BlueMX Social Impact Initiatives
Programme Strategy
Recognizing that community-first initiatives are the only way to ensure sustainable and meaningful change, BlueMX Social Impact Initiatives ensure the involvement of local communities by involving Mexico’s Ejidos (communal land, held by community members) in our social programmes.
Our Ejido community engagement strategy focusses on three key pillars to ensure inclusive, fair and enduring participation:
Access to Knowledge
Our on-ground workshops socialize the program, identify rights and obligations of the Ejidos and do participatory planning to identify local needs.
Good Governance
We seek to strengthen the governance of our Ejido partners through training, modernising internal regulations, and advancing gender equity.
Legal Protections
Ejidos’ rights are protected with formal agreements through legal assemblies and their registration with the Registro Agrario Nacional (RAN).
“Community-based hydrologic restoration approach is a good way to ensure long-term restoration of wetlands … the construction of human capacities [results] in a more efficient strategy for ecosystem restoration. “
Zaldívar-Jiménez et al, 2017
Community Implementation
Informed by our three pillars, we involve local communities in all activities through training, capacity building, transferring technical knowledge and information to drive community-led replication.
Diagnosis
We conduct an environmental and social diagnosis of the area and communities to generate information concerning the state of mangroves ecosystems and the local social situation where priority problems are identified.
Planning
We form a restoration plan with an advisory group that provides advice to local stakeholders on planning, conservation, restoration, education, management, monitoring, and replication.
Engagement
Community involvement is encouraged throughout the life of the project through workshops on social participation, education and training programs designed to create community ownership.
Monitoring
Communities participate in monitoring restoration success through assessment of specific variables that function as progress indicators and identifying new actions via adaptive management.
Replication
Trained participants build their capacity to replicate restoration activities in other areas, better understand resource pressures and analyse information to inform ongoing community resource management.
We acknowledge the continuing connection of Mexico’s first peoples to land and sea. We extend our deepest respect and recognition to the traditional custodians of the places we work and we strive to help coastal communities realize their hopes, dreams, traditions and cultures.
The Benefits of BlueMX Social Impact Initiatives
BlueMX offers direct community employment within its project areas (Goals 1 and 2). We have partnered with a cooperative, Comunidad de Restauradores del Manglar en Isla Aguada, that is managed 100% by women and with a majority-female workforce (Goal 5), to handle monitoring, conservation and restoration activities (Goals 8, 11, 14 and 15). The cooperative has previously employed more than 800 community members to work in BlueMX restoration projects and this skilled workforce is also contracted to work on all its project areas in Mexico.
