Related Projects

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health
Impact Area and Outcome
The key impact area is the restoration and conservation of landscapes and natural resources critical for local livelihoods. The desired outcome is improved and sustained provisioning of ecosystem services through community empowerment and promotion of nature-based approaches and solutions for resilient livelihoods.
Context
Biodiversity and ecosystem services are the basis for sustainable food systems and building resilient landscapes and communities. On-going climate change, out-migration and urbanisation are negatively affecting biodiversity hotspots and habitats, undermining the environment and their vital ecosystem services. Loss of agricultural, forest, and aquatic biodiversity due to unsustainable land use and harvesting practices are common. The gradual loss of indigenous conservation knowledge and the government’s conservation-oriented policies (as opposed to conservation by optimum use) also affect local food and livelihood systems. Women, girls, and marginalised people are impacted most when essential biodiversity and ecosystem services are depleted. We will work with custodian farmers and indigenous communities who reside around biodiversity-rich ecosystems (such as buffer zones, watersheds, wetlands and river basins) and hold rich knowledge about biodiversity-based production systems to demonstrate the synergies between community empowerment and sustainable management of local biodiversity and natural resources for resilient livelihoods.
The programme will contribute to the national policies and priorities, particularly the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, National Forestry Policy and Strategy, and Watershed Management Strategy, and closely align with SDG 15 priorities and targets.
Key Strategic Actions
To achieve this outcome in this strategy period, we will:
- Identify, prioritise, and conduct participatory assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services in watershed, wetland and river basin landscapes that are critical for local livelihoods. Develop and pilot appropriate incentive solutions (such as pro-poor reward for ecosystem services or payment for ecosystem services and equitable benefit-sharing mechanisms) for sustainable restoration of landscapes, generate evidence, and influence policies for up-scaling;
- Pilot and up-scale market-led approaches to sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystem services for improved livelihoods (e.g., through the integration of ecosystem services as an integral part of community forestry management plan, promotion of unified landscape branding, and food hub approaches for local products); and
- Empower local communities, institutions and networks for their stewardship in the conservation and management of local biodiversity such as promotion of conservation-oriented enterprises focusing on women and indigenous communities, and establishment of locally-managed biodiversity information centres and conservation funds.
