2021 Rainmaker Start-up grant: Building partnerships to develop culturally appropriate PES mechanisms for Indigenous peoples and local communities"

We aim to use the start-up funds to conduct groundwork essential to advance our current research for external funding. The main project tasks are: 1. Mapping Local Community Lands across the globe to complement the current map of Indigenous Lands, developed by the CDU team led by Prof Stephen Garnett, and assessing the value of their Ecosystem Services (ES) (potentially 2 publications); 2. Building partnerships with global organisations for supporting Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) to manage their lands sustainably; 3. Developing culturally-tuned Payments for ES mechanisms.This start-up grant will help us focus on the first task—mapping Community Lands globally, and assessing the value of ES. For tasks 2&3 we will be collaborating with partner organizations (such as TNC, WWF, WRI) to apply for funds from local (e.g. ARC linkage) and external organisations (e.g. TNC, WWF, etc.)