Rapid Agrobiodiversity Appraisal (RABA) - Are you looking for one ...

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Rapid Agrobiodiversity Appraisal (RABA)
in the Context of Environmental Service Rewards
The RABA itself is designed to cover the stages of scoping out the domain and identifying partners who will be engaged
in the transactions. As an analytical framework (figure 3), RABA offers guidance on the important things that should
be noted in any attempt to advocate conservation of agrobiodiversity in the context of environmental-service
rewards. It captures the perspectives of seller, buyer and intermediaries. As a tool, RABA is also designed to assist in
locating and obtaining initial data necessary for sellers, intermediaries and buyers to explore the potential for
developing a reward system.
The approach consists of five steps, four of which comprise RABA (figure 4). Locating the area of biodiversity
importance, for example, could be seen as an activity that should be conducted by the potential intermediary or as a
joint activity with the seller. Limited access to information limits the seller's knowledge about biodiversity hotspots
and endangered species. In such a case, it is the intermediaries' role to provide information about the location of
biodiversity importance. However, in other cases where there is local knowledge on endangered species, potential
sellers could provide initial indicators on the existence of endangered plants or animals. Organizations that might
have an interest in conserving endangered species and research organizations are other potential sources of
information.
The seller could refer to existing definitions of conservation priorities developed by many conservation organizations.
Although done coarsely, the process of locating the area also represents the first filter for indicating situations where
there is potential for ESR. Areas of high priority may be indicated by the nature of the species assemblage, its
uniqueness and the threats it faces.
Some activities are conducted jointly. For example, inventory of local issues and societies are to be conducted
together by intermediaries and potential buyers. The division of work and the context of analysis may be different in
each case of ESR engagement, but assessment of the credibility of the potential seller will always be a focus that
buyers are very interested in.
RABA is not a stand-alone tool; rather it is a tool in which approaches to rapidly collect data and appraise the
conservation value of an area are combined, summarized and adapted. Different techniques such as Rapid Rural
Appraisal, Stakeholder Analysis and exploration of 'citizen science' (such as Local Ecological Knowledge) are among
the methods or approaches that have been taken into account in the different phases of RABA.
RAPID AGROBIODIVERSITY APPRAISAL (RABA)