systems. The tools and methods described in these documents are designed to enable NGO facilitators to use both livelihood and conservation criteria to select the most appropriate market sectors on which to focus. Guidance is provided on how to engage key market actors, including private sector actors that conservationists may not traditionally interact with and who may not initially be interested in the environmental impacts of their businesses. Tips are provided on how to frame discussions in terms of business interests, such as product quality and sustainability of supply, and how these are related to sustainable use and conservation. Exercises are provided to help empower marginalized producers to have the skills and confidence to negotiate with input and service providers, as well as with traders, and with government agencies whose policies influence the business enabling environment.

A central element of the Participatory Market System Development process is bringing together key market actors to map their current market system, increasing their understanding of the roles of other actors and the importance of communication and information flows along the value chain. Through facilitated discussion of challenges and opportunities these actors can begin to identify simple strategies that they can implement to improve the system for mutual benefit. This process helps build more transparent, fair and trusting relationships between producers and other market actors.

The guidance documents include examples and case studies of how these tools have been applied in a wide range of FFI projects in Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, Myanmar, Tanzania and other countries. Market sectors addressed include marine fisheries and non-timber forest products, and involve the participation and empowerment of both women and men. In all cases well-governed local natural resource management institutions, whether customary or newly established, have played a vital role in ensuring that local communities benefit from improved livelihoods without overexploiting their natural resource base. Secure tenure, in the form of officially recognized locally managed marine areas or community forests, has been shown to be a major enabling factor in the success of these initiatives. Strong links between support to market system development and conservation outcomes are key to ensuring that this approach incentivizes not just sustainable use but also has positive impacts on wider marine and forest ecosystems.

These newly published documents, together with a previously published Learning Paper, are freely available at fauna-flora.org/approaches/livelihoods-governance/sustainable-economic-opportunities.