Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests of Tanzania and Kenya ...

INTRODUCTIONThe Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) is designed to safeguard the world's threatenedbiodiversity hotspots in developing countries. It is a joint initiative of Conservation International(CI), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Government of Japan, the MacArthurFoundation and the World Bank. CEPF supports projects in hotspots, the biologically richest andmost endangered areas on Earth.A fundamental purpose of CEPF is to ensure that civil society is engaged in efforts to conservebiodiversity in the hotspots. An additional purpose is to ensure that those efforts complementexisting strategies and frameworks established by local, regional and national governments.CEPF aims to promote working alliances among community groups, nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs), government, academic institutions and the private sector, combiningunique capacities and eliminating duplication of efforts for a comprehensive approach toconservation. CEPF is unique among funding mechanisms in that it focuses on biological areasrather than political boundaries and examines conservation threats on a corridor-wide basis toidentify and support a regional, rather than a national, approach to achieving conservationoutcomes. Corridors are determined through a process of identifying important species, site andcorridor-level conservation outcomes for the hotspot. CEPF targets transboundary cooperationwhen areas rich in biological value straddle national borders, or in areas where a regionalapproach will be more effective than a national approach.The Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests of Tanzania and Kenya hotspot (hereafterreferred to as the Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests hotspot) is one of the smallest ofthe 25 global biodiversity hotspots. 1 It qualifies by virtue of its high endemicity and a severedegree of threat. Although the hotspot ranks low compared to other hotspots in total numbers ofendemic species, it ranks first among the 25 hotspots in the number of endemic plant andvertebrate species per unit area (Myers et al. 2000). It also shows a high degree of congruencefor plants and vertebrates. It is also considered as the hotspot most likely to suffer the most plantand vertebrate extinction for a given loss of habitat and as one of 11 “hyperhot” priorities forconservation investment (Brooks et al. 2002).THE ECOSYSTEM PROFILEThe purpose of the ecosystem profile is to provide an overview of biodiversity values,conservation targets or “outcomes,” the causes of biodiversity loss and current conservationinvestments in a particular hotspot. Its purpose is to identify the niche where CEPF investmentscan provide the greatest incremental value.The ecosystem profile recommends strategic opportunities, called “strategic funding directions.”Civil society organizations then propose projects and actions that fit into these strategicdirections and contribute to the conservation of biodiversity in the hotspot. Applicants proposespecific projects consistent with these funding directions and investment criteria. The ecosystemprofile does not define the specific activities that prospective implementers may propose, butoutlines the conservation strategy that guides those activities. Applicants for CEPF grants arerequired to prepare detailed proposals identifying and describing the interventions andperformance indicators that will be used to evaluate the success of the project.1 At the time this document was prepared in 2003, the Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests region wasclassified as a biodiversity hotspot itself. However, a hotspots reappraisal released in 2005 places this region withintwo new hotspots - the Eastern Afromontane Hotspot and the Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa Hotspot. Thisprofile and CEPF investments focus strictly on the Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests comprising theoriginal hotspot as defined in this document.5